I saw this cartoon on a blog here, so I’ll have to give the link back so I can use the cartoon.

The term morality disengagement along with the term “tuning” refer to the act of telling of “porkies” (that’s “pork pies” meaning lies in rhyming slang for our Aussie readers). So just how many people are guilty of morality disengagement or tuning? Well according to Career Director International’s Mega Trends Report of 2008, research shows that more than 30% of resumes contain factual errors (www.nehra.com 2008). “Tuning” a resume, the lesser of the two evils, refers to the practice a turning a phrase, swapping a word or inserting a word that perhaps bloats or enriches an individual’s capabilities. Morality disengaging from personal responsibility is a much more serious matter of resume fraud where education and experience can be completely fictitious.

Types of careers making the news for resume fraud seem to be widespread with recent cases cited being every occupation under the sun from CEOs to Heads of Universities, athletic coaches, Olympic officials, and notably a celebrity chef who was found to have fabricated education, a Knighthood, and experiences cooking for royals, top ranking politicians, and more. 

Today, it is even easier to perpetuate resume fraud helped by diploma or degree mills often hard to detect due to the amount of legitimate universities offering online degree studies. Simply put degrees can be purchased on the internet, yet the consequences of exposure can be devastating as entire reputations can be discredited virtually overnight leaving future high ranking job prospects in significant peril.

With today’s Web 2.0 blogs and social media playing a huge role in information transfer it is bound to become increasingly easy for new appointees to be found out by someone, somewhere.

No one is immune from being discovered–whether it is a friend from the past on Twitter or a blog laughing about your education record, a scrupulous record search from the media or the policy of disclosure by employers. Despite 9% of people in a 2008 survey by iVillage.com saying they would lie again on their resumes, clearly the risks of exposure is far too great.

New York Times Article here:

Interesting article in the New York Times today how Web 2.0 has made it into the realm of announcing staff cutbacks. In the past, press releases announced job layoffs, but now, the company blog is seen as a way to release information without disgruntled or redundant workers getting in the way with their own spin in personal blogs and Twitter and other social media. The article references a former HR executive as saying:

“Today, whatever you say inside of a company will end up on a blog,” said Rusty Rueff, a former human resources executive at Electronic Arts and PepsiCo. “So you have a choice as a company — you can either be proactive and take the offensive and say, ‘Here’s what’s going on,’ or you can let someone else write the story for you.”

Clearly companies are deciding to counteract the negative publicity that can be caused by staff using blogs and Twitter by taking an early stand to set the record straight.