CV lies and fakes - what ever it takes

There was something screwy about his resume. I’ve written about 400 resumes as head of my business and with many years in PR, I can smell “dupe” better than I can spell it.

Yet it’s my job to ensure the candidate is represented by their CV (which I was writing), in the best possible light. But this does not extend to lying.

The problem was his grade point average for his Australian MBA was higher than any possible maximum. GPA’s usually have a maximum score if 7. His was 20. Clearly a genius.

When I telephoned him to ask about this discrepancy - it could have been a keystroke error - there was a pronounced pause (not a good sign) and he claimed that I had no right to question his credentials.

And he was right. In Australia, under the Privacy Act, a university or TAFE will not give any information regarding whether a candidate completed their degree or the grades they achieved. They will release the information only with the permission of the client.

Lawrence Money in The Age recently picked up on this loophole when a former RMIT Business student claimed he had completed his degree when he had not. RMIT would not disclose any details about the former student’s academic bona fides.  In 2006 an Australian employment screening company, RISQ, found that one in four job applicants were falsifying or embellishing their tertiary qualifications to dupe employers in to hiring them.

A 2003 Pricewaterhouse Coopers investigation of resumes at a large Australian financial institution found that 40 per cent contained “serious mis-statements” including fake qualifications.

Resume fraud is a vexed issue for a number of reasons. It’s first and foremost a legal issue as to obtain a job and thereby monies using false or fraudulent information, is a crime and one can be charged under any number of Acts including the Crimes Act.

Last year former senior Australian Federal Government official Bobby Singh, was caught listing fake degrees from Harrington University in America on his resume.

Harrington University is one of many “degree mills” that sell degrees on the Internet. The curriculum requires no educational assessment.

Mr Singh’s case was due to go before the Federal Magistrates’ Court recently but was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.

Last year Peter Imbardellia quit as CEO of IHG Asia Pacific, after it was discovered that he had not received his degrees from an Ivy League American university as stated on his resume. He had only attended classes.

He blew not only his US$400,000 in salary but also his reputation.

The psychology of “writing fraud” is complex. Many people simply want to be admired. Such was the case of Stephen Glass, a 25-year-old journalist and rising star at The New Republic in America. He wrote dozens of high-profile articles for a number of national publications in which he made things up.

He created fake notes, fake voicemails, fake faxes, even a fake website - whatever it took to deceive his editors, not to mention hundreds of thousands of readers.

"I would tell a story, and there would be fact A, which maybe was true. And then there would be fact B, which was sort of partially true and partially fabricated. And there would be fact C that was more fabricated and almost not true. And there would be fact D, which was a complete whopper. And totally not true. And so people would be with me on these stories through fact A and through fact B. And so they would believe me to C. And then at D they were still believing me through the story," he said on American TV program 60 Minutes.

That is one of the best summaries of the psychology of resume fraud one will read. The frauds often lie on a substrata of truth yet the lies compound so quickly that the perpetrator is in too deep to pull out.

Recruiting companies who recommend candidates to employers without fully checking their credentials (we again hit the Privacy Act problem) may be liable to prosecution under the Trades Practices Act.

Last year recruitment giant Hudson settled a matter for an undisclosed sum after it was found that the placement of a senior lawyer had been “highly problematic”.  Leading law firm McMahons, who were acting for the employer, said the lawyer demonstrated “poor litigation skills and substandard conduct”.

McMahons sued Hudson for his salary package ($119,422) plus the $33,000 recruitment fee, as well as extra staffing costs and damage to its (the employer's) reputation.

Hudson had unsuccessfully argued that its “no liability” clause in its contract was protection and that it was up to the employer to be satisfied with candidates before they were hired.

The Trade Practices Act effectively says that if a recruiter proposes a “dodgy candidate” then they may be involved in deceptive or misleading conduct by a corporation or corporations engaged in a commercial activity.

According to the website Peoplecheck, University associate professor Joellen Riley said that simply having a “no liability” clause didn’t let recruiters off the hook.

“The only way a waiver would work is if there was some kind of clear disclaimer by the recruiter saying, ‘Look, we’ve done the best we can to check references but ultimately you have to rely on your inquiries and make your own decision’.”

Then why hire a recruitment company?

Yet one has to feel sorry for Hudson. They are a reputable agency. Recruitment agencies are caught in a bind, especially when it comes to verifying academic qualifications as they butt up against the Privacy Act.

Australian company due diligence legislation means that it is part of the employer’s role to rigorously screen applicants. So applicants can expect referees to be called and resumes more closely scrutinised.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald’s blog, demand for the services of First Advantage, which checks employee backgrounds, has boomed from 50 to 120 in less than two years. The company’s clients include CBA and National Australia Bank.

Last year First Advantage conducted 150,000 individual checks across Australia.

At the National Australia Bank background checks are now mandatory for all new employees, including permanent, temporary and contract staff.

Checks include verifying working relationships with nominated referees, salary confirmation, reasons for leaving a job, police records, bankruptcies and bans from company directorships are also noted.

Human resource departments are phoned to confirm that starting and leaving dates have not been tweaked to hide periods job applicants don’t want to talk about. There’s no messing about with the NAB and with good reason after employing three individuals who ripped the bank off for $300 million.

Can we assume that if a client does not want to release their academic results that they are lying? Certainly not, but in corporate Australia these days, if you don’t, you’re dead in the water.

Let me play the devil’s advocate? Who hasn’t tweaked their resume so that it reads better than it really is, falling just short of the “post facto reconstruction” - the bald face lie?

Maybe we’ve said our year on the dole surfing at Byron Bay was part of a “cultural exchange program” or that you managed 20 people in a corporate environment when you co-managed five people at an NGO.

There are lies and there are lies. I suggest that first and foremost, that a minority of people these days are unwilling, for a variety of reasons, to spend three of four years studying to gain the requisite qualification. Universities have commodified degrees thereby making them simply “objects” in the marketplace, which can be bought and sold.

A resume is a specific kind of document. It’s a complex mix of autobiography and marketing document. It shows not only what you have done but also indicates potential. Corporate employers are always looking for this special ingredient - a sign that they will pick up and groom a “champion”. It's this desire to believe the candidate - to think well of them - and embrace their mendacity, that is their undoing.

One of the most spectacular Australian cases of resume fraud was that of Glen Oakley. It was a brilliant career that included stints as a director-general at a government department and chief executive at Newcastle Port Corporation. The only problem was that Oakley wasn’t quite who he said he was each time he applied for a new job.

Oakley’s elaborate deception began in the 1980s, when he obtained various degrees from a range of universities. Using these, he created fake degrees and made false representations to a justice of the peace that the photocopied documents were genuine.

The fake qualifications included a Bachelor of Science (Hons), a Graduate Diploma in Education, a MBA and a PhD.

The first time he relied on the qualifications was in 1987, when Oakley jumped from being a humble mortuary assistant to a regional manager of the NSW Maritime Services Board. The move placed him in charge of an operating budget of $44.5 million.

His impressive titles continued until 2001, when the scam began to unravel. Oakley was the front-runner for an executive position with toll road developer Transurban. All was well until a board member expressed doubt over Oakley’s academic achievements. The board member had been the head of the university school where Oakley claimed his Masters degree was granted, but he had no recollection of Oakley.

Things went “legal” after that. It’s a small irony that individuals who can concoct and maintain such elaborate lies seem to have no trouble climbing quickly up the corporate ladder. Many are naturally intelligent yet for some reason lack that core value which all good leaders require - honesty.

The consequences of falsifying qualifications are not only litigious, morally or ethically reprehensible but also potentially dangerous. A former Qantas engineer will stand court next month for forging a maintenance engineer’s licence. They’re the people who service the engines.

I let the client go who had achieved a GPA of 20. Reputation is everything.