You know that some applicants pad their resumes — giving themselves better job titles, higher salaries, and more responsibilities than they actually had at their last jobs — hoping that you won’t find out. Unsurprisingly, that practice has been adapted for the high-tech world with LinkedIn users including false information on their profiles. Employment law attorney Mark Schorr offers his insight into what you should do if you find a former employee’s LinkedIn profile contains false information that you want removed or at least changed to reflect more accurate statements.

A lot depends on the nature and extent of the incorrect information and your ability to claim that your company is being damaged by having a former employee post incorrect information on her LinkedIn profile. Specifically, how far off is the reference to her former title? Is she claiming to have been a high-ranking executive? Is she misrepresenting significant facts about the company, her work with the company, or current employees to the extent that you or the others are being reflected publicly in a false light? To the extent that any incorrect information could be damaging to your company or its reputation, you have grounds to take action to have any such misrepresentations removed.

Since she isn’t currently your employee, though, your ability to control her actions is limited. Nevertheless, at the very least, I would suggest that you correspond with her in writing and demand that any inaccurate information be removed or corrected. Depending on the seriousness of the misrepresentations, you may want to have your legal counsel serve a cease-and-desist letter on her.

If the misrepresentation of her title isn’t serious and the other inaccuracies don’t clearly cause you harm, you may want to simply let it go and hope that other employees who know the facts and may be connected with her on LinkedIn will openly question her about it.

Technology for HR manual and HR Laws subscribers’ tip: Research using social media tools like LinkedIn for recruiting and hiring online

Mark Schorr is a partner with  Erickson & Sederstrom, P.C., LLO, where he is chairman of the law firm’s Labor and Employment Law Practice Group. He is the editor of Nebraska Employment Law Letter and also a contributing editor to The Developing Labor Law, a leading treatise published by the ABA and the Bureau of National Affairs.

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