How to Write A Resume Cover Letter Blog

You may have recently heard that two very high profile executives have been busted for lying on their resumes. There are a few lessons to be learned from this

that can help you in your job search. Before we jump into that let’s first go over the details of what happened.

“Broadcom Senior Vice President Vahid Manian said on his corporate bio he had a B.S.E.E. and an M.B.A. from UC Irvine, but it turns out he never even finished his bachelor’s, “writes the Silicon Alley Insider. There was also the report from Bloomberg news that stated, MGM Mirage, the casino company majority-owned by billionaire Kirk Kerkorian, said Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Terry Lanni will retire this month, as questions about his post-graduate education surfaced.” It turns out that Lanni claimed to have an MBA from USC though he never attended that university.

Did I mention that Broadcom SVP Manian was making over $3 Million per year!?! And without so much as a bachelor’s degree. And what about Lanni? He had a base salary of $2 million in 2007, but received total compensation of $12.7 million, which included incentives and perks.

So within the span of the last two months we’ve got two very high level executives that got outed about fake degrees on their resumes, but both have been described as being very competent at their jobs.

Both these guys took a calculated risk and decided to lie and for all practical purposes it paid off. They’re not going to do jail time and they get to keep all of those millions in cash. Now the question to ask yourself is: What level of achievement, and compensation would they have been able to achieve had they NOT lied about their college degrees?

I am a Mortgage Loan Officer (with 13 years total in the business) in an area located in South Carolina that has been hurt by this mortgage crisis along with the rest of the country. There is still production here and this area is not as bad as other locations in the U.S.

I am currently in the hiring process with a mortgage company that is doing very well compared to the other companies. Most Loan Officers are seeking employment with companies that have high standards that want to see a Loan Officers’ production numbers for the previous year.

I am scheduled to have an interview at their Headquarters and the first thing they will ask for is my production numbers for 2007.

Do you have a way to produce numbers that they will not go out and investigate? I am short $1.8 Million of the goal. I can give them an email provided to me by my employer (who I was with for 3 years). I can fudge the numbers a little to make up the difference yet I do not want to be caught in outright dishonesty.

I really need this job with this company. They are progressive and promise to make a good loan officer better. I absolutely need to produce the minimum.

What in your opinion is the best way to handle this? I can give them the email with fudged numbers and they will be happy. If, however, they decide to check on these numbers, I am in a pickle.

How do you think I should handle this. My resume’ is stellar and I have a good reputation. I am just paranoid that if they call my ex-employer to verify the numbers then the dishonesty will kill the deal.

Signed,

Scared in South Carolina

Dear Scared

The rule of thumb here is to never lie about anything that can easily be verified or confirmed. If you can get away with fudging your numbers a bit do so. But more importantly is exaggerating things that they can’t verify. For example you can mention how you use guerilla methods of obtaining your own leads. Tell them you do a lot of targeted networking, that you speak at a Toastmasters group, that you have a Myspace or Facebook page dedicated to lead generation, etc. By showing your prospective employer that you’re proactive and actually go out and generate your OWN business as opposed to many who sit around the office hoping that the company’s marketing department (assuming that they even have one) will create a campaign that will get the phone ringing.

Your goal is to show that you’re resourceful, entrepreneurial and proactive as well as being a good mortgage loan office that can close loans.

If you over exaggerate your numbers you might bring a closer investigation of the validity of your numbers. Since South Carolina is also hurting from the credit meltdown, you’re better off saying that you were one of the top mortgage loan officers in your company. That fact will be more difficult to check out

If your $1.8M shortfall is of paramount importance and you feel it will come up, then you can say that you did bring in well over the $1.8M in loans but your processor or underwriting team couldn’t or wouldn’t approve the loan. This helps deflect the blame and says, “Hey I can bring in the loans, if you can close them.”

Let me know if you have any questions, and please let me know when you get hired.

Good luck!