An awkward, unscientific lie is often as ineffectual as the truth – Mark Twain, “On the Decay of the Art of Lying”
News comes to us today that the CEO of Yahoo has been ousted for lying on his resume. I don’t know when the lie showed up on the Scott Thompson’s CV. Maybe it was a new addition; probably it was there long before he held his previous job as CEO of Paypal. Thompson isn’t the first bigwig to get caught conveniently “misremembering” a degree. A brief search reveals similar senior executives at Bausch & Lomb, Veritas Software, Radio Shack and InterContinental Hotels have been revealed as resume padders. And that’s just since 2002.
It is disappointing to see so many CEOs fail at such a fundamental business skill as lying. These are the leaders of the greatest economy in history and they get tripped up by fraudulently claiming a computer science degree from Stonehill College? It is for this reason–to help the CEOs of the future–I present the five most common mistakes when lying on a resume.
1. Overreaching. The bigger the lie, the easier it is to trace. Any HR person worth their Wonderlic test will figure out you didn’t win the Pulitzer Prize in fiction. But a Pushcart Prize or an honorable mention in a Paris Review short fiction contest might just go unchecked. Claiming a law degree from somewhere like Whittier Law School is a much surer bet than opting for Northwestern. It’s just common sense, people.
2. Being too perfect. Don’t simply cut and paste a job ad and claim to have, line by line, the exact qualifications the position calls for. The bullet point “2-5 years experience in business management” is bound to be a red flag. The good news is no candidate is going to have the exact skill set the position calls for. Therefore, if you have all of two and part of a third, then fudge the third, lie about the fourth and leave it at that. Geez, didn’t they teach you anything in that MBA program you didn’t go to?
3. Don’t flaunt your lie. Once you get that CEO job, you have nothing to prove. Don’t pretend to be on the Cambridge alumni committee or friends with the dean at Yale. Definitely do not fill your office with doctored PhDs or lacrosse trophies you bought on Ebay. Play it cool.
4. Do your due diligence. “Many a young person has injured himself permanently through a single clumsy and ill-finished lie.” More good advice from Mr. Clemens. In other words, do your homework. If you’re claiming a degree from Harvard, at least know their mascot (it’s John Harvard, but the sports team are called “Crimson”). Check out a few pictures online. Read the Wikipedia entry. Find out who in the company is actually from that institution and have them transferred to Uzbekistan..
5. Not having your spin control ready. Odds are if you make it to CEO you’ll develop enemies. (Heck, I don’t know you and already I don’t like you.) And if you have enemies, one of them–even among people as slow-witted and lazy as CEOs–will find one of those lies on your resume. Okay, probably they’ll have a junior v.p. do the leg work, but you know what I mean. The point is, you have to be ready for that day–and it will come–when the Wall Street Journal reporter calls. Thompson lamely claimed his executive recruiter added that erroneous computer science degree. That’s not good enough by half. You should have your rap down cold, and the more confusing, meandering and hard to pin down it is, the better. Above all, never, NEVER admit to anything. O.J. Simpson never did and look at him. Okay–bad example.
Keep these mistakes in mind and you’ll soon be able to disassemble with the our nation’s captains of industry. And if you get caught, so what? You’re a CEO. It’s an old boys network and you guys take care of each other. At worst, you’ll get a multi-million-dollar golden parachute and end up heading a slightly smaller company. What comedian Lenny Clarke said about television applies to corporate executives: “In this business, there’s only one way to fail. Up.”
Chris Bittler is a proofreader with a bachelor’s degree from Trinity College in Deerfield. Like anyone would make that up.
