[EAS] Slicker Resume Fraud

[pjk]

Subject:   Slicker Resume Fraud

(from NewsScan Daily, 10 March 2004)

RESUME FRAUD GOES HIGH-TECH
      As companies ratchet up efforts to detect misrepresentations
on job seekers' resumes, resume fraud is jumping to a new level,
thanks to operators of Web sites that provide phony degrees and
toll-free numbers for employers to call, where they're assured that
a job candidate's credentials are valid. Some candidates are even
paying hackers to alter class lists at universities they claim to
have attended, says Charles Wardell, managing director at
Korn/Ferry International. "In the past, people just lied. Now, what
they are doing is they are hacking into a class of a university and 
putting their name on the class list." Wardell says his company has
started requesting degrees and, in some cases, even grades from
potential job candidates, but such documents are also easily faked,
thanks to the ingenuity of Web sites such as easydiploma.com, which
offers phony degrees and a verification service. "You can select
the parchment paper, the insignia and the type of degree," says the
head of a corporate investigation firm's background screening
division. Background search firms say these increasingly
sophisticated resume fraud schemes are making their jobs more
difficult: "A good liar understands that you have to have some 
basis and facts to pull off a scam. But it's even more dangerous
when employers unknowingly hire a fraud, thief or a crook," says
the president of Employment Screening Resources. (Reuters 9 Mar
2004)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=OJNDBKAUN40DSCRBAEOCFFA?type=technologyNews&storyID=4529931

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Sobering quote from the Reuters article:

> The background search firm ADP Screening and Selection Services, in
> a 2003 study, found that more than 50 percent of the people on whom
> it conducted employment and education checks had submitted false
> information, compared with about 40 percent in 2002. 

   --PJK