CASE STUDY DUE ASAP

Case Study Analysis-CLA-Course Outcome 2 Read the BUSINESSWEEK CASE: EXECUTIVES: MAKING IT BY FAKING IT at the bottom. Answer the three questions at the end of the case in a 2 page paper. Follow the project guidelines Complete a 2 page paper not including the title page and reference page. 3.Answer each question thoroughly. 4.Demonstrate your understanding of the information presented in the weekly reading assignments by defining terms, explaining concepts, and providing detailed examples to illustrate your points. 5.Include at least two references from your reading assignments or other academic source to reinforce and support your own thoughts, ideas, and statements. Executives: Making It by Faking It At least once or twice a year, businesspeople the world over are reminded of the high cost of a little exaggeration, a material omission, or an outright lie on a résumé and how a tangled web concerning one’s background can lead to career catastrophe. Consider the case of the MIT dean whose career track was halted when her employer realized that she hadn’t graduated from a single one of the three institutions from which she had claimed to have earned degrees. Or any one of a string of business executives who learned the hard way 174 PART 2 Acquiring and Preparing Human Resources that faking their way is no way of making their way into executive management. Just ask headhunter Jude Werra. The president of Brookfield, Wisconsin–based Jude M. Werra & Associates has spent the better part of 25 years documenting executive résumé fraud, credentials inflation, and the misrepresentation of executive educational credentials. It’s something that has kept Werra pretty busy over the years, given the prevalence of such management-level chicanery and the fact that so many ambitious and transition-minded individuals have convinced themselves that it’s their credentials—real or otherwise—that matter most. Werra’s semiannual barometer of executive résumé deception hit a five-year high, based on his review of résumés he received during the first half of 2007. He figures that about 16 percent of executive résumés contain false academic claims and/or material omissions relating to educational experience. And when you account for the fudging of claims of experience unrelated to academic degrees earned, it’s easy to see why executive headhunters generally acknowledge that as many as one-third of management-level résumés contain errors, exaggerations, material omissions, and/or blatant falsehoods. Some people will stop at almost nothing to get to where they want in their career. Still, Werra wonders why otherwise experienced executives would inflate their credentials or otherwise mislead with their résumé, in light of the potential career-ending consequences. Given the alarming levels to which they do attempt to mislead, he constantly reminds hiring organizations that it’s critical that they verify what they read on résumés, even at the executive level. What’s even more alarming—and more prevalent than people falsifying their backgrounds and qualifications—is the number of hiring organizations that fail to conduct a rigorous background check on their new management recruits. Far too many organizations figure that checking a few references is enough. And even the most thorough reference checks won’t uncover false claims that predate those references’ own professional interactions with the individual executive. It’s quite possible that a fabrication of one’s education, certifications, and experience is what got the executive his first management job many years ago, leaving the trail cold unless it’s reopened during the course of a diligent background check. When it comes to executive-level hiring that’s going to cost the organization into the high six figures, at minimum, when you factor in headhunting fees, the new executive’s salary, and benefits, it becomes a matter of caveat emptor [let the buyer beware]. A thorough background check is an important insurance policy for the recruiting process, and headhunters will tell you that your organization risks getting burned if an executive it hires has, at any time in his or her past, decided to assume the risks of playing with fire. Given the high cost of a bad executive hire, today’s organizations simply can’t afford not to do their homework. SOURCE : Excerpted from Joseph Daniel McCool, “Executives: Making It by Faking It,” BusinessWeek , October 4, 2007, www.businessweek.com . Questions 1. Suppose you are an HR manager at a company that needs to fill an important management position. In what situations would a candidate’s educational background be important? In what situations would a candidate’s track record as a manager or leader be important? 2. If you are considering a candidate whose management track record is good, would it matter whether the candidate described his or her educational background accurately? Why or why not? What if the misrepresentations involved the candidate’s work history? Would your opinion change? 3. The writer of this article expresses an opinion that the utility of background checks is high. Do you agree that employers should place more emphasis on background checks?