What happened
A new Harris Poll for Express Employment Professionals suggests Canadian resumés are not telling hiring managers the full story. According to the findings, as reported by Talent Canada, 82 per cent of Canadian hiring managers say a candidate's resumé does not match their real-world skills at least sometimes. 29 per cent say it happens all the time or often.
Job seekers tell a different story. Only 22 per cent admit to listing skills they do not have. AI is part of the worry: 84 per cent of hiring managers believe it makes it too easy to embellish a resumé, and 35 per cent strongly agree it is a serious hiring risk.
The examples hiring managers shared ranged from a false claim of attending a university to a candidate who said they were bilingual in English and French but were not, which cost the company sales. Job seekers admitted to inflating programming skills, changing job titles and stretching how long they held a role. The employer survey covered 504 Canadian hiring decision-makers in November 2025. The job seeker survey covered 502 adults.
Why it matters if you are hiring
The resumé is now the weakest signal in your process. If most hiring managers already see mismatches and AI makes polished text free, a clean document tells you very little about what someone can do.
The costs show up after the offer. The bilingual example is a good one: a language claim that goes unchecked can hit revenue directly. Technical claims, such as programming skills, and claims about hands-on experience carry the same risk in any role where the work is visible on day one.
This points to three changes. Test the skill the job needs, rather than reading about it. Verify the facts that are easy to check: titles, dates, credentials and languages. Ask for detail in interviews, such as what the candidate built, what went wrong and what they would do differently. Candidates who really did the work can answer. Those who did not usually cannot.
One thing to do this week
Pick your most open role and add one short, work-based check before the final interview. For a bilingual role, hold part of the conversation in the second language. For a technical role, set a 30-minute practical task. Write down the two or three resumé claims that matter most and verify each one.
Traverse Staffing screens candidates across operations, finance, sales, contract, manufacturing and AI and data roles, so employers meet people whose skills have already been checked against the work.