Picture this:
You have been jobless for quite long. You have sent an avalanche of emails seeking employment. No response. You sit quietly in despair wondering what you could be doing wrong.
Then on a hot Sunday afternoon, when you are perusing the dailies, you spot an advertisement. A high flying company is hiring. Finally! You study the job description as well as the key attributes that have occupied half the page. Your weigh them against your qualifications and work experience. You notice a sizeable mismatch between what the company wants and your CV. You are pensive. You direly need a job. What do you do? You decide to moderate your CV to align with what the company is looking for. It is a harmless little lie. You tell yourself.
You overstate your skills. You upgrade your work experience. Your CV aligns with the advertisement. You hit the send button. You are anxious. The company is impressed. You receive a call on Monday morning at the crack of dawn. The company cannot wait any longer because of your percieved employability. You are invited for an interview the following day at 9AM.
During the interview, you are stellar. You take the panelists through your CV. Colourfully, you explain your various roles in your previous employment. Your last role according to your CV was senior manager. The company is also looking for a senior manager. The company is satisfied your are the missing cog in their wheel. You state a high salary. Higher that what you were earning in your previous employment. You have overshot the company’s budget. Howevr, for an employee of your calibre, the company will make some adjustments. You sign and declare that the information you have given is the truth and nothing but the truth. YOU ARE HIRED.
Down the road, there is trouble in paradise. Your employment is far from stellar. The company notices discordance between the candidate they hired and the job deliverables. At the workplace, you are a square peg in a round hole.
You are invited for a performance review. The company has also done some mining. They have unearthed several deal breakers among them:
- Your last role in the previous employment was not senior management. You were an operations officer who reported to the manager. You moderated your CV to align with the job requirements.
- You earned a significantly less salary than you quoted. The figure you quoted was fictitious and grossly exaggerated.
- You suppressed the circumstances under which you left your previous employment. Your were terminated on disciplinary grounds. The separation was acrimonious.
Wholesomely, the company feels that you secured employment through deceit and false pretences. You are heard on these charges. The company’s case is towering. YOU ARE TERMINATED.
You approach the Employment and Labour Relations Court grieving that your termination was substantively infirm.
Such is the situation that the Employment and Labour Relations Court addressed in three cases that have captured our attention.
In Zeddy Cheronoh Sambu v National Oil Corporation of Kenya [2022] KEELRC 743 (KLR), also available at Zeddy Cheronoh Sambu v National Oil Corporation of Kenya 2022KEELRC743(KLR) employee was terminated after it was later found out that she gave false information regarding her last salary. In her previous employment, her last pay was KShs. 328,748/= per month. During the onboarding interview, she gave a false figure of KShs. 385,000/=.
Agreeing with the employer,the court stated that:
It is puzzling why a prospective employee or interviewee would give a false figure as salary, a figure or amount an employed persons typically interact with at least once every month….The Court is satisfied that the Respondent had a justifiable reason to penalise the Claimant.
In Agingu v Advtech Kenya Limited t/a Crawford International School & another [2025] KEELRC 2762 (KLR) , also available at Agingu v Advtech Kenya Limited ta Crawford International School another (Cause 604of2019) 2025KEELRC2762(KLR) (9October2025) (Judgment) the employee misrepresented her profile during the recruitment exercise. The employer charged that the employee was dishonest; she provided an inaccurate CV. She misrepresented her last place of employment as well as her role. She also falsfied her last salary. Further, she suppressed material facts regarding her separation with the previous employer. In reality, she lost her previous employment for reasons ranging from competence to general conduct at the workplace.
Siding with the employer, the court observed:
The non-disclosure and misrepresentation by the Claimant, which has been discussed in the foregoing part of this judgment, was in my view, in the realm of a deal-breaker. One can therefore safely say that the Claimant obtained employment by deceit and the employer was within the law to terminate the employment on this ground.
In Adhiambo v Bank of Africa Kenya Limited [2025] KEELRC 3695 (KLR), also available at Adhiambo v Bank of Africa Kenya Limited (Cause 205of2016) 2025KEELRC3695(KLR) (19December2025) (Judgment) the employee misrepresented that her last role in the previous employment was senior and managerial. In reality, her last role was operations officer. She reported to a line manager.
The court, in endorsing the employer’s decision to terminate the employee, held:
The claimant was clearly in breach of her obligation of trust and confidence, in an industry where these values are the cornerstones of an employer-employee relationship. She procured a managerial position with the Respondent, by false pretences.
So what is the lesson?
An employer-employee relationship should be built on trust and confidence. An employee who is onboarded on the basis of dishonesty and misrepresentation has largely breached the faith inherent in the work relationship. This duty of candour is even higher in sector specific and sensitive industries where employees are accorded enormous degrees of trust. For instance, in the Agingu case, the employee was a grade 9 teacher. In the Adhiambo case, the employee was in the banking industry. These fields are, inarguably, highly sensitive. They call for utmost integrity.
Dishonesty during the recruitment exercise is a deal-breaker. If an employee lied during the interview, can they be trusted down the road? Does a leopard change its spots? The employer wonders.
That said, there is a moral conundrum that remains unresolved. Where the prospective employee volunteers a chaotic employment history, or that the previous separation was noisy and messy, won’t that suck all the air out of the interview room? Will a prospective employee readily shoot themselves in the foot? I have some doubts. But as we say here, you be the judge.
