A NYONE tempted to embellish their CV for a job application will be brought short by the three month jail sentence for the former deputy chief executive of Stoke-on-Trent Primary Care Trust after he admitted inventing academic qualifications to land the £78,000-a-year post. These days, submit a lacklustre curriculum vitae and it's unlikely an interview will follow. So presenting your CV in an eye-catching fashion has become a multi-million pound business and, if applicants are coached to extract the maximum from their submission, it's rather surprising to learn that public bodies obviously do not scrutinise them as closely as they should.

O ne suspects that many people embellish, or even invent, their achievements to impress prospective employers, precisely because so few seem to take up references, let alone demand proof of qualifications. Indeed, in this litigation conscious age, many organisations will do no more than confirm someone's dates of employment and decline to comment on their abilities for fear of being sued. It's madness, yet in this case Lee Whitehead was already an NHS employee and one would have thought it quite easy to make some checks. There is also a surprising lack of humility in this affair from the PCT's successor body, especially as an innocent person has missed out on a job. Whitehead was rumbled by colleagues who smelt a rat, rather than by institutional checks, so for a spokesman to say that Stoke-on-Trent was not the only trust fooled is of little consequence. Neither is the assertion that there are strict pre-employment checks in place. It's a rather risible case of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.