[Formal education] weeds out people who are too independent, and who think for themselves, and who don’t know how to be submissive, and so on – because they’re dysfunctional to the institutions.
– Noam Chomsky
While Background Proof encourages interviewers to embrace their self-interest by lying, we have not necessarily found that falsifying your education is worth the cost / benefit. The issue is that it is more difficult to cover-up your education (and easy to disprove), and the fact that the reward is worth the difficulty.
Over the past decade, companies have been moving away from strict degree requirements and focusing more on skills. Skills-based hiring has especially gained momentum for middle-skill jobs, and employers are increasingly valuing relevant skills, experience, and practical knowledge over degrees. Some prominent examples are Dell, Accenture, and IBM – all of which have publicly announced they are no longer considering education in lieu of skills.
Difficulty in Lying about your Education
It’s really difficult to mislead education in a background check. All a checker needs to do is to contact the educational institutions listed on the candidate’s resume or application to confirm the dates of attendance, degrees earned, majors or fields of study, and any honors received. This is usually done by contacting the registrar’s office or a designated department within the institution.
The background check may also verify the legitimacy of the degree or certificate claimed by the candidate. This might involve checking with accreditation agencies or using online databases maintained by universities.
There are some background checks that will skip the education verification itself. While that might sound like an opportunity to lie, what it really signals is that the employer does not care about education. In which case, why even take on the risk of potentially getting caught in a lie, over something that will not make a large difference in your candidacy.
Recommended read: Executives that Lied to Become CEOs
Options to Improve your Education Section
If you do feel vulnerable regarding your education, we advise signing up for credentialed training programs or classes through sites such as Coursera (BackgroundProof does not endorse any specific service).
Coursera (and similar platforms) are an online learning platform that offers a wide range of courses, specializations, and even degree programs from universities and institutions around the world. The key part of this is that your classwork (and certification) will typically be done through a prestigious university (e.g. Harvard, John Hopkins, MIT, etc.) and often a careless resume screener will simply see the university name, and pass you to the interview stage. If the coursework was through, say, Harvard Online, we do not recommend lying in the interview about actually having attended Harvard; instead, just acknowledge it was coursework, and then change the subject.
Look for programs that offer LinkedIn badges, as this will increase your rankings when recruiters run a candidate search.
Discussing Education in an Interview
If you find yourself in an interview, and feel you are short in terms of educational expectations, there are a few ways to talk around this in the interview.
Emphasize Relevant Experience: Spend time highlighting any relevant work experience, internships, etc. that demonstrates your skills and knowledge – at the equivalent level of candidates that have the expected education. Practical experience can often be just as valuable, if not more so, than formal education.
Showcase Transferable Skills: Focus on the skills you have developed that are transferable to the job you are applying for. These can include problem-solving, communication, teamwork, leadership, and other soft skills, which in a lot of cases people with higher education will not have. This often won’t help at the screening level, but can be far more effective when talking to your direct manager.
Highlight Continuous Learning: Discuss any additional training, certifications, online courses, workshops, or other forms of continuing education you have pursued to enhance your knowledge and skills in the field. Showing a willingness to overcome any gap in knowledge can be key, especially if the recruiter is having difficulty in finding the “perfect candidate”.
While it is difficult to lie about your education, there are valid reasons to lie on your previous employment. If you are concerned about an employment gap on your resume, see our advice on how to best lie – and why.