Telford lie detector test reveals Employee Lies

Our client was impressed by a candidate for a vacant sales position in his company. Having read his CV, our client took him on immediately never imagining it would lead to a Telford lie detector test.

Ali´s Case

During the pandemic, Ali´s driveway business thrived.  People in lockdown got bored and started to think about improving things around their homes.  Getting their drives looking pristine was just one of the things they thought about.

With sales enquiries mounting and Ali working on driveways with his team, he needed a salesperson to follow up on the leads. Of the many candidates that answered his online advertisement, Nigel was by far the most impressive.  His CV showed that he had worked for several prestigious organisations and the references he supplied were positively glowing.

He took Nigel on straightaway, and didn´t even consider checking out the CV or references, something he would later regret.

Business slows down

Within a month of Nigel joining the company, business began to slow down. Ali asked Nigel why he thought this was.  Nigel responded that many people were bored being at home during lockdowns and just made enquiries for services out of curiosity.

One day Nigel had a day off and Ali took to the phone. He called some of the leads that hadn´t turned into orders.  In almost every case the driveways had been carried out by another firm. One of the customers told him that the reason they´d gone with the competitor was due to price. They had a resin driveway installed which was the same quality as Ali´s firm offered but it had cost them 15 percent less. The customer also told him the name of the competitor.

Ali hadn´t heard of a rival company with that name so he looked them up online.  Checking on ‘WHOIS’ data he found their website had only been launched a month or so before Nigel started working for him.

Suspicion crept into Ali´s mind and it kept him awake at night.  He started to check out the CV and references that Nigel had supplied.  This was difficult because most of the companies weren´t working fully due to lockdown.  However, a virtual assistant at one of them told him that Nigel had been fired due to some dishonesty involving theft of company data. Another company on the CV told him Nigel had never worked for them.

Telford lie detector test

Ali booked a lie detector test in Telford for Nigel. He told Nigel that periodic lie detector tests were taken by all employees as part of his company´s loss prevention strategy.  Nigel hadn´t read the small print of his employment contract which included a polygraph examination clause.

There was immediate resistance from Nigel, who said that he didn´t want to take a test because test generally made him nervous.  Ali got our West Midlands polygraph examiner to talk to Nigel on the phone.  It was explained to him that natural nervousness wouldn´t affect the test results.

Still Nigel refused to take the test. Ali told him that he was aware that he´d lied about his employment history on his CV.  Either Nigel took the test or Ali would report him to the police.  It is a criminal offence to lie on a CV in the UK.

Results and conclusion

Deception was found in all the responses to the questions Nigel was asked by our examiner.  The questions related to whether Nigel was connected to the competitor website Ali had found. It transpired that Nigel owned the website and had his own team of driveway installers.  He was siphoning off Ali´s sales enquiries and undercutting his prices.

Pre-employment screening

We cannot stress enough the importance of pre-employment screening. No matter how desperate you are to fill a position, CVs and references should always be scrutinised.

If you´d like more information about the use of lie detector tests in employment screening please call our free helpline on 07572 748364.