Newsweek
28-Year Lie
Resume Lies a Major Concern for Employers
How did MIT’s dean of admission mislead the school for nearly three decades about
her educational background? What lessons can corporate America learn?
As dean of admissions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Marilee Jones was
responsible for ensuring that applicants represented their academic backgrounds honestly.
So it was more than a shock when the 55-year-old resigned Thursday, admitting that she
had misled school officials over a 28-year period into believing that she held three
degrees from New York institutions. In fact, she had never received even an
undergraduate degree from any school.
While Jones's case is extreme, it points to a major concern for any corporation or
institution that hires employees: embellishments and outright lies on résumés. Sue
Murphy, association manager of the Human Resources Association, says that in her 20
years in HR she has seen the application process change dramatically. "We used to try to
have the applicant provide two or three business references. But now … employers are
being much more aggressive about checking applicants' backgrounds, and if they can
afford it they are even hiring third parties to do background checks."
One of those third parties, ADP Screening and Selection Services, said it conducted 5.8
million background checks in 2006, a 20 percent increase from 2005. Out of nearly
500,000 reference verifications ADP did last year, 41 percent came back with some sort
of discrepancy between the employment, education or credentials information provided
by the applicant and what the source reported. "In some cases it's individuals who are just
trying to fluff up their résumés, and in others it's people who are desperate for work,"
Murphy says. "They are trying to put food on the table and pay the mortgage, so they will
try to embellish. As the economy and job market has tightened up, it has become more
prevalent."
But if an employer doesn't catch the falsehoods, how does an employee live with such a
big lie—in Jones's case, a falsehood that she maintained for 28 years? Psychologist Paul
Ekman from the University of California Medical School in San Francisco (who has not
spoken with Jones, and only knows of her situation from media reports) speculates that
Jones's case is likely related to self-esteem. MIT officials noted that a college degree
probably wasn't required for the entry-level position that Jones took on in 1979, and
apparently no one checked her credentials with each successive promotion. Still, by all
accounts, Jones was good at her job. She was quoted frequently in the press as a collegeadmissions expert and recently wrote a book that cemented her reputation as a sage
adviser for college applicants. "Even though [the fake degrees] didn't [initially] give her
tangible benefits, she [personally needed them] in order to get people to respect her,"
Ekman says. "And in time it appears she did get a lot of respect, but by then she couldn't
reveal she had lied without losing her position."
Ekman says many people are tempted to exaggerate their credentials for the same reason
a kid exaggerates his father's strength, but that most people resist. "They either know
from past experience that they could never get away with it—perhaps because they are
bad liars, they don't like taking risks—some people are risk takers so it attracts them to
lying, or they are religiously observant," Ekman says.