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Fake job reference service

careerexcuse.com

134 pointsfnazeeri62 comments

There's an interesting spin on this in Brooklyn's Russian immigrant community: there are companies that will give you fake references--and a crash course in the job you're supposed to have done.

Apparently they do a pretty good job. Since immigrants from the former USSR are usually pretty smart, skilled, and hard-working, they can be very rigorous and not lose students. An acquaintance did this many years ago: she learned SQL Server, and got references for a couple years of SQL Server experience, and now works at a Fortune 500 company.

From a strict career perspective, this feels like it could be more valuable than college.

Could be?

It's basically a way to hack the college > HR interface.

It's basically fraud.

At least with that method the candidate has some skills. I've seen CVs that are out-and-out lies in terms of what the candidate can do. And at least one faked reference, but we caught that as the candidate seemed good for the positions but had an air of "something not quite right" so we looked deeper.

And college is not? I believe that 'experience' is probably more valuable, even a few weeks', than 4 years of theory.

Is it? If traditional college guaranteed excellent this would be fraud. Think of money vs. fake money.

But both college and experience are no guarantee of anything. They are more like a faint hope. Hopefully someone with this resume will be as good as the resume suggests they might be!

Now on the other, if this hard crash course + hard working intelligent people results in true valuable skills, then is it fraud? Isn't who ever hires them getting exactly what they hoped they would get? It's like someone slips you Australian dollars instead of US dollars, but enough of them that even after exchange fees you're left with exactly the amount of money you wanted.

Many immigrants don't get their past experience working and educating in russia or wherever they came from recognized even though they have the skills so something like this to cut through the HR idiocy screen is useful.

In economics, this is called the signalling effect. And you're somewhat correct. The pure signalling/screening effect of college can probably be attributed to 50% of a person's wages wages over high school graduates.

True story, +1. A fake diploma from the best Moscow University printed in Brooklyn? Нет проблем!

I think this is a side effect of employers who worry more about credentials than talent.

Exactly. I'm almost uncomfortable thinking about how many of these things turn into really embarrassing live interviews.

"So, Ms. Jones, I've never heard of the Acme, Inc., perhaps you can tell me more about it?"

"Just call the toll-free number to talk to my supervisor!"

"I'd rather have you tell me about the company, what it does and the specifics of your role there."

"I'll be leaving now."

This doesn't help unless there is some kind of black list of applicants that companies can share and check for references. It would have notes like "Candidate X seems to have faked his references...". Otherwise, besides losing that particular job position, the candidate would just move on to the next one where they will be less rigorous about asking such questions.

But then of course, if the candidate actually knows their stuff, what does it matter if they could find someone to provide a fluffy reference? Most people can find such a reference. Why not just test the candidate, talk to them, take them to lunch, look at the portfolio of work, do a debug session, a white-board session with them and see what happens?

"They are a stealth-mode startup"

This is depressing, but I've personally worked with at least two VP level (200K+ salary roles, heavy hitters) individuals with diploma mill degrees. Noticed one on linkedin after he was dismissed for other reasons - the college sounded unfamilar, did a quick search on google and... Well, Well, What do we have here...

The other cute little "education" scam I've seen is the Ivy League executive education courses - you will see some senior line managers out there claiming post-undergrad experience at Harvard, Wharton, and U Chicago. These are frequently 1 - 3 week "exec ed" programs which they then spin as "mini-MBA" or (ratcheting up the deception level) either business degrees/programs or an "executive MBA".

The resume process is inherantly broken - many resumes are outright lies, many are poorly written, the balance of the candidates are often interchangable within certain broad sets of skills. Look at the flow of talent within existing leadership teams at major companies - IT PM's <-> IT Ops, Developers frequently learn new platforms, many folks moving between technology and near-business roles (such as process improvement and process management roles)... The external recruiting process is sufficiently broken that we can't do this with external candidates.

We're in the fall back world - most senior level hiring at my current employer (large company) occurs through either: - Personal Relationships (referral from a "made man") - "Feeder Companies" (a big 5 consulting firm)

Suspect you can't use the fake referral unless you're either very junior (lots of institutional scruity but very little personal checking by the hiring manager) or trying to get into a space where they are sufficiently desparate for talent that they don't have time/interest for a deep check..

Very believable as a tactic to get around the practice of only hiring already-employed candidates, mentioned here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020387240457425...

I think I'd rather go with claiming I just got off a contract for a defense contractor, and an NDA prevents me disclosing who it was or what I worked on, other than to say that it involved the same skills that are listed on my resume for my last non-secret employer.

That seems safer.

And totally believable... not.

Doesn't have to be a defense contractor. I've signed a contract that basically did not allow me to disclose what or who I was working for to create a software product for a small tv production company. (It fell through)

Same here. I have done work for a number of large companies in software, healthcare, banking, etc. which I can't talk about. It leaves a grey hole in my portfolio.

If you use this service you forfeit most of your legal rights as an employee.

In general, if you lie on your resume, you cannot later sue your employer claiming you were wronged. For example, if you were terminated for cause from a prior position and fail to disclose it you lose your right to sue your employer. This is called the "after-acquired evidence" theory or doctrine.

A few other examples that constitute lying:

Not putting a former employer on a resume

Making false statements about education, experience or holding professional licenses

Concealing or failing to reveal a former felony conviction, and

Making up a college degree during an interview.

EDIT: Someone asked for a source. Here are two:

http://employment.findlaw.com/employment/employment-employee...

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disparate_treatment#After-Acqui...

Many more available from Google:

http://tinyurl.com/4972e2m

Extract from the Disparate treatment entry on wikipedia:

If an employer takes an adverse employment action against an employee for a discriminatory reason and later discovers a legitimate reason which it can prove would have led it to take the same action, the employer is still liable for the discrimination, but the relief that the employee can recover may be limited. McKennon v. Nashville Banner Publishing Co., 513 U.S. 352 (1995). In general, the employee is not entitled to reinstatement or front pay, and the back pay liability period is limited to the time between the occurrence of the discriminatory act and the date the misconduct justifying the job action is discovered. McKennon, 513 U.S. at 361-62.

Do you have a source on that? I'm not a lawyer, but some of that sounds at odds with other case law I've seen.

It sounds particularly ludicrous to suggest that omitting a former employer from a resume is grounds for losing legal standing for some types of claims. For example, I worked at Radio Shack and The Princeton Review in high school, and don't list those on my resume since they aren't particularly relevant to the sort of work I do now.

Sure:

Bryan E. Kuhn, Counselor at Law. P.C, Denver, Colorado.

http://employment.findlaw.com/employment/employment-employee...

Yeah but we're talking about purposely providing false information. No one cares that you leave off irrelvant work history.

Financial firms do. Or defense contractors or others who require a 10 year background check.

I have to list all my former employers? That is absurd.

If I were a catbert style hr guy, I think I might start purposely seeking out this type of candidate. If everyone I hired had this type of background, firing would be easy when necessary.

There seems to be enough people willing to fudge this kind of thing that I'm sure I could dig up some adequate employees who had this weekness.

A few other examples that constitute lying: Not putting a former employer on a resume

So I'm lying on my resume if I skip college/pre college work? I guess my resume is about to be filled up with a bunch of irrelevant crap: tech support rep before college, tutoring center guy, grader, lab assistant, tutor at a different tutoring center...

What if you don't want to include a reference from a former employer because (a) they fired you; (b) they'd subjected you to psychological harassment, bullying and an attempted rape before getting to the firing part, leading to the employee having to spend three days in the hospital and I still haven't recovered fully even seven years later?

"Landing a job is 70% presentation and 30% actual skills and abilities. In fact, the candidate who gets the job is not always the most qualified; rather, the candidate with the best presentation will get hired."

So true...

That said, though, having the skills needed to present yourself in the best possible light is a good life skill to have. You might not want to work in a place where this is necessary to get hired, but it is always a good thing to be able to make a good impression when you have to.

I've always felt that applying for a job is just like dating. You have to make a perfect initial impression, followed by actually delivering the goods when you've got the foot in the door.

In dating the further 'making an impression' is from my mind the better it goes. I think this is true of most encounters. Trying to be perfect will just make you tense. Relax and be yourself. No one's expecting perfect. The less you try to sell yourself the better you come across.

Yeah, if you look like you sell yourself, you'll just appear desperate. You can still put an effort into making a good impression, though. But I agree that it's better when it comes naturally.

The "funeral excuse" section of the website has a logo for "Fisher & Sons Funeral Home" that's appropriated directly from the HBO show Six Feet Under.

Well I suppose it would be unreasonable to expect a company that peddles in faked credentials to create their own logo.

I've always thought of a reference chack as a way to make sure someone has at least two friends that are willing to say nice things about them.

Still, if you come to hire, always follow up the references. Always.

If they lie about anything on their resume my company walks away. The last guy I interviewed we talked for my alloted time and it was clear he wasn't quite up to par but I wanted to know how much he knew. The next guy after me sent him home within minutes because there were flat out lies on his resume.

One may not imply the other (lies !== bad employee) but it's a red flag.

However some people apparently manage to work at jobs for years without making any friends. This is a useful piece of information to know before hiring them.

It's really not too unbelievable. Unethical, on the other hand...

I have also seen people use such a service for University admissions. Said individuals got into very prestigious places aided by this too.

(posted anonymously)

I don't find this unbelievable or even shocking because I've heard of these:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diploma_mill

I'd find it shocking if someone I trusted used a fake reference service or a diploma mill, but it's not at all shocking that these exist.

However did they actually know their stuff or did they fake that too? If the person is 100% proficient and knows the domain well, I don't see why the diploma is even that necessary.

Don't get me wrong, we all bought into the "education is vital for survival" and I worked hard in college for that summa cum laude honors, but in the end it is probably open source work, code samples and my behavior during the interview that got me the job.

And in some cases even pets have been granted diplomas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colby_Nolan

Been going on for years, sometimes referred to as reference agencies. This looks like a pretty poor example IMO.

Oh! I thought it was a sarcastic joke site ;-)

Do they write the resume too and provide interview coaching? One time I had a manager at a major financial institution offer to hire me, and told me he would make sure I got a good performance reviews. However, he wanted a kickback of like 5% of my salary. Something like this will just help get past a pesky HR department.

I've thought of doing something like this for years, you could do job references, former landlords for rent, etc... the list goes on and on. I just couldn't bring myself to build it because of that tiny thing with not being ethical.

There's money to be made in this, so someone will build it eventually. And if it works, what does this tell us about the hiring process? We can argue that fake references are unethical, of course, but I think that this lets us know that the system that allows them to succeed is fundamentally broken.

LinkedIn and the social graph in general will really help employers avoid these scams. Every reference I've done is with someone who I have significant connection with between the different graphs of LinkedIn, Twitter, and others.

Of course, this is the NYC tech community so doesn't apply to 99% of hires that happen... yet.

Would you sometimes prefer an incompetent candidate who went to the lengths of using CareerExcuse to a maybe competent one? At least you know exactly what you're getting.

There's an interview with the founder of the site at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJhV23vs8uo

Maybe I'm reading this all wrong from their user's perspective, but has to be depressing to get a job based on such falseness.

I'm someone who works off the confidence from previous experience and having to stoop to this would affect my performance.

It's probably best to just ignore references unless they are negative (or come from someone you trust).

I like how the example company for consultants is consistently misspelled. (Distibution...)

Well the real life references aren't 100% beivable either. I have been asked more than once by my colleagues to speak refer them regarding the work that they have not done. Or role that they have never played and this is not just for the referrals but for public sites such as linkedin.

The Philosophy that I always recommend s hire slow fire fast. You take time interviewng the person, probing them if you feel something sounds fishy. Give them a chance to prove themselves and if it doesnt work out don't hesitate to fire in the first year. A few months is a good time to understand how a person works and what their calibre is.

I know here in Ontario that you're on probation for the first 3 months and your employer doesn't need to justify a reason to dismiss you. So I really don't think a 'reference mill' or a 'diploma mill' would even be capable of working here as you can hire anyone who sounds good and if they turn out to be crappy, you can just fire them.

I don't really see this as being useful unless you're already talented. IE my brother is a great programmer and has been asked to speak at conferences, but because he never got a degree he has no hope at certain companies, which IMO is absolutely moronic.

Their second product could be extortion of their first product's customers. Synergy!

I'd rather just continue working with something I enjoy and use 'fakecareer.com' instead :-)

This is about 5 days early.

<title>CareerExcuse,com</title>

I am assuming that semicolon instead of a dot is a typo.

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