Seeking advice: Lies on a LinkedIn profile

I am curious to know how many of you have seen blatant lies on a LinkedIn contact resume, and how many of you have called the liar on it, or alerted a potential client about it.

You can picture the situation, someone you vaguely know asks you to connect on LinkedIn, you accept and upon looking over the person’s profile you notice that their tagline includes: founder of X non-profit. Now, you personally know the two founders of such non-profit and this person is not even on the board.

What should you do?

I innocently asked such person if they could clarify for me what was their involvement with the organization, hoping they will voluntarily correct the “mistake”. But I was ignored. How to proceed from this?

This is not an isolated case, a CareerBuilder survey found that 75% of employers have caught a lie on a resume.

And that is the thing, the liar will get caught. Sooner or later you will run into someone who has had a connection with the company you are claiming to work for, or someone will ask you to design a poster on InDesign because you listed it as your skill, and you will have to face up the consequences.

But, as a colleague, what do you think is the right approach? Should you tell on people who are building a reputation as a consultant based on non-existing business experience? Should you tell a potential client that their bilingual public relations hire speaks Spanish at a middle school level and has no writing skills?

No one likes to be the tattletale, but if we don’t do this for others, will they do it for us when we are faced with hiring a liar?

I believe we should build a community of respect and honesty where we can trust our colleagues to be on the lookout for each other’s best interests. But, it takes courage to put on evidence those who fabricate their experiences or skills. Not only that, what is the proper way or avenue to do so?

Perhaps an article on LinkedIn and other social media networks?