Lorraine Tighe, the Westmeath-raised mother-of-two who missed out on tonight’s final of The Apprentice when she was fired by Sir Alan Sugar last week, is not alone in overstating her work history on a CV.

New research shows that more than half of Irish CVs contain fibs, with candidates claiming everything from the ability to speak fluent Japanese to spending a year backpacking in Australia when they were in prison. Tighe was accused of overstating her work history by a year.

As part of its registration process, Grafton Recruitment interviewed 3,600 job candidates who sent in CVs over a three-month period. Applicants were questioned for up to 90 minutes on every aspect of their work experience, qualifications and interests, and it emerged that 52% had lied about some detail.

Almost seven out of 10 applicants had asked a friend to act as a referee on their CV.

“We had people who applied for jobs that required security clearance saying they were away on a gap year in Australia when they were really in prison,” said Caroline Kilbane, Grafton’s marketing manager. “Others made up the names of companies for their CVs and some put down referees that didn’t exist.”

Women in their early thirties are the biggest culprits, with 77% of their CVs containing discrepancies, Kilbane said, citing a survey of British CVs by the Risk Advisory Group, a corporate investigations agency. Even among the most honest group examined, men in their early twenties, half of CVs featured misleading information.

“I can understand why women in their thirties would embellish their CVs, because people still feel there’s a glass ceiling out there and they may feel they have to compensate for absences due to maternity leave,” Kilbane said.

The most common embellishment is extending the dates of employment to fill in gaps, exaggerating job titles, increasing the size of the budgets managed, being creative with hobbies and claiming to speak foreign languages.

“It’s amazing how many people in Ireland are fluent Japanese speakers,” Kilbane said. “But people should know that if they claim to speak a language, they’ll be tested on it. Candidates also like to list extreme sports as hobbies to make themselves look more exotic.”

As many as 50% of candidates interviewed by Grafton exaggerated their previous salaries, even though the recruitment firm would be likely to know from other research how much money is generally paid for employees in such roles.

White lies are easily uncovered by employers because companies need new recruits’ P60s to set them up on a payroll system, and these forms outline previous earnings.

Grafton’s decision to probe the extent of CV fabrication was inspired by the experience of Lee McQueen, winner of The Apprentice last year. He won the prize despite it emerging that he exaggerated the amount of time he spent at college.

“If an employer discovered during a real-life interview that you had lied on your CV, you’d have about a one in 10 chance of getting the job,” Kilbane said. “And that’s just allowing for the crazy maverick who would let you in despite the lie.”

Rowan Manahan, a careers consultant who sits on interview panels and checks out CVs for employers, agrees that job applicants are being generous with the truth.

He regularly encounters “barefaced lying” on job applications and CVs. The most common lies are candidates turning diplomas into degrees and vamping up job titles to make it seem they had greater responsibility in a previous role.

“The candidates who are two years or so out of college will chance it quite a bit,” said Manahan. “With the amount of CV embellishment in the accountancy and legal professions, you’d think from the experience they put down they were running entire departments.

“Making up a hobby is an invitation to interviewers to suck away at your own credibility. If you say you’re into sailing, rugby or martial arts when you’re not, there’s a good chance someone on the panel will share your interest. If they turn out to be a fanatic about sailing and your knowledge of the subject would fit on the back of a matchbox, you’ll look like a proper eejit.”

Manahan attributes such fabrications to people with a “huge sense of self-entitlement” who are used to being rewarded when they don’t deserve it. He acknowledges that record unemployment has encouraged job-seekers to do anything it takes to land a post.

“These embellishments happen in a healthy market too, but it’s happening much more now,” he said. “In straitened times, anxious people will chance their arm more. But my mantra is that if you have to lie to get your foot in the door, it’s not the job for you.”

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