MoneyWise
Reader Question...
“I've
been having trouble finding steady work since getting
laid off last fall.
Lately I've been tempted to embellish my resume by changing
"attended Ohio State University" to "graduated
from Ohio State University." I was only a couple
of credits shy of officially graduating. I'm thinking
that being a graduate looks better than saying I attended
and it might give me a leg up. What are the downsides
to revising my educational history?”
Doug
Morrison's response...
The state of
resume "re-do" is nothing new. According
to Jude M. Werra, of Jude M. Werra & Associates,
a Brookfield, Wisconsin-based recruiting firm, there
is what Werra calls a Liars Index®. Werra created
the index in 1995. "It's the number of people who've
misrepresented their education divided by the number
of people whose education we've checked." In short,
it's the percentage of people who invented a degree.
In its 10th year, the percentage was at its peak in
the first half of 2000 (23.3%). Today, he says, the
figure for the first half of 2003 was 10.59%. The average
over the last two years was 11.25%.
“There
has been a definite downward trend over the last two years,
with the current percentage at half the rate of early
2001,”says Werra. “The
cases we have surfaced include altered majors and changed
graduation dates, but the majority of those who misrepresented
themselves claimed degrees where their attendance was
only for a semester or two, or not at all.” Werra’s
surveys show that 95% of the time employers immediately
eliminate candidates who claim nonexistent degrees. Since
education is a credential easily verified, common sense
should indicate not to lie. (Figures for the last half
of 2003 are not yet available, but projections suggest
a downward trend, he notes.) Apparently, this is good
news.
For anyone thinking
about embellishing their resume, consider these recent
statistics:
- In the first six months of
2002, coaches at Georgia Tech, Vanderbilt and Notre
Dame were deposed for embellishing their resumes.
Notre Dame coach George O'Leary (claimed master's
degree in education) lost his job over his fabricated
resume.
- Later that year, Washington,
D.C. fire chief Ronnie Few was forced to resign when
his college degree and a fire-chief-of-the-year award
were aired as fabrications.
- So did Sandra Baldwin, the
first woman named chairman of the U.S. Olympic Committee.
Baldwin may have in essence been an honest woman (now
perhaps Diogenes can extinguish his lamp), but she
told a whopper of a fib when she presented her resume
to the Olympic Committee. Not only did she misrepresent
the school from which she earned her bachelor's degree,
but she listed a Ph.D. she never completed.
- Closer to home, former CEO
of Charlotte-based TransAmerica Insurance, Bill Simms'
claims of Olympian prowess led to his disgrace and
resignation.
I could add to the
list, but you get the point.
"A
good man is hard to find," novelist Flannery O'Connor
once wrote. "Honesty
is such a lonely word," lamented Billy Joel in a
song. "Sewing a lie to a credulity," as the
late poet Dylan Thomas pointed out, may work for a while,
but eventually the light of day exposes it.
I would suggest
that anyone who contemplates claiming any unearned degree,
however desperate, consider the consequences: Is one lie
worth a ruined career?
5200 Park Road, Suite 227
Charlotte, NC 28209
(800) 711-0773 (704) 527-5556
doug@careerpowerresume.com
