CHAPTER 7.

CASE APPLICATION #2 Résumé Regrets

Would YOU lie on a resume to get a job you want? 70 percent of college students
said they would! Human resource (HR) managers say that 53 percent of resumes
and job applications contain falsification, and 21 percent of resume falsification
state a fraudulent degree. In this age of digital and social media, it’s hard to
imagine anyone falsifying their records, much less someone who’s in a company’s
top position as CEO.
After a thorough search, Scott Thompson was named as Yahoo!’s CEO in early
2012. Prior to his appointment at Yahoo!, Thompson was president of PayPal and
prior to that was PayPal’s chief technology officer. Thompson replaced Carol
Bartz, a well-known computer industry executive, who after two years on the job
had been unable to resolve Yahoo !'s troubles. In his first months on the job,
Thompson formulated a strategic plan for turning around the company, including
a massive layoff of employees. Then, the whole situation started to unravel.
In early May of 2012. an activist investor sent a letter to Yahoo !*s board of
directors expressing concern about an SEC regulatory filing signed by Thompson
“that stated to the best of his knowledge its contents were accurate.” That
document said that Thompson had earned a college degree in accounting and
computer science in 1979 from a small university south of Boston.
The activist investor said he had reason to believe that the degree was in
accounting only. And, come to find out, the university didn't have a computer
science program until the early 1980s and school officials confirmed that Mr.
Thompson received a bachelor’s of science degree in business administration. The
activist investor questioned if Thompson had embellished his academic
credentials and if the board had failed to exercise due “diligence and oversight in
one of its most important tasks—identifying and hiring Lhe Chief Executive
Officer.”
After all this came down, a person close to the company said that, “.” And at first,
that was the stance Yahoo!'s board took. However, the controversy continued to
grow'. In a meeting with senior Yahoo! officials, Thompson said he “regretted not
finding an error in his public biography.” He then suggested that maybe an
executive search firm might have inserted this information more than seven years
earlier. Yet, this blame game backfired. Some of his comments ended up on tech
blogs, which angered the search firm, which produced documents from Mr.
Thompson showing his inaccurate biography. As one person close to the situation
said. ‘The coverup became worse than the crime.”
Not long alter. Thompson ended up resigning his position. Aldiough the board did
not give him severance pay, he did get to keep $7 million of the cash and stock he
received when appointed to the position. Not a bad haul for only four months’
work.
(Epilogue: Thompson was replaced by Marissa Mayer, who we introduced in Case
Application #3 in Chapter 6.)
Discussion Questions
7-28 What does this story tell you about the importance of checking a job
applicant’s background?
7-29 Look at the statistics in the first paragraph of this story. Are you surprised by
them? Why or why not?
7-30 What can you learn from this story (a) personally and (b) professionally?