Verifying CV is accurate

HarryD

Recently we hired a guy who apparently had a relevant degree from a university in Israel.
The guy doesn't have basic knowledge of the subject, and I'm sure he could not have got through a degree course in it.
I suspect he was lying on his CV.
Is it possible to call the university to find out if he got a degree there ?
Do they give out that info ?
And verifying the Uni is a legit one ?
I dunno how this guy got through the interview, but that's another story.

TIA,
HD

road_high

Can you not ask HIM for prove of the degree himself?

AARRRGH

I've had a lot of problems with people faking their qualifications, experience and referees. Sure a friend of mine faked an entire degree and post grad qualification and is now a fund accountant!

Personally I would ask him to bring in a copy of his degree. He won't be able to do this of course...

_feedback_

Feckin' chancer ! !

As others said, don't bother doing it yourself ...

Maybe say something like, you are just completing his paperwork but realised you don't have a copy of his degree .. and ask him to bring it in.

Mrs OBumble

AARRRGH wrote: »

Personally I would ask him to bring in a copy of his degree. He won't be able to do this of course...

Depends on the "university" - he may well have the piece of paper, and have paid people to do assignments for him, and made strategic donations to help with the examination process.

I've worked with a guy with an MBA from a reputable New Zealand university who didn't know what a spreadsheet was, much less have the Excel skills that we expected as basic to doing the job.

Did you verify his references and credentials prior to hiring him? And that means not just looking at paper, but actually ringing up referres and asking innocent-sounding questions to work out whether he was where he claimed to have been? If not, then it serves you (or your manager!) right, you'd better get busy training him.

AARRRGH

JustMary wrote: »

Depends on the "university" - he may well have the piece of paper, and have paid people to do assignments for him

Unfortunately I know some people who have done this too.

OP: If the guy can't do his job, would you consider letting him go?

damnyanks

You should be able to ring up the University and ask. If they dont give it to you they will tell you what you need to get access.

Asking him to bring it in could involve him making a fake.

growler

if he's that clueless what difference will the degree make to his usefulness to you? Get rid.

the_syco

1) Get him to bring a copy of his cert in.

2) Ignore the phone numbers on the cert. They could be his mates numbers. If you do ring this number, ask is it another university, and ask did your employee do a different course. If you get two yes's, you're dealing with one of his mates. Example: he did a arts degree in Fun College. Ask did he do a accounting degree in Bell College. There are places that used to advertise such facilities in the US, a few years ago.

3) Google the college. Get the number from the college, and ring the college. Also compare for "type-o's" between the number, and the one on the cert.

4) Ask college to verify that he was in that college from X date to Y date doing Y subject.

daveirl

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eth0_

daveirl wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

You can't, actually. I found this out quite recently - In the UK and Ireland the employee will have to give permission for the university to give out their attendance details and grades to an employer. Data protection laws.

Eoin

It might also be a "diploma mill" university, like the one someone linked to a while ago here. They often have names that are quite similar to reputable colleges, but are just fakes. So a degree in itself may mean close to nothing.

However, HarryD - you say you don't know how this guy got through the interview. If you didn't interview him, is it up to you to check out the qualifications?

ButcherOfNog

eoin_s wrote: »

However, HarryD - you say you don't know how this guy got through the interview.

Two possibilities:
1. The interview process was poor.
2. It was a phone interview, and the candidate got someone experienced to do it rather than himself.

bbam

If its a recent hire, is he still on probation ??
As previously said... even if produces the paper he's still crap at the job.. thats the problem, thats what you should deal with...
Get rid, sooner the better..

Eoin

ButcherOfNog wrote: »

Two possibilities:
1. The interview process was poor.
2. It was a phone interview, and the candidate got someone experienced to do it rather than himself.

What I was getting at, is that if the OP wasn't responsible for the interview, then I wonder why he is responsible for checking up the references. If it is in an official capacity, then get the name of the University, and just google it. I'm sure a few minutes research will give you an idea of what the place is like, and how it is regarded. Then just ask for a copy of the degree, simple as that.

HarryD

Thanks for the replies guys.
I didn't do the interview but he was interviewed 4 times which is very unusual here.
Even that shudda rang alarm bells.
He's burdening my team at the moment, so I wanna check out his credentials.
He escaped the probation thing too, because he hadn't proved himself to be as incompetant as he is, but he was very borderline - another mistake by us.
I'd prefer to not have to go through the disciplinary procedure as it's hard to quantify things in my industry, but will probably end up doing it if he has somehow got a legit degree.
I'm gonna try take the calling college route first.

Cheers,
HD

Poco Loco

This might not work but could you say to him that you need his qualifications recognised by the relevant body here in Ireland? All degrees that are worth the paper they are written on should have an equivalent here in Ireland. I know from applying for work permits for medical staff here that the Dept of Enterprise Trade & Employment need any qualifications to be recognised by a body here in Ireland before they will accept the application - not sure what the profession of your guy is or if it's possible in his line of work but thought it might be an idea?

On a side note, had a guy start with our company a few years ago and he had a 2.2 degree from Athlone IT (we required everyone to have a 2.2 degree or higher) - he gave us a copy of the degree and also (REALLY stupidly!) gave one of his lecturers as a referee - the referee gave a glowing reference and was pleased to confirm that Mr. X obtained a PASS degree from the college - he had forged the degree! So even Irish people in Irish colleges can forge stuff!

SheroN

There is a girl who recently graduated a couple of years ago (apparently). I asked her one day in passing what college did she go to. She replied with "if you have a problem with my work just come straight out and say it". She doesn't understand basic computing ideas (e.g. she couldn't understand the difference between a server and the local machine, she had never heard of SQL) -even though she has an IT related degree.

As others have said, the best thing to do is to ask him for a copy of his CV.

I don't know why anyone protects people like this. It devalues my degree and my efforts in college when you have people getting pass degrees saying they got a 2.1 etc.

AARRRGH

SheroN wrote: »

I don't know why anyone protects people like this. It devalues my degree and my efforts in college when you have people getting pass degrees saying they got a 2.1 etc.

Yeah. There are people who:

1) Pretend they have a degree
2) Pretend they got a better grade
3) Pay others to do their college projects for them

All three can be stopped fairly easily. For example, 1 & 2 can be confirmed by asking to see the original degree (I'm aware some people might go to the trouble of faking an actual degree, but they're rare), and 3 can be stopped by the college.

I recently did a Masters in a private college and if I had to criticise the place it'd be that they have no interest in stopping cheaters (I know of two blatent cheaters who were caught but they were still given a good grade) or failing people who don't have a clue.

I think we're reaching a stage where having a degree is nearly worthless (due to the amount of cheaters and fakers).

kayos

SheroN wrote: »

doesn't understand basic computing ideas (e.g. she couldn't understand the difference between a server and the local machine, she had never heard of SQL) -even though she has an IT related degree.

I've seen people come out of Computer Science degrees not know where the home and end keys were or even what they did. Same goes for copy and paste via the keyboard. But they did have a valid degree.

I've also seen degree holder who did not deserve their degree, they failed to hand in their project on time told they would fail as a result, they got an extention (waterworks) and missed that. And another extention (more waterworks), this person actually tried to rope some of the programmers in the company to do the project for them!

I've seen a degree student from a IT course writing the most god awful code just to make sure a textbox would only accept an alpha..... I mean comparing the input per keypress to every letter of the alphabet in an if statement....to make it worse comparing the input to every letter in the alphabet in upper and lower case. This was VB, now fair enough coming out of college you might not know every possible function in the language but heavens sake isNumeric? Hell even a quick google...oh hold on google was not popular back then :P

So they have a degree. Who did they copy off? Who did they pay to do their projects? Its work exp and references from past employers that is the real way of figuring out what they are like.

AARRRGH

kayos wrote: »

I've also seen degree holder who did not deserve their degree, they failed to hand in their project on time told they would fail as a result, they got an extention (waterworks) and missed that. And another extention (more waterworks), this person actually tried to rope some of the programmers in the company to do the project for them!

I think I went to college with her

Yeah, it's unfair on the rest of the students who work hard. The concept of hard work and honesty is a rarity these days!

kayos

AARRRGH wrote: »

I think I went to college with her

Hmmm I would ask how you know its a her, it could have been a guy doing the waterworks.....

NUIG?

seamus

You'll find in college courses that there are certain people who manage to befriend those who can do the practical coursework and get it done for them (because no-one wants to tell a mate to feck off).

Unfortunately our leaving cert system is churning out more and more people who've developed the skills to study the material, study past papers, answer exams correctly (and with high marks) and yet are completely incapable of understanding the material, applying it in the real world, or remembering it for more than a week after they've completing the exam.

Once one of these people can find a mate to do the bulk of their assignments, they're sorted.

I still cannot figure out how *anyone* can get through a college course any more without understanding at least the basics of typing and formatting a word document.

HarryD

I gave this guy a simple task to do, at 10am one morning.
It would take anyone max 1 hr to do.
At 4pm that evening he had still not started because he was 'working on his aliases'
uugghhh..
He seems to be always spaced out.. no interest in the job..

mikewest

There is always the possibility thta this guy has a valid degree but is just
A. Useless
B. Incompetent
C. Has no interest
D. All of the above
Some people get through their qualifications without learning a damn thing and then they get a job and expect everyone else to pick up their slack as they know sod all. (they often get promoted into management where they can do less damage:pac:)

PeteK*

I'll do it

MIN2511

For him to have passed 4interviews and was offered a position suggest either he's a very very good liar or the people that interviewed him are incompetent.

Sometimes a degree isn't everything! Experience also counts, he could have a 1st class degree but be ****e at work.

I know a few people that are book smart and dumb when in real world...

My idea is to send him on a training course, it's too late to give him the sack as he has passed his probation(how the hell did he pass if he's that bad?)

daveirl

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Eoin

daveirl wrote: »

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That probably assumes that the person carrying out the check is authorised to do so, which I'm not sure about in this case.

Rosita

AARRRGH wrote: »

Personally I would ask him to bring in a copy of his degree. He won't be able to do this of course...

I imagine if he is in the business of trying to get jobs by way of invented qualifications, he might just have this particular base already covered.

Farls

AARRRGH wrote: »

I think I went to college with her

Yeah, it's unfair on the rest of the students who work hard. The concept of hard work and honesty is a rarity these days!

I also done a degree with similar, we called them tit degree's at the time, think about it. They then got work in the same company I worked for at the time and used low cut tops to get where they needed there also. Disgrace.

:mad:

kayos

Farls wrote: »

I also done a degree with similar, we called them tit degree's at the time, think about it. They then got work in the same company I worked for at the time and used low cut tops to get where they needed there also. Disgrace.

:mad:

To back that up and this is a true but very un PC story.... same girl walked into a meeting one day to give something to one of the bosses, no problems there. She left the meeting and one of the directors said the following

"As you can see we have just hired some fine ass-ets"

Lovely girl and all that but could not do the job she was hired and paid to do. She still got more chances than any one else in their and took full advantage of her assets so to speak.

By the way I am an equal opportunity bitcher about peoples work. I don’t care if they are male, female some where in-between or related to the boss.

the_syco

OP: the 4 interviews thing made me think: look at their surname, and compare to the bosses. Four interviews screams to me that someone wanted them to be hired, but it took four to get them in. Because of this, I urge you to thread carefully, as the boss who got them hired may want them under their thumb.