Recently the Wall Street Journal ran a story about the increasing use of background checks for university applicants. It seems that resume inflation begins early these days. Applications to college are at record highs, and some candidates will do anything to stand out. According to the Josephson Institute of Ethics, 28% of high-schoolers stole from a store last year, and 60% cheated. (Even more disturbing, 92% of the respondents were satisfied with their personal ethics.) Padding your list of extracurriculars seems like small potatoes after that.
As a result, the academic system has begun to fight back. They are beginning to use spot checks, or in some cases verifying all accepted students. In a reflection of this interest, Kroll Security Group has launched a division dedicated solely to academic verifications. At SentryLink we have an increasing number of schools who rely on us for a criminal background check. Of course, this is all good news for the background screening industry. As the article notes, the National Association of Professional Background Screeners has seen its membership explode over recent years, with the number of active firms going from about 30 to over 400.
If this student behavior is a predictor of how future job candidates will act — and it probably is — our industry is going to be increasingly important.
It is an interesting development. It ties in with something some people have been noticing about the post-honeymoon media investigation of Harvard Law grad Obama…the Chicago Tribune and others have been digging through details of his 1995 autobiography “Dreams of My Father” and finding that not all of it seems to be, um, totally accurate. Stands to reason though: overworked Harvard officials haven’t usually fact-checked student admission essays, but reporters can be expected to.
And Obama’s story is what everyone who has gone to a top-flight law school can recognize as having started life as an application essay: it’s called The Rap. Required elements of The Rap include teen angst, a commitment to bettering the world, selfless good deeds, and, critically, some sort of real world conflict that gives them some unique perspective on the human condition that makes them “diverse”. But not too conflicted, mind you, since a felony conviction will keep you from even taking the bar in most states.
Until now, no one in admissions offices ever calls BS on any applicant’s Rap since no one ever had the time, energy or enthusiasm–bravo for the screening industry for starting to change that.
[…] week ago we posted about the increasing use of background checks for college students. Most of the usage there has been focussed on catching exaggerations that applicants use to get […]