Outright lies about education - Page 5

I never said it was OK or if you approve of it, I was simply asking if you understand why some people do it. I certainly understand and can appreciate their way of thinking even if it's wrong.

Like I said before, some people lie on their resume just to be able to get a job and some people lie on their resume because while they can totally do the job with the knowledge and experience they have gained on their own, they don't actually have formal education (and can't afford it even if they wanted to get that education) and that takes them out of the running automatically. So using these two examples, I can understand and appreciate why people lie on their resumes.

Again, I am not saying it's right or making excuses for lying on your resume - but some people feel that they have to and I can understand why they feel that way. I am not talking about what lying on your resume does to society as a whole - I am talking about why the individual feels compelled to lie.

I still don't get it; you don't have the skills for a job, you go get the skills. What happened to hard work? Nobody ever gave me anything, and I certainly couldn't "afford" the best schools, but I worked hard and went to them anyway. I certainly can't believe that it's a longstanding viewpoint or conceptual mindset that if you don't have what it takes to get something, you just give up and lie about it. What happened about working for your goals? Understanding WHY people do what they do, and then slightly justifying it by means of "fairness" doesn't make sense. Life isn't fair. If you can't get what you want, you either work harder to get it, or adjust your goals accordingly. I don't believe that what you mentioned even could have been something intelligible to human thought before the 1970's. For some reason, we have the belief today that just because we're alive, we all ought to be earning $200k a year and living our dreams. I'm "special," which means that I deserve it. I see your point, though; thank you for clarifying. I just can't see how it actually makes sense, or why understanding the practice should in any way keep us from trying to stop it. Certainly I can't "appreciate" their reason for doing it, because they almost assuredly did not exhaust all the possible options in doing it. This isn't stealing a loaf of bread to survive, here. edit; I had a whole nice response worked up, and my interwebz crapped out. SO, sorry this follow-up is choppy.

I understand what you are saying, but I don't think it's realistic in some regards. It's not as black and white as you are making it out to be. Just because you didn't go to a school recognized by some company you want to work for, doesn't mean that you haven't worked hard.

I know people who have educated themselves and gained experience through working for free and doing internships (because they couldn't afford to go to school or couldn't get into a school) - ultimately making them much more qualified than the person who actually went to school, but if some office monkey in HR is only looking for people who went to a fancy university like he did, then what choice does the hopeful employee actually have. He worked hard, he could do the job with his eyes closed based on the hard work you speak of and not because he felt he was owed the job simply because he is alive or that he is "special".

There are many stories of high profile successful people in business or media, who later admitted (through a biography or some interview) that they lied to get their foot in the door for whatever reason. It's also usually treated as a funny or entertaining anecdote to someone's brilliant career. No one is saying strip them of their billions of dollars, because they lied. In some cases, people have considered the lie to be a smart move, because their career now justifies the lie. No one cares that they lied 40 years ago to get a job in the mailroom of the company they wanted to work for and that they now run.

This makes sense, especially the bolded. It's definitely a complex issue, and one that I wish had more standards/rubrics, or at least agreed-upon operational definitions and checks. I think some standardization would really help, in the same way there is standardization for formatting (APA, MLA, etc.) and a sort of established clearing house or process (like the GRE, SAT, or something) for checking/verifying things. In the same way you send a transcript, it would be great if they had a sort of "verified" CV... maybe even like a credit report or something?

I don't know, but I agree with you that all the flexibility, lack of consistency puts liars at an advantage, and makes lying seem a decent solution to get ahead.

I visited my parents over the weekend in a town hard hit by the recession, still. My dad was talking about how jobs are scarce and that many people are doing whatever they can to compete for the few jobs that become available including lying.

I don't endorse this at all, but I can understand the circumstances that can lead to this behavior. The jobs my dad was referring to are lower level, though the principle is still the same.

I worked for a number of years at a top management consulting firm (one of MBB) and we recruited heavily at top undergrad schools and occasionally caught people in lies, but one story stood out.

Right after having lunch, a good friend of mine (who was 6 months away from making Partner) was getting ready to resume his day of final round interviews for candidates. He had a minute before the woman arrived and was flipping through the candidate materials, which included the resume, cover letter and transcript. He saw more Cs than As (which is pretty hard to accomplish at Harvard), and then flipped to the resume that showed a stellar GPA.

The woman walked into his office, and rather than give her a standard case interview, he pushed a calculator across the table along with her transcript and said "please calculate your GPA." And he didn't say another word beyond that. Needless to say she didn't get the job