In 2007, a young lad named Adam Wheeler gained entry into the prestigious Harvard University through false pretences. Harvard is an Ivy League institution.
The Ivy League is an elite grouping of eight private learning institutions in the United States.
These institutions are famed for their academic excellence and stringent selection criteria. How then did the young student concoct his way past Harvard’s rigorous admission regime?
How did he succeed in fooling the selection team in its own backyard? Said one blogger: “Hey, if you can scam your way into Harvard, you deserve a degree!”
Wheeler lied about his academic history, claimed qualifications he did not have, alleged to have attended exclusive schools which he never did, used fraudulent transcripts and forged recommendation letters.
He was expelled from Harvard in 2009 after his shenanigans were exposed and was convicted in court for identity theft, fraud and forgery.
It was later to be uncovered that while at Harvard, he had also won awards for academic excellence borne out of plagiarising the works of others.
Digging deeper, it was established that Wheeler’s life was littered with a long pattern of lies and deceit spanning from his early school days.
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One woman who went to high school with Wheeler said of him, that he “. . . was always the prankster and jokester. He goofed around”.
The Adam Wheeler saga no doubt compromised the integrity of Harvard. The institution’s authorities were shaken out of their decades-old complacency and fell headlong off the proverbial Ivy tower. What are the implications for the workplace?
About two weeks ago, 2 300 graduands braved the blistering heat at the University of Zimbabwe Athletics Stadium to formally receive their bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees.
Many more have and will graduate from other universities, polytechnics and various institutions around the country and abroad. A new wave of college graduates has just hit the job market.
With Zimbabwe’s unemployment rate estimated to be around 90%, jockeying for the few jobs available will be so intense and every trick in the book will be employed to improve one’s chances of grabbing the scanty job opportunities.
The propensity to misrepresent one’s identity becomes a reality. Is this not opportune time to revisit the age-old topic of faked resumés and fictitious credentials?
Job seekers can mislead the unwary employers in so many ways. They may claim qualifications that do not exist, falsify CVs and academic certificates, provide false reference letters, exaggerate their skills and experience, claim awards that were never received, lie about reasons for leaving previous jobs, misrepresent their correct age, withhold information such as previous criminal convictions, trump up job titles and responsibilities, gloss over gaps in their employment history and a litany of other forms of deception.
A few years ago, we interviewed a middle-aged man who claimed to have won the worker-of-the-year award for two consecutive years at one of his previous employers. He even had certificates to prove it.
Unbeknown to this job seeker, one of the interview panellists had worked for the same organisation before his time and was still well-connected to people there.
A simple check confirmed that worker-of-the-year awards had long been discontinued at that company. The candidate had fudged his resume. Needless to say, he did not get the job.
There is nothing wrong with selling oneself when applying for a job. You can use flowery language, but if you lie on your CV or in an interview, prepare to be caught.
There are chances that you can even end up in jail, especially if the deception leads to potential or actual monetary prejudice to the employer.
Showing oneself in the best light is something we should all endeavour to do, but this can be achieved without being economical with the truth.
Embellishing your CV with fabricated qualifications or past achievements can come back to haunt you should your new employer decide to delve a little deeper. It can be your kiss of death.
What legal recourse is there for the employer who subsequently finds out that it has employed someone who deceived it prior to employment?
Employers generally have the right to full and accurate information about a prospective job applicant that is pertinent to the hiring decision. Misrepresentation can therefore result in dismissal if proven.
Courts have also viewed dishonesty in a serious light and have in most instances concluded that it results in a breakdown of the trust relationship between the parties in an employment relationship.
In the cases of Makina vs State (1983) and Kaziboni vs State (1984), the employees concerned presented to their employers qualifications belonging to other persons as their own.
When their chicanery was discovered, they were dismissed from their jobs and were also successfully charged with criminal fraud at the courts.
In the case of Charumbira vs State (case number SC119/85), the accused falsified his educational qualifications and secured a job with the National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ).
Though the Supreme Court decided that the misrepresentation did not result in actual prejudice to the employer, it upheld Charumbira’s conviction on the basis that his actions were potentially prejudicial to the employer.
In another NRZ case (Muzira vs NRZ), the employee failed to disclose to the company a fact they considered pertinent to their decision to employ him.
The fact only surfaced after he had completed his probationary period. On the basis of that non-disclosure, the court held that his dismissal was justifiable.
In Zhanje vs State (case number HH 5/86), the accused stole a blank report from his school headmaster and recorded false qualifications. The court fined him and slapped him with a suspended prison sentence.
If job seekers have perfected this art of duplicity, what should employers do to protect themselves? It all boils down to the credibility of the recruitment and selection process.
Those charged with recruitment must check all information that job applicants give them and not just accept it at face value. The hiring and placement process must be thorough and methodical. In medical parlance, they say prevention is better than cure.
In Zimbabwe, the use of polygraph or lie detector tests in the selection process is not widespread. In fact, wherever such testing has been used, it has been highly contentious and the admissibility of its results debatable.
Where it is suspected that an employee has secured a job through deception, proper investigations must be carried out. If the employee is found guilty, the employer must conduct hearings that are procedurally and substantively fair before dismissing the culprit, otherwise the courts may overturn such dismissal on simple, technical grounds.
A proper audit trail of the whole recruitment process needs to be maintained so that instances of dishonesty can later be proved.
Isaac Mazanhi is a labour analyst writing in his own capacity.
