Ask a Manager: my coworker lied about her entire resume — should I tell anyone?

[minoanmiss]

This is a doozy. Cut tagged because it's a bit long.

A reader writes:

I work at a small (fewer than 10 employees) firm as a mid-level associate. A few weeks ago, a close friend, Josie — who doesn’t work with me but lives in my city — showed me a photo of a woman while we were out to lunch and asked if she worked in my office. I said yes, it was our new (five months into the job) account coordinator, Larisa. She said Larisa is her cousin and that she had seen her post something on Facebook about where she worked and had connected the dots that it was my firm. She seemed surprised that Larisa was working there, and she shared that Larisa had only ever completed one semester of college and had been unemployed for seven years before getting this job. This surprised me, as I know that all positions at our firm require a college degree and cannot imagine we’d have hired someone with such a gap in employment.

Since it was bugging me, I went back and found the email HR sent out when Larisa was hired. It included a little blurb about her and said she had earned her BA from a local university and had come to us with 10 years experience in the industry. I told this to Josie, who said that that was the university Larisa had dropped out of after one semester, and reiterated that she had been entirely unemployed for the previous seven years. (Larisa is only 32. She’d been married for most of that time and supported by her husband’s income, but began job searching after they divorced earlier this year.)

My question is, do I tell my bosses? Larisa is fundamentally capable at her work and doesn’t seem to be failing at anything. Most of her duties are clerical and client outreach, not things which are too difficult to pick up on the job. If she’s not doing a bad job, is it worth bringing up to anyone that she does not have a degree or any of the experience preferred for the position she’s in?

I’m not worried about the accuracy of the information — Josie sent me screenshots of Larisa’s Facebook posts from around six months ago, complaining about the difficulty of job searching when every job requires a degree, experience, etc. and lamenting that she does not have either. I’m assuming she just lied on her resume and figured employers wouldn’t confirm her degree.

I know these are heavy allegations but I’ve been able to find absolutely nothing indicating that she ever graduated from college or held a paying job in the years preceding her being hired here.

Is this something I should flag for my bosses, or is it a case where the hiring manager’s lack of due diligence is what’s really at fault here? I’m personally really frustrated at this, since I took out loans and studied hard to get my degree only to wind up with a coworker who claimed to do the same without any of the work. I’m inclined to just leave it and not deal with any of this, but the AAM reader in me knows that if Larisa was willing to lie about such fundamental things in the application process, there are likely other issues with her character and professionalism. If it matters, Larisa is not my direct report but I rank above her in our admittedly small hierarchy.

My normal stance when you suspect a coworker has lied on their resume is that if your manager doesn’t bother doing any due diligence on hires — reference checks, background checks, etc. — that’s on them. So generally I’d say to leave it alone unless it’s playing out in truly problematic ways (like the person can’t do the job and their manager is investing heavily in coaching them, which she might not do if she knew the full story, or if it’s putting important work at risk).

But fabricating an entire work history is in a different category than, say, exaggerating one’s accomplishments or fudging the dates of a past job. To be clear, those things aren’t okay either! But making up an entire fake job history is a whole new level of egregiousness. And as you note, if Larisa were willing to do that, it would raise really serious questions about her integrity and trustworthiness.

So given that we seem to be talking about an entire fabricated work history and not just a couple of details, I do think you should talk to your boss. When you do it, though, make sure you don’t present this as absolute fact. It does sound like fact, but who knows what you might not know, and you want to be as objective as possible here. I’d say it like this: "I feel awkward raising this, but something was shared with me that alarmed me and that I feel obligated to share with you. A close friend of mine told me she’s Larisa’s cousin, and thinks that Larisa might have submitted a false resume. She said Larisa had been unemployed for the seven years before we hired her and only completed a semester of college. When I expressed surprise, she sent me more information that seemed to confirm it. I don’t think either of those things are inherently prohibitive — and if you hired her knowing them, then there’s no need for me to continue. But based on the info sent around about her when she started, it sounds like she might have submitted a fake resume to get hired. I realize I don’t have all the info here, and I certainly don’t want to gossip about a coworker. I’m not going to share this with anyone else, but I didn’t feel comfortable not passing it along to you in case it’s something you want to look into."

By the way, note the "I don’t think either of those things are inherently prohibitive" language. That’s there because it’s true — people can do clerical work without degrees or experience. (So much so that if it were just the degree, I’d tell you to leave it alone.) But it’s also there because who knows, maybe your employer did know all this. Maybe Larisa didn’t lie on her resume, and somehow the HR person who wrote the blurb about her got some facts wrong. That’s pretty unlikely, given the extent of the discrepancies and your account of your company’s hiring prerequisites, but you want to allow for that possibility and not seem like you’re coming in guns blazing.

Ugh. If you’re right about this, flagging it rather than keeping it to yourself is the right thing to do. If you’re somehow wrong, this is going to feel icky — but it sounds credible enough that I do think you’ve got to have the conversation.

Comments

[cereta]

I can only say that, having been both a supervisor and a member of several hiring committees, I would really hope someone would tell me if I had screwed the pooch this badly. Yes, the company should have done due diligence, but they didn't, so now there's a Situation. I feel for Larisa, and if this were a small fudge, I wouldn't bother, but it's not. It's a great big pile of lies that would make me wonder if I could ever trust her.

[shirou]

Agreed 100%. I like Alison's advice and would add that when talking to their boss, LW should insist the conversation be confidential. I would want assurance that nobody else learn of my involvement.

In many companies, conversations of this nature would automatically be confidential, but this company has demonstrated massive incompetence in HR matters once already.

[cimorene]

Same. I am usually with the people who think you shouldn't 'snitch' because yes, the requirement is asinine, but the amount of fabrication we're talking about is staggering and that's... just not the same as fudging your resume a little bit.

[lemonsharks]

Filing this one under None Of The LW's Dang Business.

With a side of "tell your friend that the subject is not up for discussion anymore."

[lyonesse]

i'm in the "why are we ratting out other workers to the boss" category.

we know why she lied: she didn't have the qualifications on paper. nevertheless, she is capable of doing the job, and she knew it, and she is doing it. so the company has got a perfectly functional employee out of it, despite hamstringing themselves with irrelevancies in the first place.

[lilysea]

i'm in the "why are we ratting out other workers to the boss" category.

I think there is a time and a place for whistleblowing when someone has lied about their qualifications. This, however, is not that time/place.

If someone had lied about being a qualified
doctor
nurse
physiotherapist
blood laboratory technician
forensic science technician
lawyer

I would ABSOLUTELY whistle blow, as a matter of public safety.

But lying about a college degree for a generalist admin job?
No. That's not a safety issue.

[minoanmiss]

I think this is the comment that helped me resolve my thooughts on What Would I Do Or Advise LW To Do. This isn't a safety issue or even a place to embezzle, so you are right. Thank you. :)

[ambyr]

My main takeaway from this is that it would be really nice if, as a society, we stopped pretending a four year degree is a necessary credential to do entry-level clerical work and that leaving the working world to be a homemaker makes someone permanently unsuited for employment. This is the inevitable result of that kind of classist, sexist gatekeeping.

[minoanmiss]

This is the one thing about this situation I am absolutely certain of.

[jadelennox]

Same.

[resonant]

I was a church secretary, and when I was helping to hire my replacement, I had to talk the governing board out of requiring a college degree. (To make matters worse, this was in a town where only a tiny percentage of people had any higher education.)

"But we need someone who can write well!" they said.

I said, "Ability to write is super-easy to test for!"

[conuly]

And, correlatively, a degree does not guarantee the ability to write well. Like, at all.

[laurajv]

One of the funniest writers I know dropped out of school in 8th grade!

[conuly]

Yes.

[staranise]

Ding ding ding.

[cereta]

On that, we agree. It's one of the reasons I teach at a two-year school.

[wolby]

+1, the requirements for the job (not just degree but also years of experience!) sound offensively bogus.

[conuly]

Sooner or later, this is going to come out. Secrets have a bad way of doing that.

[tielan]

I’m personally really frustrated at this, since I took out loans and studied hard to get my degree only to wind up with a coworker who claimed to do the same without any of the work

I would like to put up a big red flag for 'bitter co-worker looking for a reason to take Larisa down' right here.

I mean, it's understandable under the American system where degrees are expensive: LW has debt and Larisa has none and they're doing the same job. And, sure it would be a demoralising realisation because either the degree is unnecessary or LW is just that bad at her job that someone without a degree can do the same work that she can.

Speaking as someone who didn't have to pay for her degree, I'd say that if Larisa can do the job, then let her do the job. If she's a pathological liar and fundamentally untrustworthy (like LW implies) rather than just someone desperate for a source of income looking for work when nobody will give her the time of day because she didn't pay 80K for a bachelor's degree, then it'll come out in her work sooner or later...

[heavenscalyx]

Yes, this. I might’ve been inclined a bit toward the advice until the moment the LW whiiiiined. Oh no! You have debt! Well Larisa may have had a choice between having a home or lying, you don’t know, and her cousin seems like a complete asshat for ratting her out — no love lost in that family.

[tielan]

Yeah, I got the gleeful spoke-in-the-wheel attitude from the cousin, too.

[minoanmiss]

I definitely wonder about the cousin's motives. Is Larisa a serial con woman she's trying to save her friend's workplace from? Is she vastly spiteful for no good reason? Is she actually Larisa''s ex's relative? So many possibilities.

[minoanmiss]

Yeah, that was not a good look. I can understand having a moment of bitterness, but it is not a feeling that should be held onto and definitely not one that should be consulted in deciding this issue.

[sporky_rat]

I'm a bit torn between 'well, shit, she lied pretty massively re resume, is she trustworthy otherwise?' and 'fuck four year degree requirements'.

Honestly, I'd say leave it unless Larisa has shown signs of being an untrustworthy coworker.

[beable]

OMG I'm glad I'm not the only person here whose kinda leaning towards team "leave it alone". I thought I was really out there yesterday when I was reading all the AAM comments and discussion.

Much of the discussion on AAM centered around how lying about the college isn't that big a deal, it's lying about the 10 years of work experience and how it presumably isn't an entry level job if it requires that much experience. Large parts of the discussion centered on how if Larissa was coming in as an entry level person when it clearly wasn't entry level, then she might not really be doing all of the job, etc, etc.

But reading the actual letter again, LW says "Most of her duties are clerical and client outreach, not things which are too difficult to pick up on the job." - so it hardly sounds like the sort of job where it's necessary to already have tonnes of experience going in either!

I get one of the points Alison made in the comments that someone who did have the college degree and experience might not have gotten the job because Larissa did, but if we suppose that those requirements were poorly thought out to begin with, they might or might not have anyways.

I do also get where if there's a risk that Larissa could really screw something up with bad consequences (e.g. failing to fulfill a legal or taxation requirement or something) because of her inexperience that LW needs to say something, but otherwise I kinda feel that Alison and the AAM community were overly harsh on this one.

[eleanorjane]

I am 100% Team Not Your Business, Don't Rat Her Out.

There are plenty of ways to get transferable skills which are totally valid, but which a recruiter would not give a second look on an application. For example: I currently manage a team of 4-7 people (it fluctuates). I had zero leadership experience before this job. Everything I learned about people management, I learned from running a Warcraft raiding guild for ten years. Surprisingly good experience, that!

Can I put that on a resume? Can I, hell. Not in the modern corporate Capitalism Owns You environment. But that doesn't make it any less valid or applicable. Fortunately, I was never in the position of having to lie about it.

I also 100% do not buy that a person who lies on a job application is automatically really questionable, a la Alison's "if Larisa were willing to do that, it would raise really serious questions about her integrity and trustworthiness." If you cannot safely tell someone the truth, I don't think lying is a moral failing.

I usually really like AAM but I think Alison missed the mark by a mile.