I hate to let the cat out of the bag, but not many people realize that there are large numbers of people sitting in high paying jobs without the formal training and education their “papers” say that they have. How do I know this? I worked in the Human Resources Department of a large corporation for over 15 years. During that time, I reviewed thousands of applications and resumes and my bosses hired hundreds. Do you know how many documents that they went back to verify as real and correct? Zero – yes the big fat goose egg. Executives think it is below them to do the grunt work of verifying credentials. So what do they do? They pass it down the ladder to get done.
Speaking as one of those grunt employees at the end of the ladder, I can tell you that less than 10% of all applicants have their credentials checked out and verified. Why you ask? It is because so much work is dumped on us grunts that we never get the time to do the checking. It takes mailing out paperwork to schools or calling them on the phone. When you have been given 50 priorities to get done in a day, something has to give. There is just no way to get everything done. I can tell you from experience that verifying credentials rarely makes it far enough up the list to get done. Chances are good that they will never be checked. I know that if I didn’t do it, then no one else did either.