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<p>[Loeb</a> Accuses Yahoo Officials of Résumé Padding - NYTimes.com](<a href=“Loeb Accuses Yahoo Officials of Résumé Padding - The New York Times”>Loeb Accuses Yahoo Officials of Résumé Padding - The New York Times)</p>
<p>Have you seen much of this?</p>
<p>Who ever heard of Stonehill?</p>
<p>I have heard of Stonehill. It’s a decent small LAC in Massachusetts. Because I’m in nearby CT, a few kids from our local HS go there every year.</p>
<p>I love how the statement says it was an “inadvertent error”. I just told my kids that it was an inadvertent error when I said I was the queen of France–what I meant was that I really like French fries. Those inadvertent errors can be sooo tricky.</p>
<p>LOL, MommaJ.</p>
<p>I know a kid who went to Stonehill, although he subsequently transferred to another school because Stonehill did not offer the major he decided upon.</p>
<p>One of my former advisees landed at Stonehill. </p>
<p>MommaJ…LOL on the inadvertent error; yeah right.</p>
<p>The problem with these “exaggerations” is that they don’t really provide all that much help to the person in question, but they do provide a very useful tool to anyone who would like to get rid of you. And in some fields, they essentially carry a mandatory dismissal, even if no one wants to get rid of you.</p>
<p>Its not worth it. All downside and no upside. (This excludes situations where the resume padding is so aggressive that it “qualifies” you for something that you otherwise would never have received. In that case there is a clear upside, with a highly probably big downside at the end. )</p>
<p>I knew a fellow who was a very good lawyer at a top NY law firm who graduated from Stonehill. Great lawyer and great guy. That’s the only reference point I have for that school.</p>
<p>While some items on resumes can be “exaggerated” without actually lying due to choice of wording and such (presumably any student of marketing, communications, political science, psychology, or rhetoric will know this), it seems to be the height of foolhardy riskiness to “exaggerate” something easily verifiable like college attendance, degrees, and majors.</p>
<p>Time for another thread about those Columbia graduates who happened to have attended an all-female LAC in the same hood? ;)</p>
<p>guess they don’t know how to google at Yahoo…</p>
<p>This happens all over the place.</p>
<p>I’ve recently run across a PhD claiming to have BS (from an ivy), and a MS and PhD in “Economic Geography”, and also called himself a “spatial statistician”.</p>
<p>Here’s the problem, the schools he attended offer no such degrees. He has degrees in Geography. Also, the curriculum requirements across all degree levels had little to no statistics courses. His work that I reviewed showed minimal knowledge of statistics, with significant errors and bias in his analysis.</p>
<p>He fluffed up his resume because most people could give two squats about Geography degrees. </p>
<p>He also showed minimal knowledge of basic Economic principles too. </p>
<p>A background in Economics and/or Statistics is extremely beneficial in the consulting biz. This guy didn’t have those, so he just made them up.</p>
<p>Don’t change the name of the degree you were awarded to make yourself look more marketable and knowledgeable, it will only bite you in the ass in the long run.</p>
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<p>Ever notice how these little “inadvertent” resume errors are always favorable to the person in question? If they really were inadvertent they would randomly be favorable and unfavorable in approximately equal proportion. But somehow nobody ever inadvertently leaves off some important degree that they earned. They only “inadvertently” add on degrees that they didn’t earn.</p>
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<p>While you caught a fib in this case, be aware that colleges sometimes do shut down, merge, or rename departments and majors. For example, Berkeley once had numerous specific biology departments and majors like biochemistry, botany, genetics, physical education, physiology, zoology, etc… These have now been merged into two large biology departments and majors. The majors of naval architecture and petroleum engineering no longer exist. Several other majors have been renamed.</p>
<p>The thing that puzzles me is that we are talking about a man in his 50s who, one assumes, got the job based on relevant work experience (which seems rather extensive based on my wikipedia “research”), rather than his undergraduate degree major. Such resume padding at this stage of his career is idiotic and wholly unnecessary. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, I disagree with Mr. Loeb (who sounds like kind of a jerk, frankly) that the remedy is firing Mr. Thompson. If I were a board member I’d want to do a cost/benefit analysis of two choices: fire the guy or publicly reprimand him while standing behind him because there are reasons other than his undergraduate major that make him the best person for the job. In other words, is the public relations problem more of a burden than the disruption to organizational order that might be caused by having to pick a new CEO? Are there other reasons Mr. Thompson is not fit to do the job? As a shareholder, those other reasons, if they exist, would be much more compelling to me.</p>
<p>Lest someone wish to accuse me of moral relativism, let me just say I think the lie should be exposed and the record corrected. But unless Yahoo has a policy of firing people upon the discovery of resume padding, termination of Mr. Thompson’s employment needn’t be the board’s next move. Anyone out there ever embellish a resume? A little, maybe? What level of embellishment would you say calls for your termination (or your boss’s or a staff member’s)?</p>
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<p>No. Not ever. </p>
<p>This guy falsified his resume. He lied. Call it “embellishment” if you wish. </p>
<p>"What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet; "</p>
<p>Although in this case, I think it stinks on ice.</p>
<p>Okay, fine, Nrdsb4, I’ll call it falsification. He lied. </p>
<p>I still think it’s possible that firing the guy may not be the best thing for the company or, necessarily, the only remedy. Does Yahoo have a zero tolerance policy for this sort of thing? I could see, possibly, if they hired him in reliance on this one piece of information. But it strains belief to think they did. The official bio on the site, for reasons that are mysterious to me, makes this claim. That’s not the same as getting a job based on a false statement … </p>
<p>I’ll bet you we could find lots and lots of false statements on this order on many executives’ official bios. Lots. Should they all be fired? I agree, the lying is damaging. But this guy saying he majored in something he didn’t major in does not make him unfit to lead the company. It does make him look like an idiot and he should acknowledge that straightaway. (PR people going to the “inadvertent error” defense. Ugh. So unimaginative and transparent.)</p>
<p>Back in the days when Thomson was a student at Stonehill, the drinking age was 18 and there was an incredible bar called Brother John’s in the basement of the boy’s dorm. From the level of inebriation we saw from the guys living there, not remembering your exact major would not have been a stretch…</p>
<p>^^^It was Thompson who went to Stonehill, for the record. </p>
<p>Dan Lyons posted an interesting take on the scandal in The Daily Beast earlier today.</p>
<p>absweetmarie, I didn’t even remotely say that I thought he should be fired. I simply answered your question about whether or not I’ve embellished a resume and took issue with that term in this case.</p>
<p>Frankly, I couldn’t care less what happens to the guy from here.</p>
<p>Sorry, Nrdsb4. I was agreeing with you that “embellishment” is a weasely (sp?) term. I didn’t mean to suggest you agreed with Mr. Loeb’s proposed remedy.</p>
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<p>We had a guy fired from our company when it was discovered that he didn’t have the PhD he claimed to have. He wasn’t fired for not having a PhD (although most research managers at his level usually had a PhD, it was not a strict requirement of the job). He was fired for lying about it on his resume.</p>
<p>The way he was found out is that he made the mistake of running off with another woman, and so his angry abandoned wife squealed on him to the company. The last time we saw him was when he later appeared on the Newlywed Game with his new sweetie. You just can’t make up stuff like this.</p>
<p>Moral of the story: if your spouse knows that you are living a lie at work, you better make sure to keep him/her happy.</p>