High school principals downfall shows lying on a resume wrecks your career

High school principals downfall shows lying on a resume wrecks your careerHigh school principals downfall shows lying on a resume wrecks your careerOne high school principal wouldve gotten away with lying about zu sich credentials if hadnt been for some meddling kids.On March 31, student journalists in southeast Kansas publisheda blockbuster expos on their recently hired principal, Amy Robertson. Days later, Robertson resigned.Heres how it all went down student journalists at the Booster Redux interview new members of the school as part of their welcome, and in interviews with Robertson that they discovered inconsistencies in Robertsons credentials.The case of the missing degreesRobertson said she got her masters and doctorate degrees at Corllins University,but when the students looked up the school, its website didnt work.Working through spring break, the students found out that Corllins University welches a diploma mill that was not accredited by the U.S. Department of Education.Pu tting Robertsons name through a search engine, the student journalists found that she had been called out for this before as principal of the Dubai American Scientific School, local papers had said she was not authorizedto serve as principal.After the students published their takedown, faculty held an emergency meeting where Robertson couldnt even produce the transcript to her undergraduate school, the University of Tulsa.Eventually people will ask questionsStudents asked the questions the adults did not. The school district spokesman Zach Fletcher had said earlier that month that, Robertson comes to Pittsburgh with decades of experience in education.Although this is embarrassing to the local board in the short-term, in the long-term, the teenaged journalists saved their community time and money.According to The Kansas City Star, Robertson, with no educational background that could be confirmed, was due to make $93,000 a year.Your past will catch up with youYou can talk aboutyour pa st experiences and responsibilities in their most flattering light, but when it comes to skills, you better be able to back it up.If you say you can manage a school, you better be able to manage a school. Robertson may have been able to get away with her liesfor decades, but the truth eventually came out with some phone calls and cross-references.This is one more cautionary tale against lying on yourrsum. Interviewers can figure out lies by calling up past references and employers. Or if it doesnt come out in the interview process, it will when youre unable to do the job you said you could do.And thebigger the stage, the more scrutiny those exaggerations and white lies will get. George OLeary served asGeorgia Techs football coach for two uninterrupted decades, but when he got a higher-profile job, so came the questions. OLeary only lasted as Notre Dameshead football coach for five days after a newspaper figured out he had lied about playing football in college and had never gotten t he masters degree he claimed to have.Surprisingly, people who lie on their resumes can go pretty far, showing they do have basic competence to do the job even when they lie about how they got it. High-ranking executives at Yahoo, Veritas and Lotus have all been canned for lying about qualifications and degrees.What gets them canned is not their performance, but the dishonesty they perpetuated for years - and even strong relationships and strong performance dont protect them.