February 12, 2002	Tuesday	Ziqa’ad 28, 1422

LONDON: The days of embellishing your curriculum vitae with exaggerated qualifications, impressive job titles and unlikely tales of outlandish foreign adventures could soon be over.

British firms are testing sophisticated new computer software that can check employees’ CVs for accuracy, including educational qualifications, places of study and the veracity of job references.

SAS, an American firm, has developed a programme called Text Miner which uses ‘smart technology’ to detect suspicious statements in CVs. It works by examining text patterns and numbers that can change when a lie or exaggeration is inserted.

The programme will also study the language used when CV writers describe their previous posts, studying the style of the text to see whether it accurately reflects the job description. It can also check to see if academic institutions mentioned in a CV existed and if they offered the courses named at the time the candidate claimed to have taken them.

“Some things might be an honest mistake, but it will all add up and in the end you may get a degree of uncertainty that will need to be investigated further,” said Peter Dorrington, SAS business solutions manager.

Text Miner will also be able to pick up telltale patterns that show whether or not a candidate used a computer programme to draw up many CVs and covering letters at once.

Job applicants can now expect the sort of checks on their CVs that are normally used to analyse people’s creditworthiness. The British firm Experian has set up a web-based system called CV Verifier that automatically checks any CV submitted to it.

The system can consult a database on educational qualifications to ensure that candidates have not been lying about their academic record. It also runs checks to see if someone has a court record, has ever been bankrupt, owes substantial debts or is disqualified from any profession. —Dawn/The Observer News Service.