Are your CRA Applicants Lying to You? - A Checklist

Do you believe that Fake CRA Applicants exist?? If you are a hiring manager, I can guarantee more CRA candidates are lying to you than you realize. My goal is to provide Interviewers and Hiring Managers with a checklist of things to keep in mind when evaluating resumes. Please feel free to download this checklist for you and your company’s use!

When we first started noticing the trend of fraudulence, we identified that approximately 21% of our candidate pool had falsified all or part of their credentials.?Currently (2023), my team estimates that approximately 40-60% of applicants who apply to our open positions are fraudulent.

I should note that I am speaking about true applicant fraudulence…not just the mere embellishment of qualifications. We classify CRA fraudulence as a CRA candidate who has completely falsified all or part of their credentials. This may include the falsification of their employment history, stating they have a degree they haven’t actually earned, or even providing fake references.

Some tips on how to Identify Fake CRA Applicants' Resumes:

Career Builder has a published survey showing that 75% of Hiring Managers have caught a candidate lying on a resume. This was almost a 20% increase from their previous report showing 58% of candidates had been caught in a lie.

Along those lines, the SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management) published results from a survey where they stated that 85% of the 4,000 surveyed hiring managers uncovered a lie on a candidate’s resume or job application during the screening process.

Some of the trends we have identified are easy to spot…but others are more difficult to quantify. Here are some things to carefully consider when reviewing CRA candidate resumes and job applications.

The companies listed on the resume may not be real.

Don’t assume that the company is real just because there is a website or a location listed on Google.? As of this writing (December 2023), we have identified 71 sham companies being used by Fake CRA applicants. These are not companies that have been acquired or gone out of business either...they never existed. While these companies aren’t real, several of them have websites, a LinkedIn company page, and/or a presence on Google.

If you aren’t familiar with a company being used on a resume, research it. While my team has various sources to confirm that a company exists (or existed), my favorite is OpenCorporates. You can also check state registrars and Manta, but OpenCorporates scrapes all of the various state registrars as well as corporation listings in other countries.

Candidates have listed multiple companies on their resumes which did exist at some point...

...but are either deceased, acquired, merged with another company, or have otherwise rebranded.

In all cases, knowing the dates the company(ies) were active is critical. ?

Deceased Companies: When a company is deceased, your chances of confirming employment are next to nothing. While having one or two deceased companies on your resume may not point to fraudulence, having several may; therefore don't be afraid to dig deeper.

Acquired Companies: Conducting employment verification with companies that have been acquired is much easier than with deceased companies (although can still be tricky). The key is to note when the company was acquired and compare that date to the date(s) represented on the candidate’s resume.? For example, a company named Beryllium was founded in 2009 and was acquired by UCB Pharma in June 2017.

• If a CRA candidate states he/she worked with Beryllium before 2009, it is safe to say that something is amiss. After all, how did a CRA monitor for a company that hadn't been founded yet?
• Likewise, if the CRA candidate states they worked for Beryllium after June 2017, you must dig. If the candidate left for any other reason than the acquisition, (or if the candidate wasn’t even aware of the acquisition), you may have fraudulence on your hands.

Merged and/or Rebranded Companies: similar to acquisitions, make sure you are clear on the dates of companies that have merged or have rebranded. For illustration purposes, let’s look at Syneos and how easy it would be for fraudulent candidates to mislead others. If our notes are correct, foundational organizations that helped to develop Syneos include (but are not limited to):

• SFBC International was founded in 1984 and rebranded to PharmaNet in December of 2004;
• Ingenix was a clinical business that (at some point) consisted of inVentiv, Medfocus, and Smith Hanley and eventually became i3;
• inVentiv acquired Essential Group in February 2010;
• PharmaNet was acquired by i3 somewhere around mid to late 2011 and became known as PharmaNet/i3;
• inVentiv also purchased the clinical division of Kforce with the acquisition completed in April 2012;
• PharmaNet/i3 rebranded to inVentiv in early 2013;
• inVentiv merged with INC Research in 2017
• …and became Syneos Health in January 2018.

If you want to protect yourself from fraudulence, know when companies were founded as well as when they became deceased, merged, were acquired, or rebranded. In this example, someone stating they worked with PharmaNet before 2004 or the clinical division of Kforce after 2012 is likely misrepresenting themselves.

The candidate has asked for a below-market rate or salary.

When a CRA candidate’s compensation expectations are much less than the industry standard, this could be a flag.

Although this action alone doesn’t necessarily point to fraudulence, if you do progress this candidate to an interview make sure you poke at the candidate’s understanding of the position’s responsibilities and expectations.

What we have found: It has been our experience that a candidate who asks for a below-market rate or salary is either desperate, fraudulent, or underprepared. Additionally, there is no standard in this industry when it comes to titles. Because of that, we largely find that Clinical Research Associates who are asking for below-market compensation come from non-industry.

The reality: Our firm lives in a world of Senior CRAs. Clinical research professionals at this level know what the market will support in terms of rate and salary range. Always dig further if the candidate asks for a below-market rate or salary.

The resume contains a lot of self-employment or consulting with no clients listed.

Before anyone gets upset with me, I do want to state that we work with many Consultant CRAs who don’t list all of the clients they have worked with on their resumes.

But the ones we represent are those contract CRAs who are open to discussing their clients and projects with us. We feel that honest professionals will be transparent regarding the projects they have worked on.

When a CRA candidate refuses to discuss their past clients, the type of studies they have monitored, the therapeutics they have experience in, the start/end dates of their projects, or the primary responsibilities of their assignments…well, it is a huge flag.

What we have found: When a candidate is purposely vague, they are typically hiding something. And by the way, aren't the details we expect (clients, studies, therapeutics, start/end dates, and primary responsibilities) the point of a resume?? Shouldn’t an applicant expect to share this information?

The reality: When a Contract CRA refuses to list and/or discuss their clients or the details of their projects, we usually steer clear. This refusal to provide information may mean:

• The candidate may NOT actually have clients. Anyone can have an active LLC or Corporation but that doesn’t mean they have active clients.
• The projects could have ended badly…either because the contract CRA left before his/her committed contractual term or because the client ended the contract due to cause.

Either way, missing information on a resume forces me to use my imagination (which is never a good thing for the candidate).? While this alone doesn’t necessarily point to fraudulence, it is one of many grey areas you should consider when looking at the candidate’s qualifications as a whole.

The CRA Candidate has no supporting digital footprint.

In our industry, it is extremely unusual for CRAs to have NO?LinkedIn profile or supporting digital footprint.

If you are unable to find any digital footprint, be sure to dig deeper.? We often find digital footprints of fraudulent candidates that show they are truck drivers, work at Verizon, or do other jobs outside of the industry.

As a side note, even when a candidate has a supporting LinkedIn profile, make sure you can find other supporting information.

For example, MD Anderson employees are often still in the MDA employee directory. If the individual was a researcher, they are likely cited somewhere. If they were a coordinator, they may be listed on clinicaltrials.gov.? A true senior-level clinical researcher typically has a broad and deep digital footprint, so be sure to look for one.

If you can’t find a supporting digital footprint, perhaps you should put that candidate’s application into the ‘not now’ category.

If you are able, compare historical data.

We keep every version of a candidate’s resume. We also capture details we find regarding their digital footprint - every time we correspond with the candidate.

And we compare those multiple resumes and social media snips every time we consider working with them. Often, we see where employment changes…

History is good.

My last thought…

As you review CRA resumes and job applications with the above checklist in hand, remember that you are looking for trends. There are a lot of gray areas and truthfully, honest CRAs can make some of these mistakes. For example, a lack of supporting digital footprint will not necessarily keep us from progressing a candidate but finding a fake company listed on their resume will.

Need help?

Contact us to find out more about Fake CRA candidates – we are here to help!