Resumes are important, regardless of whether you’re using a LinkedIn resume or a paper copy during an interview. While the jobs people have worked and the experiences they’ve had are important, job titles are an important indicator of someone’s experience level, salary expectations, and career progress.
Unfortunately, some applicants may lie about their job titles for financial gain or to look more appealing as a candidate. Furthermore, some background checks may come back with different information that leads to further job title discrepancies. Regardless of the reason, coming across a job title discrepancy is alarming, and knowing how to deal with one is important.
The good news is that we’re here to help. Read on to learn more about how to handle various job title discrepancies.
What Is Job Title Discrepancy?
Jobs come with a lot of titles these days, especially in corporate America. While many of these jobs have established titles, sometimes job discrepancies happen when something doesn’t quite add up.
A job title discrepancy happens when someone claims to have a different job than what was found during a background check or when speaking to a reference. These discrepancies can happen due to fraud, negligence, or even an issue with the background check, so it’s not always the fault of the employee or applicant. For this reason, it’s important to know how to verify someone’s job title.
Why It’s Important to Check for Job Title Discrepancy
It’s important to check for job title discrepancies because it can prevent you from making the wrong hiring decisions. As an applicant, checking your own records is a good idea as well to prevent delays in the background check process.
For these reasons, we always recommend checking for job title discrepancies. You should also check for any discrepancies to prevent:
- Working with people who have committed fraud
- Hiring someone who is unqualified for a position
- Making a mistake that can lead to losses of funding, like hiring a nurse who doesn’t actually have that title
- People who lie about titles may lie about other information
- Spending more money than you should on an employee
There are only a few reasons to make sure you check for job title discrepancies. While it may take some extra time, it’s always worth the time and effort you put into it.
Reasons for Job Title Discrepancy
There are a handful of reasons for a job title discrepancy to occur. Most of the time, it comes down to faulty reporting or issues with the company’s way of writing a job title.
However, job title discrepancies can also be the employee’s fault. Employees may lie about titles because one might look more appealing on a background check than another one.
Learn more about how job title discrepancies happen below.
Fraud
One of the most common reasons for job title discrepancy is fraud. Even if employees don’t think it’s fraud, lying about job titles can come with fines, penalties, and termination from employers if they find out.
That said, many people still lie on their resume or give themselves a better title to try and earn more money. Unfortunately, this is more common than ever, and studies have found that 70% of workers have lied on their resume at least once. Therefore, it’s more common than many employers think, so verifying this information is crucial.
Still, even if some employees think that changing a few words in a title is acceptable, it can lead to big problems for the employee and the company.
Reporting Errors
During a background check, discrepancies will happen for many reasons, one of them being a reporting error. This can happen when agencies don’t share information properly or if the job title was listed as something incorrect elsewhere. This issue is easy to fix and can be done by reaching out to past employers for clarification.
Reporting errors can slow down the background check process and hiring process, so we recommend checking your records first to avoid any complications. It’s also important to note that reporting errors can also happen by mistake, so it’s not always malicious.
Same Meaning Different Name
Sometimes, a job title discrepancy can be as simple as a job having the same meaning but with a different name. For example, some companies might refer to an HR professional as an HR Generalist, while other companies may call them People and Culture Generalists.
While this can cause discrepancies on background checks or make it difficult for someone to verify previous employment, it’s usually not an issue. Still, you should get to the bottom of it and run a background check or contact previous employers to learn more about what a title is and what it might mean.
How to Verify a Job Title
There are a few ways to verify a job title. You can run a background check on the applicant, speak with them, or contact their previous employer. Most of these methods should work, so it’s always possible to get to the bottom of any discrepancies.
Learn more about the best ways to verify a job title below.
Contact Past Employers
If you want to find out what someone’s job title was, the best way to go about it is to contact someone’s previous employer. You can call the company, agency, or even the human resources department if you want to go that route. Ultimately, your goal should be to get in touch with someone at the company to verify their information.
Once you get in contact with someone, you can ask them for more details about the applicant’s previous title. If their answer doesn’t match what’s on their resume, it’s likely a job title discrepancy issue.
While contacting employers is a great way to learn more about someone, sometimes it’s unreliable. This is because some employers won’t work at a job anymore, or the company might not even exist anymore. Therefore, you may be better off using our people search tool if you run into these issues.
Run a Background Check
Another great way to resolve job title discrepancies is to run a background check on an applicant. This can be done by working with a background check agency, but you can also start your search with our people search tool. This is an easy-to-use tool that allows you to enter someone’s first and last name, city, and state to learn more about them.
What makes this tool efficient is how it works. We can help you comb through millions of public records databases in a matter of minutes. From there, we compile a full report of anything that’s available, which includes someone’s employment history. If you notice any job title discrepancies within the report, you know that something is wrong.
Aside from verifying someone’s work history, we can help you do a lot more. With our people search tools, you can find the following information:
- Education history
- Social media accounts
- Contact information
- Dating profiles
- Full name
- Date of birth
- Email address
- Address
- Criminal records
- Civil court records
Aside from this information, we can help you find anything else that’s publicly available. You can also try other background check agencies if you have to screen dozens of employees because the price may be lower.
Contact References
Reaching out to references is also important when you want to learn more about someone’s job title. You can reach out to personal and professional references to see if their stories about the applicant match up.
We recommend starting with professional references because they tend to know more about someone’s work history than other sources. If an employee doesn’t include references on their resume, you can run a background check instead or ask them to provide references.
Request Pay Stubs
You can also request pay stubs if you don’t believe that an employee was being honest about a title or their past employment. Pay stubs can give you an expectation for their salary and also may have details about their job title. Employees won’t always be forthcoming with this information, so make sure you keep this in mind if you’re asking for pay stubs.
Handle Any Job Title Discrepancies Today
Job title discrepancies are becoming more common in a world where it’s easier to create your own title or come up with a fake one. That said, they’re also becoming more common because some companies might use different titles than other companies, which makes it hard to verify someone’s skill level.
While job title discrepancies are problematic, they don’t have to be. With the right tools at your disposal, you should have no problem verifying a candidate’s information. Furthermore, you can always call someone’s previous employer, company, or references to get a better idea of what their job title really was.
While this may seem like an extra step during the background check process, it’s equally important as the background check itself to make sure you are verifying information the right way.
