One place I worked a person said on his application that he had a degree, and was hired. A couple days later the HR dept. contacted his supposed alma mater and found that he had never attended. He was terminated. Sad thing is, his skills were so good he would have been hired anyway if he simply told the truth. Lose-lose all around.
If an employer fires you with cause, they may not have to pay, and you may not be able to collect, unemployment. If they just fire you out of the blue, they usually will have to pay. So they will prefer to fire with cause, and lying on the application is, I think, generally considered “cause.”
:smack:
My company does a background check on everyone we hire, and the hiring is not final until it is completed. We even do this for interns.
Besides not exactly trusting someone who lied, it strikes me that lying about something so easy to check (as opposed to experience with something) does not show the intellectual ability I’d want in an employee.
That’s true, though from what I’ve seen, the prospect of paying out unemployment hasn’t been a huge deterrent. Needless to say, I do my job on pins and needles.
I know someone who lied their way into a large (like Fortune 5 large) corporation, and managed to climb quite high on the corporate ladder…as in reporting to the CEO high. Eventually retired with a nice pension and millions in stock. So you can infer that the lying was long ago.
I have also seen a few of these lies found out and fired. And it is getting easier and easier to find this stuff out.
One job I took as a degreed engineer with over 10 years experience actually wanted to make a copy of my high school diploma. That right there should have been my first clue that it was going to be a really shitty place to work. Any government affiliated employer will check transcripts prior to hiring IME.
My own field doesn’t require a sheepskin (although one is obtainable), but someone who lied about which degrees he has would get fired as fast as his supervisors were able to close their mouths and breathe in for that yell. Once a person has been found to have lied about their formal qualifications (which after all are relatively easy to verify), every piece of work they’ve produced becomes suspect.
I hate the assumption that “everybody puffs up their resumes”, but as the HR woman said after finding out my (ex-)boss had added 10 years to her age in order to be able to claim 10 years’ experience, “there’s a difference between tweaking and a resume by Aesop!”
When applying for a visa ( short term work or resident work ) to Angola one of the required documents is a scanned copy of your latest degree. This visa requirement was also the case when I was in Kuwait and I would not be surprised to see it in other countries, including the US.
At work, your degree is tied to retention bonuses so I get a bit more than someone with only a BS or MS. 
Far be it for me to encourage someone to lie, but if the question is whether you’ll get caught vs. whether it’s “okay”…well, I think the odds are pretty good that you won’t get caught. If, that is, you’re smart about when to do it and when not to. Are you a high school dropout who wants to get a job as a ticket taker at a movie theater? I’d be shocked if they asked for your high school diploma. Applying for a serious government job? Don’t even try it - the government is so full of bureaucracy and red tape that they’ll almost definitely find out.
But there are probably even good, career jobs where you could lie and get away with it. I worked in publishing for a number of years, and when I was hired they asked for no documentation about my degree, and I’m almost positive they never checked. My guess would be that smaller, more informal organizations are less likely to follow up.
Of course, it would always be a risk, not to mention an ethical dilemma. But as far as getting away with it goes, I don’t think it’s caught nearly as often as other people here are making it sound.
The best part about Scott Thompson is that his lie was, as far as I can tell, completely unnecessary. He’s an experienced IT exec who has a degree, so I can’t see what the purpose was of tacking on something else.
I worked in a place where someone was found out by a colleague years later, because they would’ve attended the same place…but didn’t. The thing is, it sucks all around because then she had to decide if she was going to tell. She told, but he was well liked and it completely ruined the atmosphere. Seriously, I cannot tell you how f*cked up that place was, the animosity was palpable. Yeuch, I’m glad I’m out of there!
Moral of the story: there is a possibility of being found out, even if your employer doesn’t regularly check. And on top of that lying sucks, it ruins the place for everyone.
And spell check before you send it off, m’kay? That was my first round of binning.
I know of a few people that got caught and were either fired or not hired on the basis of the lie.
In one case it was a guy who claimed to have gotten a degree from a university in Korea in the 70’s. This was a consultant who many of us had known for lots of years. He was a shoe in for the job but the lie did him in.
You didn’t ask for my opinion but this is IMHO so you are going to get it anyway. Lying about getting a degree that you haven’t earned is completely fucking disgusting. Those of us who got our degrees worked very hard to get them. Either do the work yourself or tell the damn truth.
I have to mention you should never underestimate the “small world” factor.
“Hmm, I graduated from that program that year, too. There were just five of us. . .”
“What do you know, my sister-in-law teaches one of the required courses for that degree.”
“You’ll feel right at home. You’ll be working with four fellow alumni. . .”
I have a nephew who graduated from a University, but his diploma was being withheld (some problem he eventually addressed). In the meantime, he had a job opportunity that required a copy of his diploma. He purchased one online, and got the job.
A few months later he received his real diploma. He asked me what to do. The eventual solution was to tell his employer he presented a gag-gift diploma accidentally, since it looked so real. His boss accepted this and replaced the copy of the fake with a copy of the real thing.
Every few years I read about a lawyer who has been faking it and someone finally checked the bar site. It used to be somewhat regular back before the internet made it a two minute check. What was really amusing was when they were partners at reputable firms that got caught.
Never for real.
Every once in a while, to save time, I tell people I have a degree in English. I have an undergraduate minor in English and did an outside minor in English for my MA. I figure it qualifies, but may not technically be true. Much less often, I will tell people I minored in Geology. I did take several Geology classes and was Vice President of the Geology Club as an undergrad, but do not have a formal minor.
In both cases, I usually tell these mostly-lies as shorthand to explain why I have the background that I do when obscure questions come up. I would never put either on a resume.
That’s true. I’ve not really used this to catch someone in a lie intentionally, but academia is an extremely small world. On a first date with someone I met on OK Cupid, the young lady mentioned that she had worked in the writing center at a major midwestern university. I asked her if she knew an acquaintance of mine. It turned out that she was the former office partner of someone whom I’d used as a character in my first novel.
Hell no. That last time some one tried to lie about my degree I beat the shit out of them.
One thing to consider: If the employer wants to check, they need only say “Please provide a Diploma/transcript” and you’re hosed.
IME, it’s easier to get away with a work history lie, than an education lie.
My older brother did, and got away with it. He told the interviewer. I went to X University, I studied computer science and I got my degree. (all true statements) He did not mention that it was a degree in English.
He got the programing job and working in that field until he retired.