Resumes getting checked twice

From O'Leary to Cyprien, false claims are not unusual

By Pierce W. Huff, Staff writer
The Times Picayune, Sunday, July 18, 2004

Shortly after George O'Leary resigned as the football coach at Notre Dame for putting false information on his resume, Terry Don Phillips, then the athletic director at Oklahoma State, took action.

"After O'Leary, we sent out communication to all our coaches," said Phillips, now the athletic director at Clemson. "If there's something that's not correct on your resume... make us aware, so we have a chance to work it out. We had one coach come forward."

Glynn Cyprien wasn't that coach. He was an assistant on Eddie Sutton's staff and played a key role in helping the Cowboys reach the 2004 Final Four. Shortly after that appearance, University of Louisiana-Lafayette athletic director Nelson Schexnayder hired Cyprien as the Ragin' Cajuns' basketball coach.

ULL fired Cyprien on Friday for not having a bachelor's degree from a school that has accreditation recognized by the U.S. Department of Education.

Cyprien listed a bachelor's degree from the University of Texas at San Antonio and bachelor's and master's degrees fromLacrosse University on his resume. He didn't graduate from UTSA, and Lacrosse is an on-line school based in Bay St. Louis, Miss., that doesn't have accreditation recognized by the Department of Education.

Phillips said he was contacted by Schexnayder about Cyprien before he was hired.

"We had a lengthy conversation," Phillips said. "We were flabbergasted to learn what had happened."

It was evident that Cyprien and ULL hadn't learned much from the scandal that rocked college football in 2001. But many institutions, including Notre Dame, changed their policies.

John Heisler, an associate athletic director at Notre Dame, said that before the O'Leary scandal, his university was not in the practice of checking the details of resumes. But that's not the case anymore.

Heisler said Notre Dame has internal and external checks of resumes, and its sports information department always double-checks the details of all press releases involving the hiring of coaches. Athletic director Kevin White and the athletic staff verify the information listed on applications, and the human resources department authenticates degrees and academic information.

"We learned that things we used to take for granted and took as accurate, now we're not taking anything for granted anymore," Heisler said.

LSU athletic director Skip Bertman said his school also learned from the O'Leary scandal.

"When the George O'Leary thing happened, at the next staff meeting I brought out everybody . And one of the topics that zoomed to the very head was for everyone to check their resume," Bertman said. "You know, like I haven't checked mine in years. Check your resume. Go back and really look it over, whoever you are. Fix it so there's nothing -- and I mean absolutely nothing -- with the emphasis being there's nothing in the resume that can get you the job that's more important than if you have lied on the resume. If that's the case, just make sure that everything is verifiable, and I think most of our coaches did that. The O'Leary thing was an eye-opener for a lot of people."

There is no full-proof way to catch every lie in a resume, even with the heightened awareness about past false background scandals. But schools and employers now are convinced that intensive background checks are a must for every new job candidate.

"I mean it costs a lot of money, but it's something that we feel is absolutely necessary," Bertman said. "We started that just about George O'Leary time. We always did some background check, but now we have done one of these professional background checks, where the (prospective coach) has to give you the right to do it. They have to sign off on it, and it's very personal. It's expensive, but obviously it's worth it. So no coach in the LSU athletic department can hire an assistant, not to mention a head coach, until human resources hires a firm and does the background check. It usually takes seven to 10 days, so even if they want to hire the person they have to wait until we're finished."

LSU human resources director David Hurlbert said more and more companies are finding that it pays to do their homework when it comes to new hires.

"I think it's fair to say that there's an increased interest in this area," Hurlbert said. "I think you'll find that with even private-sector employers. People seem to be spending a lot more money and a lot more time on background checks, not just for degrees but for other things too."

Heisler of Notre Dame said he's not sure why some coaches lie about their backgrounds.

"That's hard to say," her said. "Part of it is just the competitiveness in the positions. There is a fine line sometimes between having done the required course work and maybe actually receiving the degree."

But Barry Nadell, the president of InfoLink Screening Services in Chatsworth, Calif., said people stretch the truth on their resumes to get jobs they want.

"They don't believe people like us (employment services) are going to find that information, and so they do it," said Nadell, whose company's list of clients includes the Paramount Pictures, the University of Southern California and Pepperdine University. "We tell people that they are better off being truthful, because often times they'll still get the job by being truthful."

The statistics show that coaches are not alone when it comes to stretching the truth on their resumes. In a study done by Ward Howell International Inc. of 258 human resource executives who reported discovering instances of credential falsification or misrepresentation, 62 percent said they had found fabricated academic credentials, 43 percent found discrepancies in compensation histories and 25 percent said they had come across cases where a criminal record was omitted, according to Business Wire.

According to research done by corporate recruiters and the Society for Human Resource Management, one of four candidates materially misrepresent their educational attainment. Less than 15 percent of all employment applications have educational credentials verified because of the difficulty of getting information required in a timely fashion from multiple sources, according to a story in Certification Magazine by Martin Bean.

Nadell said of the thousands of people that have given the approval for background checks this year, 24 percent have had discrepancies when calling past employers, 8.4 percent have had criminal convictions, 39 percent have had situations ranging from minor to major traffic violations and 5.3 percent have falsified or stretched the truth about their education.

In her book "Lying: Moral Choices in Public and Private Life," Sissela Bok writes: "Some people may not understand what a serious thing it is. When a person does this, after a while they begin to believe it (resume inflation). It obviously hurts institutions and the individuals too."