by Jason Morris

EMERYVILLE — Stephen Wesley, the Emery Unified School District superintendent who resigned Wednesday over allegations he falsified his resume, publicly apologized Thursday for embroiling the district in controversy.

Wesley’s apology came during the public comment portion of the previously scheduled district Advisory Committee meeting, a day after school board trustees voted unanimously to accept the superintendent’s resignation.

Wesley admitted his mistake and said he still wants to be part of this community, according to school board vice president Kurt Brinkman.

Brinkman said Wesley told the crowd at the meeting that he was on his way to Arizona when he decided to head back.

“That took a lot of guts. I have more admiration for the man than I ever had before,” Brinkman said.

Wesley’s appearance, which was not scheduled, didn’t come as a surprise to supporters, who credit Wesley with strengthening the tiny district wedged between Oakland and Berkeley.

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by Jason Morris

I got an interesting email from our Director of Compliance titled “Ironic Spam!”  I guess this spammer didn’t know they were sending this to an expert in compliance in the pre-employment screening industry.  Her made up title, not the subject line of the email:

Subject:  Submit your nomination for a Degree

WHAT A GREAT IDEA!

Our staff will get back to you in next few days!

These criminals will go to great lengths to sell you a degree.  According to an article in the SouthTown Star, the FBI set up an investigation in the 1980’s called Dipscam.  It was the largest federal effort to combat degree and diploma mills.  Before the internet the bogus industry went into decline.  “However, the internet has injected such schemes with steroids, and they’re grwoing feversihly.“  Fortunately, with the emergence of the employment screening industry, background checks are uncovering more and more diploma mills.  This is also leading to a more educated human resource professional, curbing resume fraud.

The consequences of this fraud can be serious, especially in the medical field. In 1997, an 8-year-old girl, Rose Kolitwenzew, was treated by a doctor who supposedly had a medical degree from the British West Indies Medical College, but no such college existed. The man’s instructions led to the girl’s death.

It appears the state of Alabama is learning its lesson from recent stories in New Jersey.  Last week we reported New Jersey educators benefiting from fake or online degrees. Now, Alabama education officials are looking into internet courses and degrees.  The state has also taken action against four Birmingham based online colleges.  All Unaccredited!

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by Jason Morris

Be wary of who you are hiring!  When hiring someone from a foreign country a title of “doctor” can mean many things.   Utilizing a solid global screening or international screening program is more important than ever.  Simply verifying a professional license or checking the equivalency of a license could make a big difference.  Imagine the embarrassment of hiring a doctor only to find out he is a doctor of nothing!

Highly “Educated” Dictators of Tehran

The fiasco of the clumsily forged Oxford doctoral diploma of the Iranian interior minister is comically tragic. Unfortunately for the interior Minister Ali Kordan, he will not be able to join the elite group of Dr. Ahmadinejad, Dr. Larijani, Dr. Khatami, Dr. Maleki, Dr. Rezaii, Dr. Motaki, Dr. Jajili and a thousand other officials with a PhD degree any time soon. However this debacle raises the question, why Tehran´s rulers feel the need to carry the title of “Doctor” to govern?

More than anyone else, these inept executives are conscious of their own incompetence. Most of them have climbed up the same four step career ladder: Revolutionary Guard, prosecutor/torturer/executioner, provincials governor, city mayor or division director, and finally minister/MP/president. Their busy vocational path has left little time for learning skills needed to run the government. Purchasing a PhD diploma has been the logical choice for these rulers to purge intellectuals and educated workforce, and place themselves better to rip off the county´s wealth.

The popularity of the doctoral title among the theocratic dictators is also due to the ill reputation and disgrace associated with religious titles such as “Hojatoleslam” and “Ayatollah” among people. Such religious titles in Iran are now symbols of demagogy, brutality, and despotism.

For those officials who are engaged in interactions with the international communities , such as nuclear negotiation teams, or ambassadors, the doctoral title is used to conceal insincerity and deceitful intents and cunning tactics.

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by Jason Morris

This article does not focus on background checks.  It does however give great tips to hiring professionals on how to deter the applicant from lying to you.

3 WAYS TO CATCH JOB APPLICANTS WHO LIE TO YOU

Dr. Michael Mercer

You can use pre-employment tests, interview tricks and more to uncover if a job applicant is lying to you or embellishing the truth.

Question: Did you ever have a job applicant lie to you or, to be charitable, embellish the truth?

Answer: You probably answered, “Yes.”

This is important. In my third book, “Hire the Best and Avoid the Rest,” I often have been quoted as writing, “Whatever behavior you see from an applicant in the screening process is likely the best behavior you will see from that person.” So, if an applicant lies on your tests, interviews and forms, that person also may be dishonest in work he or she does, if you hire the person.

But, don´t worry. Reason: I will reveal to you methods you can use to

a. discover if an applicant lied to you

b. make an applicant hesitant to lie to you

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by Jason Morris

The moral of this story; Hiring managers will do background checks and uncover resume lies!

Résumés are a critical part of any job search. They are the most effective marketing tool any of us have about who we are and what we can do. And all of us want our résumé to be the best possible representation of our work.

But some workers turn their résumés into a work of fiction instead of a representation of fact. A CareerBuilder.com survey of hiring managers and workers looked at the tall tales and bold lies used on résumés.

Story Highlights:

• Many job applicants get too creative on resumes, making false claims

• Highest rate of resume dishonesty reported in hospitality industry

• College attendance, graduation is easy to verify; don’t claim degree not earned

• Most companies disqualified candidates after discovering their dishonest

Here are the 10 most outrageous whoppers, as reported by hiring managers:

1. Candidate claimed to be a member of the Kennedy family

2. Applicant invented a school that did not exist

3. Job seeker submitted a résumé with someone else’s photo inserted into the document

4. Candidate claimed to be a member of Mensa
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5. Applicant claimed to have worked for the hiring manager before, but never had

6. Job seeker claimed to be the CEO of a company when he was an hourly employee

7. Candidate listed military experience dating back to before he was born

8. Job seeker included samples of work, which were actually those of the interviewer

9. Applicant claimed to be Hispanic when he was 100 percent Caucasian

10. Candidate claimed to have been a professional baseball player

Modifying your résumé is a lot like airbrushing a photo, and many of us may have made minor tweaks to our résumés. You may have revised a job title that sounded uninspiring or omitted a hellish work experience from your list.

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by Jason Morris

When lying on your resume goes wrong! This interview goes wrong when she is asked to demonstrate something on her resume. A little Sunday humor!

When lying on resume goes wrong - Watch more free videos

by Jason Morris

I found this as my lead story today on Yahoo! We often give the same resume writing advice, “don’t lie!”. Here is a good article focusing on other strong resume writing tips.  While we still agree “don’t lie!” is the best advise we can lend, writing an effective resume and covering all the important points is a close second.  This advice will get you in the door…..our advice will help you get past the background checks!

The Biggest Resume Mistake You Can Make
by Caroline Potter, Yahoo! HotJobs

Your resume is the most important document in any job search. But what if you’re submitting resume after resume and receiving no results at all — not even a call? Your resume may be fatally flawed.

How can a resume betray a job seeker? It’s not just typos or poor formatting. According to Lauren Milligan, founder of ResuMAYDAY, a resume-writing and career coaching firm based near Chicago, “The biggest flaw for a resume is when it fails to showcase a person’s accomplishments, contributions, and results, and instead spouts a job description of each position he’s held.”

Use these three tips to make sure your resume doesn’t betray you.

Read Article

by Jason Morris

The examples used in this blog are older but the advice is the same; don’t lie on your resume. Some of the comments on the blog are rather scary, one says you should lie, why not? He/She goes on to say:

” You’re just a number to the HR folks. If you hit your numbers, it don’t matter. Only sentimental fools tell the truth. From what I’m seeing on TV, no one cares.”

We know this couldn’t be further from the truth, especially with HR departments that conduct thorough background checks.  HR folks do care! Their job is to bring qualified personnel into their organizations.  In many ways an organizations success and failure begins and ends with them!

Read on

by Jason Morris

My mother always taught me not to seek benefit from others misery.  Normally I would agree with her. I usually do! Unfortunately I won’t in this case, sorry mom!  I have no admiration or tolerance for people who lie on their resume.  Yesterday we wrote about Donald Trumps advise on resume fraud, today we find a serious offender. Who do you blame, the liar….or the districts failure to conduct a proper background check?

ALBION, N.Y. - The superintendent of an upstate school district faces a felony charge for allegedly lying on his resume, claiming he served 17 years as a state trooper.

State police arrested 48-year-old Richard Galante Wednesday and charged him with offering a false instrument.

Galante became superintenent of the Medina School District in Orleans County in 2003 after working in the district since 2000.

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by Jason Morris

In doing research for another blog post I came across an interesting website, Trump University.  Mr. Trump has obviously been capitalizing on his fame and the popularity of his show, The Apprentice. Like employeescreen University, Trump University gives tips on being successful in the business world.  Trump’s goal is to help entrepreneurs become successful.  Our job is to help them stay in business by hiring qualified people.

Trump has a great post about why you should not lie on your resume. In it he says:

What’s the harm, you wonder, in a few minor deceptions? Those lies can come back to haunt you. Recently, resume inaccuracies have hurt the careers of executives at several organizations, including Radio Shack, Bausch & Lomb, and the U.S. Olympic Committee. This is serious stuff. Good executives don’t want liars to lead their companies.

It’s a great post; short and sweet but it makes a great point: We all know what happens when he finds out you lied…..”You’re FIRED!”

To read the whole post click here!