My wife needs some suggestions for finding fake degree holders at her place of employment. She works in the HR dept. and does all the admin. for the office. (Only two people in the HR dept. and her boss is the other one and a VP) My wife is fairly new to this job (promoted from within - not much experience) and she does not want to be seen as a bull in a china closet. However, she discovered that not a single employee in the company has ever had their degree checked for validity!!! This is not a tiny company either (publicly traded). The current policy for checking degrees is to call the college and ask if the applicant graduated from there and of course the answer comes back "Yes." They then ask if they can have the transcripts/GPA, but usually are told "No, not without concent of applicant and $20." So, frequently no transcripts are ever received and that is the end of the investigation! Also, no accreditation is ever asked for - simply assumed! 1) How can my wife solve the current farse of a hiring process? Suggestions for changes of policy and how to implement them would be appreciated. 2) How can she check into all current employees education claims? Is it unethical to do background checks on people who have been employed with her company for years - with families even? My thoughts are 'no' but it is a question I never thought of before. Thank you, Chris
1) I think the easiest and fastest way would be to look in the You may look on ]http://www.chea.org/Institutions/index.cfm Another good source is the ACE "Accredited Institutions of Post Secondary Education" handbook. Keep in mind university names change and you have to obtain the right edition. 2) As for two, only your wife and the company can answer that.
Does it matter? Was a degree a job requirement? Is the employee's work accptable? Does it affect your customers? If not I would not bother with existing employees until they are considered for promotion. Add this requirement to the employee handbook. A couple of years ago my company had everyone bring in proof of US citizenship and at the same time requested copies of degree certificates.
On the one hand, an employee whose work is acceptable need not be penalized for lying on a CV years ago. On the other hand, it could come back to haunt the company if an employee mentions a fraudulent degree in e-mail, or on a Website. What I would do is first invite all employees to submit updated CVs, warning that the new CVs will be checked, but promising that the old CVs will be discarded unread.
My wife is contemplating a recomendation of investigating Top Level Man. only (in regards to "back-checking"). Since the company is traded on NASDAQ, her concern is that it is probable that they [Top Level Man.] will be checked by someone at sometime. She does not want to be the fall guy if a scandal does eventually arise. I suppose it is a mix of wanting to do the job right in the future, but a little CYA can't hurt for the past.
I concur with Mark's comments, but he needs to remember that John Davy's work for Maori TV was more than acceptable - even by Derek Fox - until poor John got caught out with a ficticious degree! And then there was Frank Abagnale, whose work as a - doctor, teacher, lawyer, co-pilot, lover, etc., was also more than acceptable for quite a number of years! Dr Duck
Thank you Uncle for your understanding support. It is, however, increasingly difficult to get good/well qualified/certificated/non-bogus typists these days. Just finished re-reading 'CATCH ME IF YOU CAN'. A great read. Dr Duck
FNHayes wrote: > I concur with Mark's comments, but he needs to remember > that John Davy's work for Maori TV was more than acceptable - > even by Derek Fox - until poor John got caught out with a > ficticious degree! I was expecting you to bring up Davy when I said what I did. It may seem inconsistent, but I'm advising corporate decision-makers to act in the interest of their company (keep quiet), and legislators to act in the public interest (lock the liars up if they cheated rivals out of jobs). CEO Davy not only lacked business training, but couldn't write literate English (he would write "in arms way" meaning "in harm's way", etc.), which may be why he plagiarized corporate documents from the Web. "Even by Derek Fox?" Remember, it was Fox who said said about Davy's "MBA" from "the University of Denver": "I have a copy of the certificate that was issued in 1976. It's checked fine." > And then there was Frank Abagnale, whose work as a > doctor, teacher, lawyer, co-pilot, lover, etc., was also more than > acceptable for quite a number of years! Frank Abagnale had no medical knowledge (he delegated all medical decisions to his interns); and he didn't know how to fly a plane (he would just leave it on autopilot until the real pilot came back). If people had died under his charge, you wouldn't call it "acceptable"; and it was just luck that they didn't.
I would think that Bears' Guide to Earning Degrees by Distance Learning would be a great asset for checking resumes. For new hires there are also independent firms that specialize in checking our potential hires for companies with small HR staff that can't do this work.
