Resume falsehoods growing with online black market

From a head college football coach at Notre Dame to a CEO of Yahoo, the list of high-placed employees caught falsifying their resumes is long and distinguished.
Last month the Providence Public School Department became the latest organization entangled in a credentials controversy when an administrator was found to have purchased her bachelor’s degree from a website instead of an accredited college.
And the city’s schools will surely not be the last to be victimized by resume fraud in Rhode Island or beyond. As old as the practice of stretching one’s experience is, human resources professionals say the falsehoods are only accelerating with the rise of online commerce.
A 2012 study from the Society for Human Resource Management Foundation, which surveyed 369 job seekers and 272 recruiters, concluded that resume fraud “is a growing problem for organizations.”
The report found that those who had embellished or were otherwise dishonest when applying for a job were more likely to do so again or mislead about something else that could come back to hurt their employer.
“I have had it happen to me,” said Cindy Butler, president of Butler & Associates Human Resources Consulting in Jamestown and director of government affairs for the Rhode Island chapter of SHRM, about job applicants falsifying their credentials.
“It is becoming more challenging to verify because employers are skeptical about giving references. They don’t want to say something that could eventually come back on them if the employee is terminated.”
In many cases, companies will only confirm whether an individual applying for another job worked for them, plus the start and end dates, with little about how they performed or what their role was. Colleges are also often less open with information than they used to be, Butler said, and that doesn’t take into account the proliferation of for-profit schools, some of which may no longer be in business since the individual in question claimed to have graduated.
But while verifying degree or work experience from established organizations can be time consuming, a larger challenge comes from a growing, Internet-enabled black market in false credentials.
Christine M. Cunneen, CEO of Hire Image LLC in Johnston, which provides background-check services, said an entire industry has risen up to sell credentials like the one purchased by the Providence school administrator.
“We see a lot of diploma mills where you can buy a degree in a few minutes online,” Cunneen said. “There are companies overseas that can provide fake resumes with phone numbers that an employer would call and it goes to a call center in India where someone on the other end answers from a script.”
Weeding out these increasingly sophisticated frauds can be difficult and time consuming for the average human resources department and even more so for small businesses without a dedicated personnel office.
That’s where background-check services like Hire Image have developed services to take advantage of the need to scrutinize applicants.
Cunneen said her company uses a number of subscription databases with details of companies and institutions that allows them to verify a credential without ever using the contact information provided by the applicant.
While confirming the basics from a college or high school is usually straightforward, Cunneen said the biggest challenges are created when companies are bought, sold or shut down, making it extremely difficult to independently confirm if someone worked there years ago. The level of detail clients request varies by job and industry type, she said, with professional services and financial firms putting prospective hires through the greatest scrutiny.
Public-sector employers typically vet the credentials of job applicants in-house, Cunneen said, although some state agencies do order background checks from the outside.
While an industry-commissioned study may be biased, the SHRM report on resume fraud and its complications found “background-verification services are essential and … justify related expenses.”
Not bringing in professionals to vet administrators may have been what got the Providence schools in trouble.
The district has changed its procedures since the incident involving administrator Nancy Stevenin working with students from the former Birch Vocational School. Degrees from accredited institutions are now required. Stevenin is being allowed to keep her job and has reportedly enrolled in an accredited college.
Looking ahead, Cunneen said she did not see the spate of resume-related firings and controversies leveling off, but probably increasing.
“We have seen an uptick in both education and employment [history] fraud and I think that comes with the economy and more competitive environment,” Cunneen said. “I do think it will continue growing and, like spammers, these fake universities are going to get more sophisticated. We have seen some that make up their own accreditation bodies so they appear accredited. They assume no one knows who does the accrediting anyway.” •

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