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PR Fuel: Liar, Liar, Resume on Fire!Dave Edmondson was the chief executive officer of RadioShack.Kenneth Lonchar was the chief financial officer of Veritas.George O'Leary was the head football coach at Notre Dame.Quincy Troupe was the poet laureate for the State of California.Sandra Baldwin was the president of the United States Olympic Committee.These five all have something in common: They lied on their resumes, and they lost their jobs as a result.Edmondson is the latest - he resigned on Monday - and he won't be the last. I'll gamble to say that everyday someone, somewhere, gets fired because they lied on their resume. From CEOs to bartenders, a resume containing a lie has cost someone a job, and embarrassed an employer. So why does it keep happening? Delving into the psychology of a resume liar is difficult. For starters, just because someone has lied on their resume does not mean that they lie in other aspects in their life. A resume lie could be born out of desperation, such as an executive knowing that despite his years of experience he may never get to the next level unless he has an MBA, something he doesn't have the time to get when he's working eighty hours per week. The desperation could hit a recent college grad, who, struggling to find work, inflates his resume with fictitious internships. Outside of desperation, resume lies can be driven by greed, insecurity or simple laziness. Some lies don't appear on a resume but are verbally crafted. For example, there have been a number of cases in recent years where executives or coaches have lied about military service, trying to use their "experience" to motivate employees or athletes. Former Toronto Blue Jays manager Tim Johnson concocted a story about serving in battle in Vietnam, which proved unlikely for someone who spent the war stateside in the Reserves. He was eventually fired by the club. Resume lies generally occur for one of two reasons: Someone has chosen to falsify their resume, or someone has made an honest mistake. The five examples above fall into the first category, while a resume lie I was caught up in falls into the second category. About five years ago, a trade magazine ran a glowing profile of a company that I had recently joined. The article noted that I'd been hired and the writer included a brief rundown of my credentials. The article was fantastic with one exception; it said that I had held a job that I had never actually held. The mistake was actually made by my boss, who decided to make our company look a little better by inflating my resume a bit. He told the article's writer that I had held a position at a major media company when the truth was that I had worked at the company for about three months as a temporary employee. The odd thing was that I barely mentioned the particular job on my actual resume, and my boss knew very well that I had been nothing more than a temp. (It was my first job in New York City.) You would think no one would care about little old me, but you would be wrong. A day after the article hit, my boss took me aside and told me that someone had called him to accuse me of lying on my resume. The writer who wrote so glowingly about us also called, saying that someone had called her to say that I had lied on my resume. Luckily, my boss took full responsibility for the mistake, telling the would-be whistleblower and the writer that he had made a mistake in relaying my work experience to the writer. Nothing more came of the incident. In case you're wondering, the person who "ratted" on me was someone I worked with at the company where I temped. She hated me, and she obviously hated me enough to try to ruin my career. Again, I was lucky because I didn't make the mistake. Regardless, I learned an important lesson. Nowadays, my resume doesn't even include the temp job. I've been in the workforce long enough and the work experience is meaningless compared to the rest of my career. My resume also does not include an "Education" section because I only briefly attended college and left school to embark on a career. I note this in a section marked "Personal" and make no bones about the fact that my college eduction is limited to nine credits. In fact, when promoting myself in the past, I've used "college dropout" as an angle. The resume lies that are premeditated are, of course, bad for everyone involved. The resume liar generally loses all credibility at his current job, and finding future employment may be difficult. The employer, meanwhile, looks stupid for getting duped. Questions then arise about the competency of the company. (How can the company operate when it can't even ferret out lying executives?) Companies can protect themselves against resume liars by employing verification services, or at a minimum, astute human resources people. Public relations people should also play a part, ensuring that employees verify any personal information contained in press releases, on corporate websites, or in marketing material. If you have reason to question a resume, do it. You have nothing to lose, and the employee should be able to verify all of their employment and education experience. Resumes are important to the public, so this issue can't be ignored. In the investment world, analysts like myself look closely at new executive hires and board directors. If, for example, I see someone who sat on the board of an accounting-scandal-ridden company sitting on the board of another company, I raise a red flag. Why would you have someone on your board who already failed in his or her duties once? One example of resume fudging I came across recently had the CEO of the company playing basketball at a major university. I verified the age of the CEO through SEC filings and figured out that if he indeed played basketball at the school in question than he would have played during a time when the school was consistently one of the best teams in the country. A quick phone call to the school's athletic department confirmed that the CEO never played basketball. "Maybe he played intramural basketball?" the school representative suggested. "Would you put that on your resume if you were the CEO of a public company?" I countered. "No. No, I wouldn't," the school rep said. A little lie can mean a lot, and in this case, the resume lie was the final piece of evidence I needed to back up my theory that something was very wrong at the company. And all it took was one phone call for me to blow up a decade-old lie.
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