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> I don't know how they found out? Is that public information?

When I graduated college (UC Berkeley, very large public school in California) I had to go to the registrar to pick up my diploma since I graduated off cycle. In line in front of me was a guy who seemed to know the lady at the window well, and put down a piece of paper and said "got another list to check". The lady went into the back, so I asked the guy what he was doing.

He told me he worked for a background check company and was there about once a month with a list of names to verify graduation dates. He told me a lot of his work comes from government and big companies. He then suggested that if I was going to lie about graduating, make sure it was to a small company that can't afford background checks!

He also told me that almost every month there is at least one person who fails to have the degree they claim to have.

This is done via parchment.com these days, they send you a nice e-diploma whose signature can be verified in Acrobat Reader or on their site directly.

Dunno how long ago that was, but these days universities tell you that they're prohibited by law to disclose such information. In the US the applicable law is FERPA-- which was passed in 1974-- but there are similar rules in other countries. You might well have been witnessing a violation, it certainly happens.

The general difficulty in checking such things is part of why that form of fraud is so ubiquitous.

FERPA - https://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html

>Schools may disclose, without consent, "directory" information such as a student's name, address, telephone number, date and place of birth, honors and awards, and dates of attendance. However, schools must tell parents and eligible students about directory information and allow parents and eligible students a reasonable amount of time to request that the school not disclose directory information about them.

I'm aware as I've argued it with a number of institutions. In my experience most do not and will not, and instead demand that that they receive consent specifically from the "student"... even for parties that were never students there and by the letter of the law ought be afforded no protection.

FERPA doesn’t apply when the person has a signed agreement to allow disclosure. Same way you can request that one college send your grades to another (for grad school apps for example).

Doing a background check is the same thing. It’s authorized by the student.

Have you ever filled out a form for your university to authorize one?

No, the background check authorization includes the form that authorizes the school to disclose your transcript.

I had an employee who lied about a diploma in ~2015. It was pretty bold, he even included a student ID number. Eventually we just called the school's registrar's office and asked if we could verify a diploma. They asked for the name and then told us they had no record of a student by that name. I asked if they could tell us if the student ID number was realistic and was told that it wasn't even close to what their ID numbers looked like.

So it looks like your mileage may vary.

IIRC, providing false information about a diploma in California is a felony.

For my current job I had to get proof of my degree, institution and grade.

Thos was for a degree between 1999 and 2003.

They wanted info down to the month I started... I had no idea so just guessed a month in 1999... They got back to me to check what was up as they had determined I actually started in some other month...

They even wanted proof of what High school I went to.

Some companies are super thorough!

Sounds like a liability to tell the previous company. I know it can happen and not even rare, but why even open that liability up

If they are competitor companies they just got someone fired to cause internal conflict. I assume Company 2 acts greedily and not through goodwill

>I don't know how they found out? Is that public information?

Verifying degree is extremely easy in most cases - the background check company will just call the registrar. It's probably done through an API nowadays.

>To me the answer is simple: you don't want a relationship (personal or with an employer/employee) based on a lie to begin with.

Personally, if I found out and they could actually do the work, I would let it pass. I'd consider it a white lie in that case.

I think it's more of a harm to society to use degrees as requirements when they aren't actually required. This too is lying, but you won't see companies facing penalties for putting a degree requirement when one isn't necessary for the job.

If you're looking at it from just a qualifications standpoint, then you're right. However, there's more to a person than their qualifications and skills. Judgment and character matter too.

If someone were to lie to my face and waited until I caught them before owning up to it, then giving them a pass tells the world that I'm A-OK with deceit as long as they deliver results.

It does say a lot about your judgement if you value a piece of paper more than 10 years of someone's work in the industry

...the poster values not being lied to their face. 10 years of work to check back on because someone was deceitful enough to lie to your face is a hell of a blast crater, and I'm not taking responsibility for having a flat out liar running rampant in my codebase.

If you don't have a degree, don't claim it. If you can still walk the walk, you've still got a chance. If you fail basic due diligence, you're telegraphing your integrity is in question.

No one can afford that.

> 10 years of work to check back on because someone was deceitful enough to lie to your face is a hell of a blast crater, and I'm not taking responsibility for having a flat out liar running rampant in my codebase.

Let's be honest, I don't think you would ever actually do that in real life ;)

> Some are going to ask: "If he was good at his job, why fire him?"

I would propose a slightly more cynical model:

It might not look good if it goes public

A bit more cynical:

People with college degrees act as a group. By enforcing the educational cartel they prevent poorer upstarts from competing with them.

Maybe penalizing people for lying on their resumes is a good idea.

Maybe trying to really judge how people will do in a job based on a resume is altogether a seemingly bad idea too

That's what the interview process is for, theoretically. Possibly you have no idea what it's like being on the hiring side, having to work with oftentimes apathetic recruiters who are in charge of the hiring funnel, candidates who claim knowledge but don't have it, or even worse are cheating. The worst is hiring the wrong person as a year can go down the tube. Meanwhile my leadership chain wants me to hire fast. My time is finite, and I've got a lot of pressure on me. I do give people the benefit of the doubt. I don't care what school you have been to if you have the right skills and work experience, but I'd be lost without resumes to narrow the field.

If word gets out that this company doesn’t check backgrounds, then this company will be inundated with fraudsters.

So they fired someone for lying, despite 10 years of work history.

Seems like there's more to that then just not having the degree.

Your college degree is not correlative to your ability to actually do a job. He probably did a lot more than just that.

Or high-level jobs have no accountability for actually being good at something.

What comes before the "high level job"...

What you said and what I said can still both be true.