Fluffy Resumes

I came across this item that sheds new light on resume-padding. Resume padding seems to be a commonplace practice. It simply is an act of embellishing dates and details of jobs to present a potential job candidate in the best possible light. Some industry experts believe that up to 40% of today's job applicants fluff their resumes in response to career pressure. People do it, even though that today's technology makes it easier to check references than ever before. There have been high-profile examples of this phenomenon:

• David Edmonson resigned as Radio Shack's chief executive when it was found that he had misrepresented his academic record.
• George Deutsch, a presidential appointee to NASA who claimed to have graduated from Texas A&M University, but had not.
• George O'Leary was forced to resign as the football coach at Notre Dame in 2001 when he falsely claimed that he received a master's degree at NYU. The ironic part is that he found another job as a football coach.

I don't know what causes people to do this, but I suppose that people may be afraid in these tough economic times that they would not be able to obtain a job unless their credentials are the highest. I figure that this must be the case, but why risk your integrity doing so? Or does integrity go out the window in the name of the almighty dollar?

In the case of the CEO of Radio Shack he caused a big problem in shareholder trust and loyalty by emblellishing his record. I do not see what you really gain by it.

As a matter of fact, there is a website that actually talks about the culture of cheating here.

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