Thursday, November 26, 2009
Watch out for bogus credentials
Someone I am coaching recently was interviewed by the CEO of a well known company. Looking up the profile of the CEO on LinkedIn, and the bio on the website, I saw that he had obtained a degree from a University that was new to me. I Googled it and it came up as a diploma mill that had been closed down for fraud fairly recently. We have seen CEOs a Radio Shack and Bausch & Lomb who were discovered to have claimed degrees they had not earned. I have several times interviewed people who were found to have falsified their credentials, yet clearly, people who do this can continue to prosper. Some people say that the falsification of academic credentials is growing as more degree granting institutions proliferate. However, let it me a warning to carry out due diligence before hiring anyone.
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The fact that "people who do this can continue to prosper", even at a high level, could be interpreted as evidence that the possession of a genuine university degree may be overrated.
I suggest this half-seriously, make of it what you will. But would you agree that actual performance in the job is more important than academic qualifications?
Your more general point about checking up on CVs is surely valid. Many years ago, a colleague of mine in his early twenties was going around the office asking people for names and addresses of companies they'd worked for, so that he could add them to his own CV. (These days, of course, he wouldn't need to ask: he could just harvest them from the Web.)
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