Saturday, September 03, 2005

Of Resumes and Lying Executives


SHRM's September 2005 edition has an interesting article titled, "Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire" (page 18). Here's a quick overview of the article:

How many executive job seekers have the nerve to claim an advanced degree from an educational institution they've never set foot in? Quite a few it turns out. So many, in fact, that Jude M. Werra began compiling a "Liars Index" back in 1995.

To calculate the % of lying exec's, Werra - who is President of Jude M. Werra & Assoc's LLC, an exec search firm in Brookfield, Wisconsin - divides the number of people who have misrepresented their education on a resume by the total number of people whose education his company has checked.

The Liars Index for the first half of 2005 is 10.73 %, down slightly from 11.88 % during the preceding six-month period.

A few years ago, Werra reviewed the resume of a man who claimed to have an executive MBA frm MIT. MIT revealed no record of the man. The man faxed Werra a copy of his diploma. Werra showed the document to MIT, which explained that it was given for completing a summer program that lasted a few weeks, not for an executive MBA.

The candidate's response: "Picky, picky."

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