False diplomas, how to avoid them?

False diplomas are a more common phenomenon than you might think, and can degrade the quality of your recruitments. How common is it? What are the risks for the employer and the candidate? How do you deal with it? Here is everything you need to know.

Fake diplomas: a common phenomenon?

In our audits, we find that one in 8 resumes contains a serious lie. And many of them involve fake diplomas.

Very often, it will be a simple lie on the CV: a diploma supposedly obtained, which the candidate does not really hold. But regularly forged diplomas are presented to the recruiter in order to obtain the desired position.

In some cases, the candidate took the training but did not complete it, or failed the exam. But sometimes the training was not taken at all! We regularly relay examples in our top 3 monthly of the lies identified by our teams.

Is a fake diploma easy to obtain?

Unfortunately, yes!

Many sites offer to make fake diplomas on demand, for an unfortunately affordable budget. These sites claim that these fake diplomas are only to be used for recreational purposes. But you can imagine what often happens. See instead:

The democratization of computer tools also makes it very easy to produce a fake. But even worse, there are counterfeiters who specialize in making fake diplomas! Here is an interview with one of these false certificate manufacturers.

What are the risks of using a fake diploma?

They are multiple, both for the candidate who takes the risk and for the company that would hire an employee with a false diploma.

For the employer: hiring an employee with a false diploma can have serious consequences in certain sectors. One thinks of the medical, health and social sectors. But it is also the case for professions where the employee has the responsibility of supervising the public (sports instructor, childcare). A false diploma can also jeopardize a certification such as iso 27001. We have dedicated an article to this subject.

But of course, the most common risk is to hire someone who is not qualified and of questionable character!

On the candidate’s side : in case of an incident at work, the legal risk is great. A ski instructor who has lied about his diploma and sees one of his students get injured can be seriously worried. The same is true for all health and social professions and, of course, for medical professions.

Generally speaking, lying about a degree can be grounds for dismissal, as explained in this article.

How to fight against false diplomas?

To begin with, you can already ask for copies of your new employees’ diplomas, to check that they have really been obtained and do not appear falsely on the CV.

But as explained below this is not enough. It is far too easy to falsify such a document.

It will be necessary to verify the certificate. Several methods exist: analyze the diploma, conduct an internet search, contact the schools, consult databases when you have access to them.

A real survey work in short! With a risk of error, and a significant workload to achieve this if you do it yourself. Not to mention the deadlines and the risk of not respecting legal obligations, such as obtaining the candidate’s consent.

We therefore recommend that you use the services of a specialist such as EveryCheck, which ensures a fast, ethical and legally compliant audit!

You can learn more about EveryCheck’s fight against fake diplomas in this report made for the France 3 television news:

Feel free to book a short presentation of our services to learn more.