One in five Hong Kong candidates submit inaccurate information on job applications

One in four make false claims with regard to their professional licenses.

More than one in five (21.5%) background checks conducted on job candidates in the Asia Pacific region (APAC) in 2016 identified inaccuracies in the information supplied by candidates. This finding was based on the results of background checks performed by HireRight in the APAC region last year.

Whilst this discrepancy rate has decreased from the previous year (29%), it remains almost three times higher than the discrepancy rate globally (9.7%). A discrepancy is marked when the information provided by the candidate does not match records of their previous places of employment, education or other relevant organisations and databases. Discrepancies could include a disparity in dates of education or employment, qualifications attained, graduation dates, positions held and job responsibilities.

More than one in five (21.3%) background checks conducted in Hong Kong in 2016 contained discrepancies. However, Hong Kong has seen a significant reduction in discrepancies as compared to 2015 (26.9%), and now sits right around the APAC average discrepancy rate (21.5%).

Similar to Singapore, professional licenses represented the highest Hong Kong discrepancy rate in 2016, with more than one in four candidates (27.3%) making inaccurate claims. That said, Hong Kong saw a significant reduction in education history discrepancies (25.2%) as compared to 2015 (34.8%). Similar to their counterparts in Singapore, Hong Kong candidates were most accurate when declaring their employment histories, with only a 10.9% discrepancy rate in 2016.