Ever heard of the saying “too good to be true”? As an employer, an organization must have a healthy level of skepticism over candidate CVs because the saying has truth to it. A con man teacher, Paul Elliot, who had been lying on his CV for more than three decades, has been banned from teaching for life.
The case began when a private leading school in Yarm, UK, commissioned a private detective to investigate the outstanding CV of their religious studies teacher.
Detecting deception
The investigation was carried out by verifying all the claims he made on his CV, including authenticating the claimed credential documents. The results revealed several false claims that he made on his CV: lying about studying medicine at Oxford, playing professional rugby for renowned clubs, having been a visiting scholar at Cambridge, and working at a prestigious school.
The only document attesting to its authenticity was a certificate from the Farmington Institute, a constituent college of the University of Oxford. However, the document itself was not awarded by Oxford.
After being informed of a long list of shocking findings, the school brought this case to the Teaching Regulation Agency (“the TRA”).
In addition to inflicting financial loss, such fraud may harm a school’s reputation and lower the caliber of its graduates. In general, it could severely harm public confidence in this profession.
Verifying claims
What we can learn from the case is that a CV is a self-proclamation that needs to be inspected. To do so, employers must perform background checks on their candidates, which include verifying educational documents.
If fraudulent educational documents are detected, not only does the employer’s reputation suffer, but also the institution, whose name appears on the document. Therefore, apart from carrying out their functions genuinely and appropriately, educational institutions must also do more to safeguard their reputation by verifying their alumni diplomas.
These days, however, document verifications by telephone, email, and fax are often inefficient. A one-stop platform for verification is the answer to this problem. Through a one-stop verification platform such as www.education-verification.com, the document verification process will be more efficient in terms of time and resources.
In Education Verification, the verifier’s name is recorded in the system, which maintains accountability in the verification process. Moreover, the verification is carried out in a two-step process: verification by the academic staff and confirmation by a supervisor, which promotes a check-and-balance process. All results can be accounted for and are guaranteed to be accurate.
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Image by Drazen Zigic on Freepik
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