Online impersonations: no validation required

Back when I lived in the Silicon Valley, there was an ongoing employment scam. Prospective employees would show up with perfect resumes and immediately get hired. It would not take long before it was clear that these people did not have the experience stated on their resumes. Within six months they would be fired. However, …

[Jesse Melton]

So What???

Who cares? People have been overly aggressive in marketing themselves since the beginning of time. If you're good at the job you got with your false credentials, it's obvious that the experience wasn't necessary anyway. It only matters if you can't pull the job off.

[Aubry Thonon]

Well, d'uh!

"Recently, a 15-year-old impersonated Australia's ABC Television and sent a DMCA counter-notice to YouTube. YouTube responded by sending infringement notices to users and many video clips were removed. (This begs the question, why couldn't Viacom get this kind of response?)"

Gee... could it be because said 15-yo sent a politely-worded legal notice of infringement while Viacom slapped a lawsuit on YouTube?

Could politeness be more effective than bullying?

Naaahhh!

[Scott]

What about the "upside"?

Has anyone considered the up-side to this? Now you can confidently go into that next interview with your resume packed full of made-up stuff, and it will be easily validated when the employer does a google to check. All you need do is simply create lots of MySpace etc. etc. web pages by people who don't exist, fill them with rubbish about how brilliant you are and all the great things you've done, and you have instant validation. So while someone with a grudge can make you look bad, you can also make yourself look very good. Google is not a source of "trusted" information!

If an employer is serious about checking references etc, they should just try picking up the phone and calling the companies you claim to have worked for!