I think a company leader is faking his work history, a burned-out coworker, and more

by Alison Green on August 1, 2024

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. I think a company leader is faking his work history

A coworker and I discovered that a member of our company’s C-suite is very likely misrepresenting his work history. We both noticed that his executive bio, which is provided to press, doesn’t align with his LinkedIn profile. Previous versions of his bio are riddled with inconsistencies. He claims in the newer one to have held multiple executive positions in two industries (no mention of companies!) prior to jobs at the director level AND prior to finishing his degree in this field.

I did some fact-checking and discovered at least two flat-out lies. He claimed to have been an executive creative director at two companies where he was actually an art director, which is about 3-4 levels lower on the ladder. Also, he worked for small subsidiaries in both cases, not the parent company. We found various other references that likely support deception — his own social media profiles, for example — but those sources aren’t reliable enough to confirm that he’s lying, exaggerating, or omitting.

Ethically, this concerns us because investors deserve to know the truth. We are a private company without the level of SEC scrutiny that comes with being public. Investors rely on this information to make sound judgement about their money. Also, our suspicions about this person’s truthfulness go well beyond his work history. What’s the right thing to do here?

This is the kind of thing that can be outrage-inducing when you suspect it, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re well positioned to do anything with it.

If you’re in a fairly senior position — or in a communications job where this could reasonably fall within your purview — you might be able to bring it to someone higher-up. You wouldn’t be saying “he’s definitely lying” because it doesn’t sound like you actually know that. You’d be framing it as “if this looked weird to me, it’s likely to look weird to outsiders too.”

But if you’re more junior, there really isn’t anything you can or should do here. It may implode, it may not, but it’s well above your pay grade or ability to do anything about.

That all said … while it sounds like there’s smoke here, I don’t know that there’s fire — at least not the sort of fire that leads to “investors deserve to know the truth.” It doesn’t sound like you’ve uncovered evidence of actual lies (the title inflation maybe, but it’s not uncommon for people to use different titles in different contexts so you’d need more info before that one is a slam-dunk), or at least not lies of the sort that are likely to be a clear and obvious scandal, or even ones likely to be terribly alarming to investors. Be concerned that a company leader might have inflated their accomplishments and lack integrity, sure. But it doesn’t sound like it’s at the level of “potential company scandal that must be reported immediately.”

2. What should I do about a coworker who seems burned out?

There is someone on my team who I’m seeing behaviors from that give the impression he’s burnt out: more frequently working from home (we’re in office two days a week but he works remotely every other week with a new excuse), tasks taking a while to do, not being super engaged in meetings or chat, etc. We’re roughly on equal footing in terms of responsibilities (we’re both individual contributors), and we share the same manager.

My normal approach of “just talk to him” feels like an overstep here. Although he’s on my team, his own work rarely intersects with mine, and his slow pace only affects me tangentially if at all. However, I’ve noticed this because I’ve gone through this myself at other companies, and it did not end well for me. I feel like I would have appreciated a nudge of “hey, this is obvious to others, figure it out or hide it better” but that’s only with the benefit of hindsight, not to mention the fact I could be reading far too much into it.

I do generally have a good relationship with my manager, but I’m worried about inviting the extra scrutiny on him. My manager is generally pretty easy going, but also isn’t very hands-on. I don’t know him well enough to know how he would to respond, but I’d guess, based on his past tendencies, he would most likely go into a fact-finding mode to see what my coworker’s output looks like (and not figure out if there’s a larger issue).

Should I try to reach out to the peer even if it’s awkward, should I talk to my manager at the risk of inviting the wrong kind of attention, or should I stay out of this entirely?

Stay out of it. If you’re worried it would be an overstep to talk to your coworker about it, it would definitely be an overstep to approach his boss about it. If it were affecting your work, that would be different, but it’s not. And as a general rule, unless a manager has given you specific reason to think otherwise, assume the most likely response would indeed be a fact-finding mode to see what the person’s output looks like — since they’re responsible for that output. We also don’t even know burnout is in play here; your coworker could be dealing with stuff in his personal life, or a health crisis, or just be sick of the job, or who knows what.

If you were close to him and wanted to ask if everything was okay or to approach it from the perspective of “hey, be aware this is getting noticeable and might cause issues for you,” that would be fine to do. But it doesn’t sound like you’re particularly close, so leaving it alone is the right call.

3. Am I obligated to share every piece of feedback with my employee?

I have a question for you about my obligation to share feedback with my direct report. The work my team and I do has a heavy internal stakeholder management component so I often receive feedback on my team’s work outside of formal channels.

A stakeholder recently approached me in passing and shared that her experience with my direct report had been less than stellar. It wasn’t anything shocking or problematic, but more focused on how scheduling and communication could be handled better to meet that stakeholder’s needs. The direct report in question has been with the company for about three months and, overall, I’ve been delighted with their work. Am I obligated to share this one-off feedback with my direct report? Can I hold onto it and share if a pattern emerges? My concern is demoralizing them by nitpicking, but I also worry I could be doing them a disservice by not sharing and allowing them to improve the stakeholder’s impression.

You are not obligated to pass along every piece of feedback you hear about a direct report. If you disagree with the feedback or just don’t judge it something worth prioritizing, it’s fine not to share it. You should bring some nuance to that, though: even if you disagree with the feedback, sometimes the person would still benefit by being aware of it. Think, for example, of someone who’s being criticized by higher-ups for X and you don’t care about X; it still could be to their advantage to be aware that it’s drawing unfavorable attention from people who have influence over their career. Other times, though, sharing it would do more harm than good and you should let it die with you (like in this example).

In your specific case, it depends on the details. Did the stakeholder encounter lengthy and repeated issues with scheduling? Or was it one minor thing that just wasn’t to their preference? For example, if your employee continually ignored messages and was rude when the stakeholder followed up, that’s something you should address. If they were just a little more difficult to schedule with than a VIP stakeholder would have liked, you might just need to let your employee know that they’re expected to accommodate the VIP’s schedule rather than the other way around (if that’s true); that wouldn’t be criticism, exactly, just info about how things work in your company. If it was more minor than either of those, it might make sense to just hold on to it and see if you see a pattern (and taking the feedback as a nudge to pay closer attention in that area than you might have otherwise). Also, if the stakeholder is someone your employee will need to work with a lot, there’s more of an argument for saying something than if they’ll never need to again.

It’s impossible to say for sure without knowing exactly what the feedback was … but there’s no “absolutely must pass on every piece of feedback received” principle to follow. You should bring your own judgment to it.

4. Is this the worst cover letter intro in human history?

I started recruitment for an administrative position and have read the exact same sentence word for word in not one, not two, not three, but four separate cover letters. This sentence is, I believe, among the most stupid and pointless sentences fathomable. It is:

“After reviewing your job description, it’s clear that you’re looking for a candidate that is extremely familiar with the responsibilities associated with the role, and can perform them confidently.”

You mean, after reading the job description, you believe I am looking for someone who can do the duties listed in the job description?! You don’t say!

I beg you, can you please please explain to job seekers why they need to remove this sentence from their cover letters immediately, and the importance of actually reading whatever boilerplate cover letter template (or AI generated material) they’re using to confirm it’s not including meaningless, stupid sentences like this? Because if I read this sentence one more time (very likely, at this rate), I will start pulling my hair out!

That is indeed a truly terrible sentence. And I googled it and it pops up in a ton of search results, word for word, so clearly it’s been recommended somewhere — by someone or something giving awful cover letter advice — and then people are blindly copying it. People would actually benefit from removing most throat-clearing, substance-free filler from the start of their cover letters anyway, but this one is particularly bad.

That said, I almost can’t bring myself to penalize the copiers for it — lots of people are intimidated by cover letters and don’t know where to find good guidance — but it’s sure as hell not doing the thing cover letters are supposed to do, which is to strengthen their candidacy.

5. Am I supposed to pay for my own hotel when traveling for training for a remote job?

I recently accepted an offer for a remote position a little less than a year after being laid off from my previous job at an educational technology start-up. This new company is stable, widely respected, and has great benefits. As I’m trying to move out of state closer to family, the remote aspect is particularly great for me.

They did ask in the interview if I could come to in-person training for up to three weeks, in their HQ which is four-ish hours from the city where I live. At the time I was under the impression whether they were asking if I logistically make it work (i.e., if there would be hindrances with childcare, health, other life responsibilities). But it’s been almost a month since getting the offer and no one has mentioned accommodation, which makes me nervous. It seems unreasonable to expect a new employee (particularly one who has been jobless for 10 months) to pay for a week’s worth of a hotel stay. I’m planning on reaching out to HR to clarify, emphasizing that it is not financially possible for me given my circumstances, and ask how they’d like us to sort this out. How to I approach this without sounding demanding or entitled?

Be matter-of-fact and approach it as if you assume that of course they’re paying (because they probably are). So: “You mentioned wanting me to come to City for training shortly after starting, so I wanted to check about arrangements for that. What specific dates are we looking at, and what’s the process for booking accommodations and handling those expenses?”

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{ 291 comments }

{ 291 comments… read them below }

  1. Pippi’s mom*

    #4: I hire student workers, and I have seen that same sentence, maybe with a slight variation, so many times, and I have a similar reaction after about the third time in a row. Yes, of course we need someone familiar with the job description, but that doesn’t clear the bar. We also need someone who can do the skills. And follow instructions. (Out of 40+ applicants last time, 2 submitted the required writing samples.)
    AI-generated letters have also been fun. I’ve gotten cover letters that indicate this applicant is perfect for the job—knows all of our programs, AP style, our internal style, years of writing experience, even says writing samples are attached. And then the resume includes none of that and there are no writing samples. I know they’re students, but I’m not sure what they think is going to happen—that I won’t notice that their stated experience is nowhere to be found? A lot need an on-campus job and I try to let that temper my frustration, but after the fifth or sixth letter like this, my patience wears very thin.

    1. Someone stole my croissant*

      I’m a recently graduated student, and I used a free online service to make my resume. (Side rant: they all lie! It’s “free” until you want to download it!) I was very careful to make sure anything generated by the site’s AI was in my voice and accurate. I also used Alison’s blog to help write a smash-bang cover letter, no AI needed.
      I think part of the problem is that students don’t ever really get trained. No one in high school taught me how to write a cover letter, and I went to a free teen class on resume writing, but there was absolutely no advice on cover letters. I point everyone my age to AAM, because otherwise we think we can get away with AI written things in our name… like we do in high school now. ;)

      1. Orv*

        Also any advice on resume writing you get in high school or college is virtually guaranteed to be out of step with current trends. Most of those courses are being taught by people who haven’t had to do a real job hunt in 20 years.

      2. Midwest Manager too!*

        I hire students frequently, and run into the same problems as Pippi’s Mom. Every cycle, I have the same thought: I’d make a splash if I reserved a large lecture hall on campus and gave a 1-hour seminar on how to write application materials when you have minimal experience.

        I swear the number of times I’ve had 6-10 page resumes listing EVERY extracurricular activity since middle school is mind-boggling. The last round I had 70+ applicants and approximately 30% of them had (verbatim) the same cover letter. All were from the same program.

        /end rant

    2. Trick or Treatment*

      I searched this sentence and the first result that came up was AAM, where someone commented they’d been seeing it a lot in cover letters they received… On a post from 2018. Wow, this crap piece of advice has been around for a while!

      1. TheBeanMovesOn*

        Lol and now with AI this crap piece of advice made it into the training data set for a bunch of LLMs and we will be seeing it in AI generated cover letters until the robots take our jobs.

    3. Disgruntled Anon*

      I’ve submitted hundreds of cover letters over the years and the consensus seems to be that they’re either read by a machine or by someone in HR who doesn’t understand the role. Under those circumstances, I really don’t see what’s wrong with sitting back and letting AI do all the work. I think it’s both ridiculous and slightly humiliating to be expected to re-edit my application materials for each application just to ensure that certain keywords and phrases from the job listing are present when a competent employer could just as easily read my cover letter and understand that it conveys the same meaning in slightly different words, so why not take the easy way out? If employers have to filter through AI-generated letters and identical phrase then so be it. They’ve made their beds.

        1. Disgruntled Anon*

          Of course I want to be successful. That’s why I’ve put my best foot forward on hundreds of occasions over the years. But I can only hear ‘but did you actually write that you wanted the job?’ (after copying every word from my CV and typing it into an online form, writing a cover letter, and then writing a lengthy personal statement) so many times before concluding that writing applications is simply a matter of regurgitating the job listing so that someone in HR (most of my applications have had to be addressed to someone in HR) can tick all the necessary boxes. If that’s how it has to be then I’d rather let a computer do it for me. I can only contort myself and my words so much before becoming so demoralized and exhausted that I give up entirely.

          1. Dr. Vibrissae*

            where I work, someone in HR is responsible for completing application materials, but they are all shared with the hiring committee to review. HR is just the point person to make sure all the correct information is submitted. Yes, applications can be obnoxious, but ‘No one reads covers letters so stop complaining about the crappy cover letters you’ve had to read’ tracks logically.

          2. mymotherwasahamster*

            But there’s a difference between having a formula for a cover letter that regurgitates job-specific details and a sentence like the one that makes the LW want to stab their eyeballs, though. That one isn’t just unoriginal, or even just boilerplate. It’s literally meaningless. Like the LW said, it’s an acknowledgment that the person who meets the job description is the person who meets the job description. And even worse that the offense against language is what it says about the judgment and detail-orientation of the applicant herself. To me that’s way more egregious than just letting AI do all the work, as you said above.

            Anyway, I have to know—have you seriously gotten a hard time from multiple companies because in the documents you wrote to apply for a job you didn’t specifically say “please sir I want this job???” Is this a thing in your industry?

            1. LW4*

              This 100%. I don’t mind boring, boilerplate cover letters, or using AI to generate – I use AI to help me draft communications all the time! I certainly wouldn’t hold it against someone for having an unoriginal cover letter. But this sentence isn’t boilerplate, it’s just trash. It has no meaning. Whoever uses it either hasn’t thoroughly read the template they used (attention to detail), or read it and thought it sounded fine (critical thinking/judgement).

              All that said, I’m not going to reject candidates simply for including that sentence. In fact, one of the applicants who used it I moved forward. She had extremely relevant experience, and that’s what matters most.

              This sentence just sticks out as bizarrely common for something so worthless. I just wish candidates choosing to use templates/AI re-read their final product before submitting.

          3. The Unspeakable Queen Lisa*

            Has anyone at a company you have applied to told you this? Because friends and family and internet strangers can make up all kinds of BS that make you and them feel better, but that doesn’t make it true. Being disgruntled and saying “They made their beds, nyah” doesn’t help you.

            I’ve repeatedly seen hiring folks in the comments here say they don’t use a computer screen/don’t filter for keywords like you’re saying (except in Federal jobs). Stop “concluding” things you can’t possibly know – you didn’t get an interview, you’re not unique in that. The only thing you can conclude is that they chose someone else. You’re taking this all very personally, when it is not.

            1. MassMatt*

              This. There are lots of people on the site that have done tons more hiring than I have, but I have hired for a couple dozen roles in two different industries and I concur, I personally read paper copies of cover letters and resumes, as did everyone else in the hiring process.

              Job searching is a terrible process generally full of lots of rejection so it’s understandable that you are frustrated, disgruntled anon. But I have to wonder if your frustration is coming through in your search process.

              You only need one success in the search, I wish you luck!

            2. Happy*

              And federal jobs in the US aren’t doing a keyword search on a cover letter – it’s on the online resume.

          4. Observer*

            But I can only hear ‘but did you actually write that you wanted the job?’ (after copying every word from my CV and typing it into an online form, writing a cover letter, and then writing a lengthy personal statement) so many times before concluding that writing applications is simply a matter of regurgitating the job listing so that someone in HR (most of my applications have had to be addressed to someone in HR) can tick all the necessary boxes.

            Well, maybe you are taking the wrong lesson.

            The *real* lesson here is that you are taking advice from the wrong people.

            Even incompetent HR who don’t understand what the job is, do not expect that line. They know that your application is your statement that you want the job. So, anyone who says to you is someone whose advice on job search should be resolutely ignored.

            1. badger*

              well, and it’s not like it’s hard to throw in a line to say you’d love the opportunity to work in that position or for that company or on that project or whatever, without it being boring boilerplate.

      2. RadiationFun*

        I don’t know about what jobs you are applying to. But in my field for my sort of role we only ever get at most 6 applicants, so yes the hiring person (who isn’t some unrelated person in HR but will be your boss) definitely reads every line you write. If I had applied to my job with AI I would be unemployed.

        1. Disgruntled Anon*

          I’m told that the number of applications for the positions I want often exceeds a hundred, and most applications are sent to the relevant HR departments to be filtered.

          1. Analyst*

            In that case, then you absolutely have to personalize- you have to make sure your experience is described using at least similar language/phrases to the job ad so your experience is obvious to a non-expert. I recently finished a job search, and I used a template cover letter with an intro paragraph (with some sentences I varied by job) and a bullet pointed list of highlighted experiences that were personalized to the job. I keep a running list of those, so I could reuse. Left my resume alone, though I made effort to ensure job/industry specific phrasing was used. Sped things up a lot.

          2. Apples and Oranges*

            This is true for large companies or jobs with a large number of applicants but that STILL doesn’t mean that no one is reading your cover letter. If you pass the AI or HR pre screen it undoubtedly gets passed along to the hiring manager along with your resume.

          3. Observer*

            I’m told that the number of applications for the positions I want often exceeds a hundred, and most applications are sent to the relevant HR departments to be filtered.

            That’s all the more reason not to do things that might make you stand out in a bad way. Or just make you look like you haven’t bothered to do the minimum to actually address the application.

            “Boring” boilerplate won’t make you look bad, but this kind of line will.

            Now, in situations like this, personalization is actually more important – *to YOU* not, the hiring people. But I get that you might not have the bandwidth for it. At least don’t handicap yourself.

            The bottom line is do you want to be right or would you rather be successful? If the latter, don’t think in terms of “the hiring managers made their bed, and they can lie on it.” Because even if it’s true, it doesn’t help you get a job – and it could lead you to do things that make you *less* likely to get the job you want.

        2. Seashell*

          I imagine people who are applying to major corporations (which is a lot of people) are having different experiences.

          1. Susan Calvin*

            When I was on the receiving end of application materials at a previous employer, which was definitely a major corporation by any metric, we definitely had an HR person doing the initial screening. And yes, it wasn’t always easy to get the to understand the nuances of what we actually needed, but I think if they’d ever filtered out anyone otherwise suitable for not explicitly stating they wanted the job, I might’ve been moved to violence…

      3. Irish Teacher.*

        The advice we were given at college is that you never know what a hiring manager will care about so it’s best to put your best foot forward/not take unnecessary risks. I have never done any hiring but I would imagine it’s highly likely there are people hiring who don’t even read cover letters and there are probably others who don’t really care how they are phrased and only skim them to get a sense of what your actual experience and qualification and so on are, especially if writing isn’t really relevant to the job or if the person reading the cover letters isn’t particularly skilled linguistically themselves.

        But there clearly are some who do care. The fact that somebody wrote in about it makes that clear. And it’s not the employers that it’s going to disadvantage. It’s the applicant who may have reduced his or her chance of getting the job.

        This is particularly true if writing skills are a componant of the job, but even if they are not, it still contributes to the overall impression and could give the employer the impression that this person hasn’t really put much effort into their application and if this is the level of effort they put in when they are really supposed to be out to impress, will they put in more effort when they get the job? (They may, for all sorts of reasons, but that may not be the impression given.) Or it may make an employer less likely to read the application.

        If the job is one that gets a large number of applications, often the difference between candidates is pretty small. There may be dozens of candidates who would make good hires so little things can decide who is chosen for interview

        1. Great Frogs of Literature*

          The job market was so hot the past few years that we had to give up on including a writing exercise, so the cover letter and resume are the only writing samples I get. We do a good bit of technical writing, and also primarily communicate via slack, jira, and confluence. You’d better believe that I’m looking at the cover letter.

          I try not to take too many points off for grammar or formatting weirdness, but if the meaning is unclear or if the writing is “a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing,” as it were, I will definitely say no to a candidate on those grounds. And the one time I gave a candidate a pass for not presenting his experience concisely on his resume, it turned out that he couldn’t write efficiently and concisely on any of our work product, either.

      4. DJ Abbott*

        I agree with you that the expectation to tailor the cover letter and résumé for each position is ridiculous. That takes an absurd amount of time, even for someone who is an experienced and good writer. No one who already has a job, or school, or other things going on has time for that. And it’s true and very annoying that many employers use robots to knock people out of the running unfairly. I’m still salty about the time a big hospital corporation automatically eliminated me because I don’t have a degree, when my experience was a 90% match.
        But, I’ve always assumed that someone would read my cover letter at some point. Because if they get to the point of wanting to interview me, they’ll probably at least look at it. What has worked for me is to write/tweak the cover letter to match the position, and make it as concise as possible. Because no one these days has time to read unnecessary words.

        1. MassMatt*

          Reconfiguring your resume for every job is a big undertaking, I would only do it for dramatically different jobs, and hopefully you narrow down the fields you want to work in enough that you only have to do that a couple times.

          In my last job search I was looking for roles as a llama groomer in high-end shops which need very experienced groomers, and as a manager of llama groomers. That was two resumes, one emphasizing my grooming achievements and the other my leadership and management skills.

          Personalizing the cover letters became easier after the first couple because while no two were alike, there were many sentences and bullet points I could cut and paste.

          1. DJ Abbott*

            Yes, I was able to use the same one or two letters and make minor changes for each position.

        2. Observer*

          You make a good point. High personalization and tuning per position is just not always realistic. But there is a yawning chasm between that and the kind of garbage the LW and others are complaining about.

          What you describe sounds to me like it falls squarely on the right side of that gulf.

          1. DJ Abbott*

            What generates the garbage, though? Students are being advised to spend ridiculous amounts of time on their applications and aren’t able to, so they take shortcuts.
            It would be better to give them realistic advice in the first place.

            1. Observer*

              Well, of course it would be far better to give them reasonable advice!

              Which is one reason why what Alison does is so useful.

              My point is simply that shooting yourself in the foot in response to bad advice is not helpful. On the other hand, there are useful ways to approach this situation that don’t have to make people crazy.

      5. Analyst*

        I can only speak to my experience, but I’m a manager at a large medical research center, and we read all the materials ourselves. No AI, and HR only comes in to look at the resume when it’s time to make an offer (they propose the salary based on their reading of experience, which…can require some back and forth).

        1. MigraineMonth*

          Trying to get through automated/HR screenings for tech positions can be so frustrating because there are so many similar technologies. Sometimes they will ask about your experience with the base technology (yogurt), but other times they will ask about your experience with strawberry yogurt. I have 8 years of experience with peach yogurt, it’s basically the same thing, but I either have to lie to the automated screener or get my resume (with personalized cover letter) thrown out. Same problem with HR, since they aren’t going to realize C# and Java are very similar.

      6. honeygrim*

        I’ve hired student workers and paraprofessional staff, and have served on several hiring panels. While our HR specialists certainly helped filter the applications if we had hundreds of them, in every case I read through a cover letter if the applicant provided one. Sometimes, information in the cover letter helped us decide between two candidates who otherwise seemed equally qualified. Or, at least, the cover letter gave us a starting point for going more in-depth in our interview questions.

        I’ve struggled in the past with writing cover letters. I applied to my current job because it didn’t require a cover letter (only a massively complex application system requiring long answers that basically served as the equivalent of a cover letter). Still, I think it’s important to take the time to write a good cover letter if you are really interested in a job.

      7. Snow Globe*

        I’m not sure what you mean by “the consensus”, but just because a lot of people believe something, doesn’t mean it is true.

        Particularly if cover letters are requested with an application, it is because someone will be reading them. You just can’t assume that they’ll only be read by machine or that the HR recruiter doesn’t understand the role anyway.

      8. Radioactive Cyborg Llama*

        So, the LW deserves to have to read bad cover letters because other companies use programs to read cover letters? Does not compute. Also, this is a surprisingly high level of dudgeon about something as mundane as a cover letter.

          1. Insert Clever Name Here*

            I read it as one of those things where you just need to voice your frustration to someone who is going to understand — like when an entry level person from the AP department at my company asks me to approve an invoice for the PO I issued (I am prohibited from doing so! It says it in the SCM policy! And the Expenditure Control policy! It is very clear!), sometimes I just have to IM a coworker saying “if AP asks me to violate policy one more time I’m going to lose my mind!” before I can send a professional note back saying I’m prohibited from doing it, try (actual person who invoice is addressed to) instead.

            I’m not actually going to lose my mind over this, that entry level job has tons of turnover, this is a general thing I deal with, but sometimes you just gotta vent about it and have someone else go “I know, it’s a weird choice!”

      9. Harried HR*

        Recruiting is part of my job along with HR / Benefits & Payroll (we’re a relatively small company) and I can honestly tell you that out of 100 applicants I may get 5 cover letters. Those candidates automatically get plus because they sent a cover letter, a thoughtful cover letter definitely stands out. (FWIW – We primarily recruit Creatives / IT & Operations)

      10. bamcheeks*

        they’re either read by a machine

        Alison had a whole post about this— “your application will be read by an algorithm” has been going around for about 15 years and I’ve never met an HR person who says their ATS which has this capacity. Ranking, yes; selection and rejection, no. It’s either an amazingly well protected conspiracy or an urban legend!

        1. DJ Abbott*

          I’ve been rejected by a machine at least once.
          After the suits eliminated the position I had been at for almost 10 years in one hospital, I applied to a similar one in 2020 for which my experience was a 90% match.
          I got a response from the ATS that said I was being automatically rejected because I don’t have a college degree.
          As far as I could tell, a human never saw my application. And they don’t deserve me.

      11. Hell in a Handbasket*

        You say “they’ve made their beds” as though sending a bad cover letter is somehow punishing the company, but really you’re only hurting yourself. You assume your letter is not being read by a person — if that’s true, then your bad letter is not going to stick it to the man or make them see the error of their ways. If it DOES get read by a person like LW, then sure, I guess you’ve maybe succeeded in annoying them — but that would mean that your whole justification (that no one reads the letters) doesn’t apply and you’re just shooting yourself in the foot.

      12. Peanut Hamper*

        This is a “Tell me y0u don’t understand the purpose of a cover letter without actually saying you don’t understand the purpose of a cover letter.” kind of situation. You’re not completely re-writing things. You’re just tailoring them for specifics that are in the job description. “Hundreds” suggests that you using a scattering approach to job applications when you might want to refine your approach.

      13. MCMonkeybean*

        The consensus among who exactly? I have been told at least twice that my cover letter was a significant reason why I got the job. Once I applied for a summer internship and they made up a new internship just for me because they liked my cover letter so much!

        Seems like maybe a bit of a catch 22 here–do you not bother with putting real effort into cover letters because they won’t get you anywhere, or do the cover letters not get you anywhere because you are going for quantity over quality?

        Certainly there are plenty of hiring managers who won’t bother to read them but there are also plenty who will and a good cover letter can really put you over the top. If you’re just churning out meaningless AI nonsense though that isn’t going to benefit anyone.

      14. Baela Targaryen*

        I’ve been burned by a candidate using someone else’s/AI writing when they in actuality could barely spell or follow basic grammar. There is absolutely a reason why a cover letter needs to be written by the actual human being.

      15. Smiling*

        Hello! I agree that it’s frustrating to have to re-edit the cover letter multiple times. I will say, however, that I’ve been part of hiring processes at small nonprofits a few times. I was the person reading all the applications (cover letter and resume) for our open roles. In come cases I was the person who would manager the applicant; in other cases I was supporting the person who would manage the applicant. I did notice when people had a letter that showed that they understood what our nonprofit focused on and why it mattered to them. Even just a couple sentences that included some mention and context about our organization made a difference, and was enough to make the cover letter stand out.

        I think in a larger organization, with a full time HR staff, the person reading the applications is unlikely to be as close to the role. You might consider tailoring your approach a bit – putting more effort into the cover letters for the roles you’re particularly interested in, or when you have reason to believe it’s a smaller team.

      16. Helewise*

        I always read cover letters when I’m hiring; my husband rarely does. It has a lot to do with what the hiring manager values and is looking for. Alison’s advice on cover letters and that it should connect the dots and explain questions raised by your resume is spot on – it’s an opportunity to present yourself in a narrative way and should only enhance your application. For me it also shows 1) if the applicant is willing/able to follow simple instructions, and 2) if they meant to apply for THIS job. Not having a cover letter won’t necessarily rule a person out but it will take points off the score. The last position I hired for received over 120 applications and I read them all.

      17. Disgruntled Anon*

        I’m sorry that I can’t respond to everyone individually but I seem to have been a little too successful in eliciting responses. I should clarify that I have been sending out tailored letters and CVs for years; however, having recently been advised by several of those in the industry in which I want to work that, yes, the expectation really is that I should just copy and paste the keywords and phrases found in job listings when applying—and that my efforts to convey the same meaning using my own words has been wasted—I have decided to try sitting back and letting AI do the heavy lifting. Those telling me that I’m setting myself up for failure may be right, but what I’m doing now clearly isn’t working so surely I won’t be any worse off for trying.

        I appreciate all the responses anyway and wish everyone on this forum well.

    4. linger*

      LW4: it’s understandable you’re frustrated reading this waffle multiple times. Assuming it will appear again, and assuming it is the product of less experienced applicants following bad advice, it’s best just to ignore it if you can.
      What an applicant’s use of this boilerplate might suggest is:
      (a) This is a less experienced and less confident applicant. If you’re hiring for entry-level positions, that doesn’t matter so much, and you should move on to evaluating whether they could be a reasonable fit given the remainder of their application content. (Though it should give you more pause when hiring for roles requiring more experience.)
      And/or (b) this is an applicant relying on shortcuts. Other shortcuts (such as copying information from online templates, or using AI to generate portions of text) could be a source of legitimate concern if you are as a result less sure of the applicant’s actual qualifications or relevant experience. Nevertheless, the boilerplate text itself is not a serious enough issue to disqualify a candidate, and is not a reliable indicator of any more serious issues. Even candidates who don’t use the boilerplate may need some check on whether there are other details repeated across candidates’ applications, and whether their cover letters are inconsistent with the CV contents.

    5. Hastily Blessed Fritos*

      Using AI to generate a cover letter for a *writing job* should be an instant fail. Since they’re students it may be a courtesy to tell them that.

      As for the sentence LW asked about, my first thought was that it looked like ChatGPT. Which if it’s “all over the internet” it could still be, and that’s how it got into the training sets. Remember, asking text AI to do a thing is basically asking a bunch of random people online to do it.

    6. Sloanicota*

      Yeah using AI to write your cover letter seems particularly risky given their tendency towards … ‘truthiness’ (something that “feels true” although it may have no bearing in reality). I remember when it first came out, people in my field used AI to do the equivalent of “google themselves” and came back with a sentence like “(person) was a lambda-nominated producer of (actual work they really did write).” They were like, “I was lambda nominated?? I didn’t know that!!” – no, they weren’t, AI just though that was the kind of sentence that showed up in a lot of bios. So you would really want to fact check a cover letter closely!

    7. Velawciraptor*

      My last law student intern was predictably intimidated/frustrated by the cover letter writing process, so I directed them to two places.

      1) Here.
      2) The Jabba the Hutt cover letter Tumblr post.

      It certainly seemed to help them get over the hump, and without resorting to copy/pasting or AI nonsense.

    8. Huh*

      I just have to add my favorite opening line from a “diversity statement” (submitted to a public R1 university): In the name of our Almighty Lord, I extend my warmest greetings and am grateful for this honourable chance to present this declaration as a genuine witness in front of you.

    9. Seen Too Much*

      I am in HR and I personally do not read cover letters. When I was younger, I used to write cover letters for my friends. I know those weren’t necessarily reflective of their actual experiences and, for a fact, weren’t written in their voice. Once I started doing recruiting, I saw a lot of obvious “someone else wrote this for you” cover letters. With the advent of AI is is much worse. So now I just don’t read them.

      I, of course, will forward any cover letters received to the hiring manager with the other materials, but I let them know I don’t read them and they don’t figure into my rating of the candidate.

      And don’t get me started on references.

  2. Rick*

    #2. Do nothing. Mind your own business. A lot of us are burned out. We don’t need their unsolicited advice.

    1. Allonge*

      Counterpoint: I would almost certainly believe and take seriously someone further away from me who says I am showing worrying signs of burnout. I am NOT saying OP should keep pushing, but one conversation directly with the person could be ok.

      Don’t take it to the manager, that I agree with. In our org we have an employee relations person in HR who can advise on these things, so that would be an option if I was super worried about someone (but I see that this is not something a lot of places would have in a reliable way).

      1. Captain dddd-cccc-ddWdd*

        Yeah I tend to agree with this. The other day I was in a situation (not related to burnout) where I went to someone I don’t work closely with and is much higher on the organisational tree than I am, because of my level of concern with something. He knew to take it seriously because of the unusual nature of this and the fact that I’d seen fit to bring this to him which was out of the ordinary.

      2. bamcheeks*

        Yes, I think if you’re in meetings with someone often enough to notice that their behaviour and demeanour has changed, you know them well enough to do a quick, “hey, I just wanted to check in with you and see if everything’s OK? You’ve seemed a bit quieter recently and I was just worried in case the stress was getting to you or something.”

        If they tell you everything’s fine and there’s no problem, that’s a clear boundary and you drop it, maybe with a last offer that the door’s always open, give you a shout if they ever do want to talk or whatever you feel you can reasonably or comfortably offer. But I have certainly made (and been the recipient of) a couple of gentle enquiries like this and I think they’re a positive thing.

        1. Sloanicota*

          Yeah I thought OP wanted to offer some kind words or assistance to their coworker, and I thought that was nice (the world needs more kindness!) … but I changed my mind when what they wanted to say was “hey, this is obvious to others, figure it out or hide it better.” OP can go ahead and keep that message to themselves.

          1. Mighty K*

            Absolutely agree!

            I’m surprised there are so many responses that say to just ignore that a person seems to be struggling. I’m based in an office in the UK and checking in on colleagues is actively encouraged and I’ve definitely benefited when people have asked me in the past and I’ve been able to say what’s going on. Also, sometimes it doesn’t seem as bad once you’ve said it out loud or you realise there’s something you can do that helps. So I’d definitely encourage you to check in (twice, people often don’t give a straight answer the first time) but then leave it alone if they don’t want to talk.

          2. Hyaline*

            Yeah I was on team reach out until I saw how LW wanted to do so. Telling someone they need to mask better is really not helpful in this situation. in this case definitely leave it alone and leave it to someone more invested in showing concern about the actual person.

            1. Pastor Petty Labelle*

              THIS. Hiding burnout is not helpful. It doesn’t ake the burnout go away, it just adds to it because its one more thing to deal with. If someone is burned out, they need to do something about the burn out, not just soldier on.

            2. bamcheeks*

              I didn’t actually read it like that– I read it as, “if someone had asked me if I was OK, it would have been the wake-up call to realise I needed to do something proactive, whether that was something positive which offered relief or making sure that “losing job” didn’t get added to the pile of things wrong”. LW is speaking from their own experience of what would have helped them.

              Realistically, sometimes people with burnout DO need to mask better or try and make work a higher priority– obviously it would be great if “take a break and focus on recovery” were always an option, but it’s not.

              1. A Simple Narwhal*

                I agree, I didn’t see it as “hey no one wants to see that” but more of a “just a gentle heads up that you might think you’re successfully compartmentalizing/keeping things in check but you aren’t”.

                I went through a really rough patch years ago when my father had a health crisis while my mother had suffered a bad injury and I thought I could just focus on work and keep it buried during the day. I apparently suck at that because while I thought I was doing a good job holding it together, I wasn’t and found out when my boss formally reprimanded me. (I was technically getting my job done but it was a job that wanted you to go above and beyond.)

                If someone had come to me and told me they could tell I was off, it would have been a huge and welcome wake up call that I needed help.

          3. anxiousGrad*

            Yeah I’ve been through health problems that made me work from home more, work more slowly, and be more quiet in meetings since I was just trying to stay awake and mask my physical discomfort. Each time I was in close communication with my managers about what was going on, but not my peers. It was annoying enough when one person called me every single day to see if I was in the office, but if she had said something along the lines of “figure it out or hide it better,” I would have absolutely flipped out. Both because that’s such an incredibly callous thing to say and because it’s a huge overstep.

          4. I'm just here for the cats!!*

            exactly! especially since they don’t know what could be going on to cause this. And if the coworker is working from home more often than I think it is safe to assume that the boss knows this and that they may have an arrangement because of the situation.

            I also think because the OP has been the one burned-out (and it sounds like had repercussions because of it) that they may be seeing more than there really is.

          5. LW #2*

            Yeah, that was not the best way to frame it. In previous jobs, had I got that message it would have been a clear sign that something needs to change, either my attitude or my job. This is NOT something I would say to him, but it’s how I would have appreciated communicated to me.

            Here though, the company seems good, and burnout seems rare, so the approach I should take is more along the lines of “You seem disconnected, is it about the work or something else? Is it worth talking to your manager about getting help or changing something?”

            1. Saturday*

              I think that because there’s a high likelihood that it isn’t burnout but some other personal issue, I would only do this if you were closer.

        2. AnonToday*

          ‘Boundary’ is the important word here. Ask once, and respect the answer. Also, OP 2, have you considered your own response? Should your coworker confide in you, are you prepared with resources and advice? What happens if your coworker confides in you, but then ignores the help you proffer? How will you react? (Answer: you don’t.)

          Every adult in the workplace has stress at some point and the majority of us still get the job done. Take your cues from your coworker.

          From my own experience, a few years ago I took FMLA to care for an extremely ill (mental and physical issues) family member. Only 3 people at work knew why I was absent – my immediate supervisor and manager, and the head of HR. I did NOT want to discuss what was going on with anyone else – it was my private business and my coworkers didn’t have the tools or resources to help me. Telling teammates about my problems, who couldn’t do more than say “oh, we’re sorry this is happening,” would have exacerbated my stress.

          1. ferrina*

            Yes, it’s important that OP isn’t jumping into something they don’t want to be involved in. Personally, I would do (and have done) something close to bamcheeks script: “Hey, just wanted to check in- it seems like you’ve been stressed or sick recently. Are you doing okay?”

            I go in being familiar with the company’s EAP info, willing to take on some extra work if needed, and with empathy. And no matter what the answer is, that is the only time I will ask about it (like you said, “Boundary”). I’m a little worried that OP’s take is “figure it out or hide it better”- while that is sometimes necessary, that’s really not a healthy expectation to enforce. And many things can’t be instantaneously “figured out”- if it’s a health condition, those don’t go away because you want it to. Ditto if they are caring for a relative. It can be helpful for the coworker to be aware that others might be noticing, but the next step is thinking about support options, not “make sure this doesn’t impact others in any way, shape or form, including making them notice”. When people go through a tough time, that’s when they need their support network the most. Even if that support network is a coworker quietly taking a small project off their plate or being gracious about work being later than usual.

          2. LW #2*

            Their “symptoms” mirror what mine were so closely when I was burnt out that I hadn’t considered that they might not be burnt out but instead of some sort of external issues until I read Alison’s response. I definitely know that if I were going through something and someone came to me and said “hey, you seem burnt out, is everything okay?” the last thing I would want to do is talk to them about it. All the advice points to the fact that I can’t do much to help so I’m staying out of it.

      3. Malarkey01*

        What exactly do you mean by “take seriously”? When someone is burnt out, a coworker pointing it out isn’t really going to improve that though. In fact, it’s just one more problem for them to deal with. I would not see it caring if someone on my team came over and said you seem burnt out, I would see it as another criticism, ESPECIALLY if the message was it’s noticeable you need to mask it more.

        Taking it to HR would be even crazier to me because the response would be let’s loop in the manager.

        1. Allonge*

          I am coming from the point of view that someone in burnout does not necessarily recognise this. In that case, it can be helpful to have it pointed out, even if it’s not an insta-solution! If you know and I know you know, then this does not apply.

          Taking it seriously: just speaking for myself, if my behavior / delivery is obviously off to peope who are not so close to me, them saying something likely would be a bigger moment of ‘oh, something may be really wrong’ than hearing the same from someone who I interact with more (in my experience these people correct for how busy I am and so on). If it’s obvious to coworker I meet every month, then, well, something is really wrong. But this is also a question of personality, just as taking it as criticism (please don’t!).

          And for HR, again, I know this is not how it works everywhere, but in our particular setup, this person has ways to check in on people that do not include sharing info with their manager.

          1. bamcheeks*

            the point of view that someone in burnout does not necessarily recognise this

            Right! There seem to be a lot of comments here that assume that LW’s colleague knows they’re stressed and burnt out and that someone asking or commenting is simply another source of stress. But often people DON’T know– they think they are barrelling through and maybe they think they’re a bit stressed, but they’re covering it up fine, or they know they’re stressed but one of the effects of stress is believing that you can’t change anything. Lots and lots of people don’t realise they have burnout until something external tells them that, and a colleague checking in about change in your engagement, behaviour or affect is a much gentler way of getting that than a massive work mistake or being physically unable to get out of bed.

            That said, I do think LW should do some careful thinking first about what their message is and what support they can actually offer.

            1. Malarkey01*

              Fair enough but I think your last point is critical because this has the potential to ruin a relationship with a colleague and be seen as overstepping, especially when there’s not a whole lot the person raising it can do (and they don’t even know if something personnel/health is going on that coworker is already dealing with).

              My personal reaction to someone raising this would not be friendly and basically no sh##.

          2. Observer*

            I am coming from the point of view that someone in burnout does not necessarily recognise this

            True. But even so, it’s important to be careful in how it’s approached and the expectation you set out.

            The LW seems to be asking if they can essentially tell someone off, even if that’s not the intention. They are not offering help or resources and the way is put does not convey concern.

            The bigger issue is that they are considering going to their manager. What describe is totally not universal. In fact it’s a real outlier. Even with a really good set up, it’s an open question whether it’s helpful for someone like the LW, who has absolutely no real information as to what is actually going on, should approach HR. In a case like this, where the LW actually knows that they are putting their coworker at risk, I just cannot see how there is any way at all to justify it.

            1. Allonge*

              So – indeed the specific words they wrote are not a great message but hopefully that is not the intended wording (I was assuming it’s not).

              And OP asked if they should go to their manager, I don’t think it’s out of line to put that on the table when you are going to an advice column.

      4. Accounting Gal*

        Yeah I was on the fence with this one. I’m generally a very mind-your-business person, especially at work, but if I had a coworker I was generally friendly with and they noticed I was burnt out I would want them to say something. Either so I could fix it or at least hide it better! Because if they’ve noticed, chances are other people will too… I think this one could go either way, it really comes down to how close they are as coworkers.

    2. Stoli*

      I’m in medicine. I don’t need anyone pointing out my burn out. I handle it my own way.

      1. Tutoyer*

        Please be careful. I am in healthcare and the stats for health care workers ending up in really concerning situations due to their access to restricted materials are very high. I reach out only because i have also been burned out in health care and know what it’s like. Best wishes.

    3. Ellis Bell*

      I think if you’re not close enough to someone to ask how they’re feeling, you’re probably not close enough to tell people how they’re feeling.

      1. Allonge*

        I am not sure we are in this situation though.

        First, OP and Burnout Guy are on the same team, so I hope that asking how they are feeling is not an extreme invasion.

        Second, saying ‘you look not ok, I am worried about you, when I looked like this it was burnout’ is not telling people how they are feeling.

        I mean, sure, if the answer is ‘leave me be’, OP needs to leave him be. I really hope we can express concern for a coworker though, even if we are not buddy-buddy on a daily basis.

        1. Lala*

          But it can make the stress even worse. I am supremely burned out and I know it. I know my coworkers know it. Commenting on it isn’t supportive, and just feels like a dig. What would be supportive is if they WERE supportive in their behavior. I don’t mean picking up my work, but just being supportive in their attitude.

          Commenting isn’t being supportive. Being supportive is being supportive. Two very different things.

          1. Allonge*

            May I ask what supportive in their attitude would look like to you?

            I get that just saying ‘you look like crap’ is not particularly helpful (but then I don’t think that is what OP would want to say). Certainly no need to keep repeating it if it’s a known thing to everyone involved.

            My thing is more that burnout is one of those things that we don’t necessarily recognise on ourselves. So someone flagging it can be useful in these cases.

            1. Sloanicota*

              “You seem a little bummed lately, can I help with anything? What if I took on that X project for a while, or covered Y or Z for you – would that be useful? I’m going for a coffee this afternoon if you want to get out of the office for a bit, and I’m here to talk if you’d like.” Then buy them a coffee if they decline.

              1. LW #2*

                Unfortunately, while we’re on the same team but the work we do is different and I don’t have expertise in what he does to be able to load lighten. We also have a fancy coffee machine in the office so me buying him one would be extra weird.

                I definitely hope things are okay with him, or at worst that this is a temporary setback, but I am so detached to the situation that I think at this point me asking about it is going to be seen more as butting in than helpful.

        2. Ellis Bell*

          Oh for sure, they can ask the coworker how they are feeling if they are able; my point is that if you’re not able to do that small action, you’re not able to do more widespread actions. I would trust OP to assess that; I think you instinctively know if that’s not going to be welcome, or if the colleague isn’t up for that sort of discussion. If you do broach it, Ithink an open ended “how are you/hows things” is safer than submitting specific theories based on personal experience and diagnosing someone based on appearances, but I take your point that it can be done with tact, and by feeling your way in the conversation. Possibly by saying “How are you coping? I always found X to be a huge stress” is not overstepping.

    4. Fraggled*

      LW’s approach of “hey, this is obvious to others, figure it out or hide it better” seems a little harsh at best and unkind at worst to someone potentially already struggling.

      1. Sloanicota*

        I’m extremely burned out right now and I can’t imagine my reaction if some coworker said that to me. Then again, I know some people do great with a tough love / home truths approach and others of us are more delicate flowers haha. And my sense is it comes from a good place of OP not wanting to see this coworker getting fired or whatever.

        1. ferrina*

          Yeah, I would be livid if someone said “You seem stressed. Figure it out or hide it better.”

          Now if they said “You seem stressed. Would it help if I took over [minor task that they don’t mind taking over]?”, that would help sooooooo much. Even if I declined their offer, I would feel like this person genuinely cares about my wellbeing. I would feel safer asking them for help or timeline extensions in the future if I needed it.

      2. LW #2*

        I mentioned this in a comment above, but that’s how I would have wanted the message delivered in the past, because it would have been a clear signal to me that something needed to be changed, and the jobs where I had it were jobs where being burnt out were much more common than here. It is NOT how I would phrase it to my coworker

        1. tabloidtained*

          I think that was clear from your letter…not sure why commentors think that’s what you’d verbatim say to another person.

    5. Cat Tree*

      I know I’m burned out (although that’s not a given – it’s easy to miss when you’re in the thick of it). But if someone told me I’m burned out, I would basically think, “what do expect me to do about it?” Unless the person is in a position to hire another person or take on a bunch of my work, and will actually do it, what’s the point of just telling me I’m burned out? What does that accomplish?

      I feel similarly about the recent thing to encourage asking people “are you ok?” I appreciate that people are trying to be caring, and that it helps reduce stigma around talking about mental health. But if someone asks me that and I say no, then what? They encourage me to get therapy that I’m already in? Therapy is wonderful but it’s not instantaneous. I can be in the midst of treatment but still feel pretty awful for a while. Thankfully nobody has actually asked me this. At certain times I would have had to either lie and say I was OK, or say that I’m not OK but then explain the details of my treatment to justify not needing or wanting any help from a layperson, no matter how good their intentions are.

      1. The Unspeakable Queen Lisa*

        I’m sorry your burned out and this is a weird response.

        I think you might have missed the part where the OP said, “I’ve gone through this myself at other companies, and it did not end well for me.” She is worried the coworker will get fired. She wasn’t going to say “Hey, you’re burned out”, but “Hey, it’s obvious to everyone you’re over this job. If you think you’ve been hiding it, you’re not.” She doesn’t expect him to do one thing or another, she’s sharing information with him for him to decide what to do.

        You’re being kind of combative over imaginary people being kind to you. If someone asks if you’re okay, you don’t have to say no. But if you did say no and they suggested therapy, you can say, “thanks, I’m already seeing someone”. Ta-da! It’s that simple. And yes, it’s true that when someone asks you a question, you either lie or tell the truth. Those are always the choices.

        I mean, you sound like you think talking to people is totally unacceptable (What’s the point? And then what? What would that accomplish?) and I assume that’s not true in real life. Maybe you actually need to game out all of your anxiety-filled “and then what?” questions so you feel comfortable answering and stop telling yourself someone is accusing you of something by asking if you’re okay. Cut yourself and everyone else some slack. Please.

        1. Cat Tree*

          I still disagree. What is she expecting the outcome to be? “Hey, you’re burned out.” “Oh OK, I’ll stop being burned out.” Or “Oh OK, I’ll do a better job of hiding it.”

          I get that it’s coming from a place of sympathy and wanting to help, but it just doesn’t accomplish anything except possibly to give him more thing to worry about.

          1. Allonge*

            Does this apply to every other difficulty at work? Do we just ignore others being in pain, worried, overloaded, struggling, because we cannot provide an Immediate Obvious Magical Solution TM?

            I don’t think I want to work in a world like that.

            1. Leave Concern for my Therapist*

              If you can’t do anything other than offer “Thoughts and Prayers” or to “talk” then yes, please ignore me and go about your business. If I wanted to talk to you I would.

              I have a therapist, you’re not it. I have friends, you’re not them. I have family, you’re not them. I work with you, that’s it. If you have concerns about my work, raise them with me or my boss. But don’t raise “concern” unless you can actually do something to help.

      2. ferrina*

        This made me laugh because it’s so candid and so relatable!

        I’ve noticed that the worst lows in my life have patterns- Descent, Realization, Climb Out, Semi-Stability.
        During the Descent, things are getting bad, but you don’t realize how bad. You think it’s a temporary thing, or it’s something you’ll learn to live with. Maybe you don’t even think it’s bad at all, like in a new job where you are excited to take on new responsibilities and prove yourself and don’t realize that the expectations are unrealistic. At this point it’s kind for bystanders to ask if you are okay or offer help, but I may not realize how much I need it.
        The Realization phase is exactly what it sounds like- the moment I realize how bad things are and that they aren’t sustainable. For me, this is often a quick moment, but sometimes this takes a few days or even weeks to be able to fully process. It can happen in fits and starts, or a slow working up. At this point, bystanders asking if you are ok often feels overwhelming, because everything feels overwhelming (at least for me).
        The Climb Up phase is hard. You are trying to both remove all the things that contributed to the Descent while also instilling new things to help with the Climb. It takes so much energy at a time when you have none to spare. Life doesn’t stop just because you are desperately trying to reach a goal (the goal of Being Okay). And each Climb Up phase looks really, really different depending on what resources you have, who is around you, and how confident you feel dealing with the issue you are tackling. And it really depends who is asking “are you okay?” I’m not going to break down with a random coworker, and it will take spoons away to mask (spoon theory has been so helpful for me when I’m in a Climb Out phase and feeling guilty for being exhausted). At that point, it’s frustrating. But sometimes I love being asked “are you okay”, because it makes me feel seen and like someone is checking in on me. And it also depends on the general timbre of that particular Climb Out- there are times when I was fueled by anger, that’s what keeps me going and climbing, and the anger can come from innocuous sources.

        Either way, I hate when someone asks “are you okay” but doesn’t want you to say “no”. Never ask a question that you don’t want to know the answer to. I won’t do a little dance to keep you from feeling awkward while I’m going through one of the hardest times in my life. The absolute worst is the Toxicly Positive Busybody, who wants to know everyone’s business and also wants everyone’s business to come with a neat, tied-in-a-box solution within 3 days. That inspires rage in me.

    6. Paint N Drip*

      It sounds like OP is trying to empathize with an addition of ‘I can see it and I don’t want you to get fired, bro!!’ which I think is kind. Everyone has their own personal math on this, but I’d assume that the stress of getting fired would be greater than the stress of knowing others see you’re struggling

      1. Observer*

        True. The problem here is that what the LW is proposing is not going to help the CW avoid being fired.

        Talking to the manager is, in fact, MORE likely to get CW fired.

        If they have a good relationship, they could say something, but it needs to less directive, a bit more empathetic, and more genuinely helpful. And they should also remember that they say that they “feel” like the would have appreciated the nudge, because they don’t really know how they would have responded. And that is, as they themself note, with the benefit of hindsight.

    7. learnedthehardway*

      Another vote for minding one’s own business, unless the coworker’s work affects your own.

      The OP really has no idea what is going on in the coworker’s life. It’s nice that they care and want to look out for the coworker by warning them that they appear to be burned out, but there are all kinds of other things that could be going on.

    8. Hamster Manager*

      What you can and should do is very obviously and openly do things like taking actual breaks/vacation, asking for help, handing things off, and negotiating balancing your workload; things that burned-out people often tend not to do, or sometimes even feel like they can’t or aren’t allowed to do. I also opt to take stuff off those people’s plates when I can too, like “hey I’m not super busy, how about I tackle that for you?”

      If you can get more people (especially their manager) on board with advocating for these things, it can help change the environment (even if only on your immediate team) and help out the coworker once they’re ready to start taking steps.

      1. Hamster Manager*

        Also, observe the language around the office, burnt-out folks tend to internalize the “omg we’re so busy/stressed, wow so much to do” as a non-changeable situation. Make sure you’re not contributing to that in conversation.

        If you’re in a daily-manufactured-emergency type of place, make sure to advocate for flexibility and push back on impossible deadlines when they’re not really as critical as they’re presented.

    9. Hanliu*

      I don’t think you definitely have to do something, but it could be good to approach the colleague and can be fine if you feel you want to do it. In case you’d like assistance in learning how to go about these kinds of situations in which you try to offer care to people while not knowing what’s their deal or whether they want any help, taking a course to become a mental health first aider or reading through some of the organisation’s resources could be of interest to you.
      https://www.mentalhealthfirstaid.org/

  3. Cj*

    things like the c-suite person having different titles might not be a big deal, I want do anything about that part.

    however, it seems to me like there is a 99.99% chance that someone wouldn’t have held several different executive positions and been a director before they got their degree in that field. does this ever happen, even rarely?

    1. MK*

      “He claims in the newer one to have held multiple executive positions in two industries (no mention of companies!) prior to jobs at the director level AND prior to finishing his degree in this field.”

      It doesn’t sound as if the executive positions are in the same field as the degree, actually.

      1. Cj*

        I read it differently, but now that you say that, I’m not sure. I think it could go either way.

      2. fhqwhgads*

        I read it as: was an executive in industry 1, then an executive in industry 2, then a director in current field (presumably director = lower than exec in this context), then got degree in current field.
        So I think yeah whether it might actually be true or not, it’s certainly a weird trajectory.

      3. Anataya*

        This sounds like the ad industry, and the titles used can be confusing to outsiders. Executive Creative Director is wayyyy higher than Art Director, which isn’t a “director” role in the sense that you don’t direct people, you direct art; think of it like the art guy Peggy worked with in Mad Men vs. Don Draper. If this guy was actually an Art Director, that’s a huge misrepresentation of his role.

    2. lyonite*

      The thing is, I worked for a very large company where the CEO was confirmed to have fabricated his education background (in a field where certain degrees are required for advancement, no less!), and nothing happened. CEOs aren’t hired for their qualifications, they’re hired for being able to glad-hand the right people, and once they’re in, nothing else matters. Don’t bother bringing it up; even if you’re 100% right, it will change nothing.

      1. Ellis Bell*

        Yeah, I’m sure there are companies that would care, but I think those companies would have done the due diligence? It’s not like it’s difficult to compare LinkedIn to a bio. I’ve worked in more places were the response would be a combination of “so what?” and “it’s weird you’re looking into this”. You don’t know why they hired him, and it may have nothing to do with his experience or dedication to truthfulness. It doesn’t sound like OP has a great handle on what exactly their concerns are except that it looks a bit fishy, and that they’d rather have a CEO with a better grasp of their own optics (but then, who wouldn’t?). There’s almost certainly something about this CEO that bugs them outside of this issue, but sometimes your concerns simply aren’t shared by the decision makers.

        1. ferrina*

          My first thought was “Did this company do due diligence in the hiring phase?”

          Because if not, I don’t know how helpful it will be for OP to try to bring it up now. I think there’s a higher chance of it coming back on OP. IME, the companies that like to cut corners in hiring and hire based on “gut feeling” absolutely hate being called out or proven wrong. They will go to battle to protect their ego and their “gut feeling”. But if you can make them feel like they are the wronged party and they did everything right (when you know they didn’t), sometimes you can get them to admit that a hire isn’t working out. But that takes a lot of political capital and Machiavellian maneuvering, and the outcome is far from guaranteed. There’s a much higher chance that they will get mad at OP inadvertently pointing out how they failed, and OP will lose connections and face political repercussions.

          Especially if the executive is much higher on the org chart than OP. Just hunker down and wait for the implosion. Might be a good idea to dust off the resume as well, just in case.

    3. bamcheeks*

      “Executive position” doesn’t necessarily mean “formal full-time substantive position in a large company with a corresponding set of responsibilities”. It can also mean “running one or more small companies / businesses on contract basis, overlapping with each other and some freelance / prospective projects; sometimes I put down the dates for my whole engagement with that project and sometimes I put the dates where I was actively involved on a day-to-day basis”.

      There are certain business areas where people’s CVs can get very messy with lots of overlapping projects and positions, and trying to tell any story of your career is about selecting and highlighting what’s relevant. Yes, some of this might look sus, but it’s completely possible that it’s all above board and accurate even if it’s not 100% consistent.

      1. AnnieG*

        I’ve seen LinkedIn profiles where people list their titles for freelance and MLM sales positions as CEO/President.

    4. Earlk*

      Very much depends on age and what kind of degree. Previously there were lots of roles that didn’t require a degree but you could go further with one and also lots of places that wanted an undergrad but not necessarily a masters.

      1. Hastily Blessed Fritos*

        Field, too. Back in the day there were a bunch of tech startup founders who didn’t bother to graduate college at all (most famously Zuckerberg).

      2. Antilles*

        Also, there’s a lot of times where field-specific experience and knowledge can substitute for a degree. A brand new 22-year old might need a degree in this field, but the 40 year old with lots of experience gets grandfathered in.

    5. M2*

      I know of a person who held executive level roles before getting their degree and I know someone with multiple degrees and different careers. There are tons of non traditional students. They don’t always put all their degrees or roles on bios or online (look at Alison’s advice).

      If your company does a background check which most do I would say mind your own business! Unless you suspect it is more egregious then bring it to HR. That being said do you and your coworker not have enough work to do in the day that you are playing investigator? Spend that time doing actual work. If this person seems to be doing something illegal or harassing or something bring it to HR for sure.

      It has happened before even at places like MIT and State Department.

      MIT’s dean of admissions had lied about her degrees and it was found out after she worked there a long time. Granted she worked there it sounded like for decades so when she started maybe they didn’t do background checks.

      And at state awhile back I believe it came out their third party that was meant to do background checks wasn’t doing them! That was a big deal. I’m looking online and can’t find anything on it but I’m pretty sure it was state or some federal agency and it was a few years back. Maybe I’m wrong since I can’t find anything about it online but I remember reading something about it I think.

      Also, personally I held many roles in different companies and different titles. On my bios it doesn’t always say Jane held all roles sometimes it usually has the one most relevant to my current role.

    6. Miette*

      Depends on the field. I’ve held several director and vp-level positions in marketing and didn’t have a degree in the subject matter (a masters) until 2020. All my knowledge was gained through on-the-job training and experience. If this exec learned on the job–which I can imagine to be a good possibility for creative services-related work–then they don’t necessarily need a degree in graphic design or whatever. My favorite graphic designer colleague has a degree in social work, for example.

    7. learnedthehardway*

      From a recruiting perspective – it’s not common but also not unusual for someone to complete a degree after several years of working. Some people DO get to a fairly senior level before they find that further career progression will be blocked if they don’t have a degree – and so they go do one.

      Also, people do get to senior levels and then step back to line level roles – some industries are notorious for eating their young, so to speak, and anyone who has moved between countries or entered a different industry – even moved across the country – may have taken a career step back to achieve their goals.

      Another factor the OP may not be considering – some companies have internal and external titles. This is a thing in financial services, for example, where a VP to external clients (because clients want to talk to a senior person), but may be at an Associate level to their internal team.

      In any event, the OP should be careful about how they approach this issue. Keep in mind that the hiring manager and HR may very well be invested in the hire – people don’t like hearing that they made a mistake. I would get a read on how more senior people perceive the individual’s performance and reputation in the company before mentioning the concerns. And then, pick the right person to raise these concerns with – ie. someone who can do something, someone who is not invested in the hire, someone who will take your concerns seriously. If there’s an ethics hotline where you can report ethical concerns anonymously, that might be a good way to raise the issue, if you feel you need to do so immediately.

  4. Nodramalama*

    I feel like there has been a recent influx of letters of people going on someone’s linked in, taking it as a source of truth and using it as a gotcha.

    I will happily admit that I use people’s linked in to see what they’ve said about their jobs or where they’ve come from. But I really think, especially in this case where we’re talking about a C suite where LW is likely not, I think you have to assume that the people who hired the person did their due diligence in hiring and checked that the experience included in their CV or in their interview is correct

    1. The Prettiest Curse*

      Digging for info on LinkedIn to try and discredit someone is a weird thing to do. It’s a social media site, not a huge tablet of stone that must display The One True Version of someone’s work history.
      And different companies and industries use very different job titles for the same type of role!

      Framing this as a concern about investors is also a bit off. If investors don’t do their own due diligence before investing, that’s really on them. And given the failure rate of start-ups, people who invest in them are used to losing a certain percentage of their investments.

      1. Nodramalama*

        Yeah I think it’s been framed as being concerning for investors because it sounds more legit than they don’t like the csuite so went snooping

        1. Pastor Petty Labelle*

          Ding, ding, ding. This concern for investors for a small private company from lower level employees seems a bit over the top.

          OP seems awfully invested in proving this person allegedly lied on their resume. All the digging around and internet sleuthing. Unless it directly effects their work, it is definitely a mind your own business situation.

      2. Allonge*

        Digging for info on LinkedIn to try and discredit someone is a weird thing to do. It’s a social media site, not a huge tablet of stone that must display The One True Version of someone’s work history.

        So I don’t disagree with your point, but it’s also weird that people consider looking at someone’s profile ‘digging’. It’s something public that the person it’s about is in full control of. And I also don’t see how it’s out of line to expect that by and large it corresponds with the truth, especially if it looks up-to-date.

        1. MsM*

          The thing is, when I look at someone’s profile, I’m usually just just double-checking the chronology of their hiring or where they went to school. I’m not then going to go and confirm exactly what level of seniority each of their titles supposedly reflects at their former companies unless they’re a job candidate, and even then, it’d probably only register as concerning if they claimed to be running the place straight out of school. This deep dive feels like looking for reasons to confirm an already formulated conclusion – and it may not be an unwarranted conclusion, but LW should probably focus on whatever they’ve done while at the current company to trigger this distrust.

        2. Sloanicota*

          It does sound like OP has invested some real time comparing different versions of this person’s work interview and looking for inconsistencies. I agree that the reason you actually distrust them may be more significant than whatever this is.

        3. The Prettiest Curse*

          I used the word “digging” because it seems like the OP did quite a bit of comparing this person’s LinkedIn to their other social media and their public bios. Maybe I’m cynical, but I expect someone’s LinkedIn to be correct in the broad details (education and where they worked), but not in the fine details (dates, work duties), just because – like all social media – there are built-in incentives to exaggerate in order to make yourself look better. And also, there’s a difference between standard business PR puffery and outright faking.

          Anyway, if this dude is as dishonest as the OP thinks, either they will flame out eventually or the rest of the c-suite already knows and doesn’t care. I don’t think the OP’s sleuthing will make a difference unless they discover a fake degree or something along those lines.

        4. Observer*

          but it’s also weird that people consider looking at someone’s profile ‘digging’.

          Yeah. But then you get to the point where the LW not only took the time to make the comparison, they also then went and did some “fact checking”. That’s a lot in this context.

          For someone doing the hiring? Not a lot at all, just basic due diligence. But what’s the LW’s stake here?

        5. sparkle emoji*

          I’d agree just looking is normal, but cross referencing and getting suspicious when things aren’t a perfect match is a little odd. It’s one of those things where there can be boring, innocuous reasons for a discrepancy.

      3. umami*

        That was my thought. LW seems to have spent an inordinate amount of time checking information against this person’s LinkedIn and multiple bios. Sounds more like an ax to grind and they are looking for a ‘gotcha’ to get this person in trouble vs caring about the company.

      4. fhqwhgads*

        It depends. It reads to me like what the person’s LinkedIn says is itself bizarre to someone in whatever field this is. Independent of the other stuff, like LW saw it and thought “whoa, weird way to state your experience, weird sequence of events”. So not that it’s the One True Version of someone’s work history, but that it’s a very weird history to present and combined with the other stuff, everything seems off, or not quite plausible. Especially if the bio, previous version of bio, and LinkedIn seem to contradict each other in concrete ways (as opposed to something more common like one mentions something the other omits).

    2. Brain the Brian*

      Completely agreed. I say this as kindly as I can to all these LWs: LinkedIn is very often wrong. Stop taking it as gospel — and definitely, definitely don’t try to pull a gotcha move on someone in your C-suite over it.

      My own LinkedIn page contains inaccuracies because it’s not possible to list some of my work history “correctly” using their formatting. LinkedIn is not reliable in the best of circumstances.

      1. Captain dddd-cccc-ddWdd*

        It isn’t always easy to align LinkedIn formatting with reality but in this case…. I don’t think we can attribute listing roles as “executive creative director” (when OP knows him to have actually been “art director”) to rigidity of LinkedIn. Job title and description are freehand fields…

        I do think that the higher up and more visible the person, the more onus there is on them to have accurate / consistent information out there. If OP has looked at their website and also his LinkedIn, so will potential clients etc and spotting this discrepancy would make me pause and wonder which one is actually true.

        I know these corporate bios are quite often fluff anyway but we do need to be able to trust that the people running organisations (like c-suite) are doing things correctly. If he would fudge his experience what else would he fudge?

        1. Nodramalama*

          But it sounds like the csuites ACTUAL corporate bio, being the press release and whatever is on the company’s website is not the document that LW thinks is misrepresented. If investors are doing this much research on the csuite they would probably know to go off an official press release and not someone’s linked in

          1. Captain dddd-cccc-ddWdd*

            > the csuites ACTUAL corporate bio, being the press release and whatever is on the company’s website is not the document that LW thinks is misrepresented

            Isn’t it? I read it as the corporate bio says he was an executive creative boss but his linkedin actually lists that history as art director. Regardless of which is claimed to be inaccurate though, fundamentally both the corporate bio and the linkedin detail are typed in voluntarily as freehand text, so the idea of being constrained by what a system “allows” to be entered isn’t valid here.

            1. Nodramalama*

              I think my comment accidentally nested elsewhere –

              It’s actually not clear to me because the letter jumps a bit between linked in and bio but I read it as the person’s linked in says they were an executive director and LW did their own digging and has determined they were an art director

          2. umami*

            I would also note that the corporate bio was likely written by a communications staffer, not the c-suiter.

        2. Hroethvitnir*

          Honestly, I think it’s a bit much to have gone digging through their LinkedIn, and I don’t think there’s any point in them being emotionally invested here, but personally my expectations of C suite are underground and I cannot believe I’m alone.

          1. Hastily Blessed Fritos*

            Not at all, but I think those of us who think the ability to dissemble and set aside integrity are pluses for C-suite at larger companies just don’t want to deal with the pushback.

        3. Nodramalama*

          It’s actually not clear to me because the letter jumps a bit between linked in and bio but I read it as the person’s linked in says they were an executive director and LW did their own digging and has determined they were an art director.

        4. Brain the Brian*

          Either way, the LW is going to come across as bizarrely nosy and an office busybody if they try to make an issue of this. Let it lie.

      2. Mary*

        I couldn’t put my last job in linkedin correctly as it’s not one of the options I can select. It’s annoying, but what can I do?

    3. Cj*

      it sounds to me like the bio is a real problem. there are several versions of it, and apparently only the most recent one lists the two executive positions and the director position. if he actually held those positions, it seems unlikely that he wouldn’t have had them on the previous versions.

      Also, I suppose it could be just how the companies categorize those positions, but isn’t an executive position usually
      higher than a director position, so they would have held the director position before the executive positions? plus what I said above about about them holding those positions before they had a degree in that field.

      the OP said they noticed discrepancies between their LinkedIn profile and their bio. they didn’t mention their CV at all. their CV was probably accurate, so any reference or background checks, etc. would have been fine.

      if I’m right that their CV was accurate, there isn’t an issue with them not having the education, experience, etc, that they were hired for. and the OP doesn’t say anything about that being a problem. what they are concerned about is the fact that there is a press release of their bio, which would influence people considering investing in the company.

      1. MK*

        Job titles are notoriously inconsistent across companies. let alone different industries. Also, the wording* suggests to me that this person changed fields at least once and probably twice, and got his degree sometime in the middle of that? Maybe he reached an executive position in Field A (or at least a position that is considered executive in that filed), changed fields and got a director position in Field B (normal to take a lower role if you change industries), then got a degree in Field C and is now working in OP’s company as an executive; the timeline isn’t spelled out in the letter and possible OP doesn’t know it herself.

        Also, it occurs to me that a buffed up resume might be exactly because of the investors. It’s common advice to tailor your resume to the role, so maybe he didn’t mention his previous career when starting work at OP’s company, because it wasn’t relevant, but now the company wants to impress investors, so maybe they asked their leadership to showcase all their accomplishments, even outside the specific field.

        “He claims in the newer one to have held multiple executive positions in two industries (no mention of companies!) prior to jobs at the director level AND prior to finishing his degree in this field.”

        2. Antilles*

          Also, it occurs to me that a buffed up resume might be exactly because of the investors. It’s common advice to tailor your resume to the role
          It is common advice and it absolutely applies to company biographies as well. Just like your resume, a company bio for a mid/senior level person is a marketing document that should be tailored to the needs.
          I have something like five different versions of my bio/resume on our company servers, each targeted on a specific sector of our industry. So if there’s a proposal for a government agency, they get a two-page resume showing my experience specifically with government agencies, curated to highlight the projects that they’re most likely to care about. There’s a different one for private-sector companies, a third specifically for the banking industry, etc.
          Does that mean any of these resumes are lies? No, they’re all 100% truthful, it’s just that none of them are completely comprehensive because they’re marketing documents intended to best make our case.

          1. loggerhead*

            Yeah, I write bios for my company. We do it collaboratively because we’re a small company, so I ask the person to confirm details. But that’s the only “official” bio. There are lots more out there that people use for different conferences, board memberships, etc. There’s just a lot of ways that bios can get written and passed around. If you’re writing a bio based just off a resume or off a particular set of questions things can look really different even for the same person.

          2. Allonge*

            Hm – of course it’s ok (recommended) to tailor your resume to the job / purpose.

            I don’t think that claiming to have had a role that you (general you) never did is part of this, especially in fields that have a stricter hierarchy of roles. Sure, you need to mention what you actually did so people understand, and that might mean some tweaking of the actual job title, but if someone is Llama Logistics Head, they should not say they were Senior Director of Mammal Operations, at least not without explaining what their actual responsibilities were.

            Now in a bio, you would not necessarily want to give all that detail, so it’s trickier.

      2. Cj*

        I wanted to say that I kind of worded it wrong about the bio affecting potential investors decision. I said that because the original poster had.

        but the person’s credentials may or may not matter. what the real concern is the person’s lack of integrity, but reading the bio isn’t going to let an investor know that. which I think is a big part of the reason that the poster wants to know what if anything they can do about it. it’s letting people know that they are lying, not necessarily that it is important for investors to know what they are lying about.

        1. Nodramalama*

          Well if LW thinks there are inconsistenties between different public documents, then a motivated investor can also do the same work, right?

          1. General von Klinkerhoffen*

            In which case this is an optics problem rather than an integrity problem.

      3. Nodramalama*

        I’d have thought that a press release on behalf of a company about a c suite would have been fact checked but maybe not.

        Also if I’m honest I don’t really understand what previous bios were inconsistent mean. Do they mean previous drafts, previous press releases, inconsistent with each other, inconsistent with linked in?

        1. Nebula*

          I took it to mean that bios published at different times contain information that seems inconsistent. I say seems because that could also be explained by emphasising different things for different audiences.

        2. fhqwhgads*

          I thought they meant the official bio from current company says something like “after previously serving as executive creative director in both industry 1 and industry 2, NewGuy found his passion in industry 3, where he served as director of something at Previous Place. After attaining his degree of Something, he now joins Current Place as Executive Whatever.”
          But LW also read their bio from Previous Place and it said something completely different and inconsistent with Current Place Bio. Something like “Starting in the mail room straight out of high school New Guy rose through the ranks to become art director of Previous Place”.
          Or possibly these were self-submitted bios from NewGuy. Unclear. But I don’t think the comparison is just corporate bio to LI. It sounds like it’s things the guy actually said or wrote himself, plus LI, plus talking to other folks in the industry who worked with him before.

      4. umami*

        This makes sense, because a corporate bio would be written based on a CV, and also written by someone on their PR team who is interpreting the CV and using their own corporate language. I wouldn’t put too much thought into whether LinkedIn matches with an online bio. I’m not really sure what LW’s desired outcome is here, but any action is not likely to put them in a good light.

    4. DJ Abbott*

      This gets into some thing I’ve been working with. I’ve posted before about how our newer than me department manager plays favorites, and is unprofessional and biased.
      Her favorites are people who act like her best friends. I am not one. She has made it clear that she doesn’t want to hear anything I have to say, no matter how helpful it would be.
      So I just don’t. I don’t tell her things that would help. I don’t approach her unless I have a specific question. Let her figure it out herself. Let her screw things up. It’s not my problem.
      OP, The people who were supposed to check this executive’s background either did their job or they didn’t. Either way, it’s not your problem. If you find out something that would cause danger to health and safety, or a huge scandal that could bring down the employer, then it would be good to say something. But otherwise, let the managers manage and go on with your life.

    5. Miette*

      This, OP. No one ever said a person’s LinkedIn needed to be the One Source of Truth. You don’t know if this person lied on their CV (which WOULD be a serious situation) or even what resources were used by the person who wrote the bio. Sounds like you’re out to catch this guy out for some reason–and who knows, maybe he really deserves it–but I think the inconsistencies you’re seeing aren’t the gotcha you think they are.

    6. learnedthehardway*

      If the profile is SIGNIFICANTLY different from the resume, it might be a good idea to ensure that the OP is looking at the same person. There are any number of people named Bob Smith, for example.

      I have to be quite careful to ensure that I am looking at the right profile when I interview people. There have been times when someone has applied to a role, and I had reached out to another person with the same name via another method to recruit them. I take the approach of hospitals – confirm that you’re talking to the right person before going too far. I’ll ask a candidate, “Just to confirm, this is Bob Smith who works at XYZ Corp, correct?” if I am not 100% sure I’m talking to that person.

    1. Ad observer*

      #1 In addition, it’s worth remembering that different industries and occupations have different expectations about puffery in resumes and bios.

      From his job titles, it sounds like the c-suite executive is in advertising or marketing.

      If he can deliver clients and great work, I don’t think anyone would care about any puffery in his bio, or if his name was Don Draper or Dick Whitman.

      1. Anataya*

        Disagree, art director and executive creative director are WILDLY different jobs in advertising. An AD can move up to an ECD, over many years with many promotions, but they are NOT the same job.

        Posted above:
        Executive Creative Director is wayyyy higher than Art Director, which isn’t a “director” role in the sense that you don’t direct people, you direct art; think of it like the art guy Peggy worked with in Mad Men vs. Don Draper. If this guy was actually an Art Director, that’s a huge misrepresentation of his role.

  7. Observer*

    #1 – Corporate leader possibly faking credentials

    I don’t really understand what you are after here. If you are right, I totally agree that there is room to question his integrity, and possibly the integrity and / or competence of the rest of the team who apparently hired someone with fake credentials.

    But your concern for the investors seems a bit over-drawn here. It doesn’t sound like your company is doing stuff that could put people in harm’s way, it’s not clear that his puffed up credentials are so important that they mean that it’s unlikely that he can do his job, and the information is so easily available that any investor doing basic due diligence has the same access to it as you do.

    That means that on the one hand, this does not sound like a major scandal brewing on the one hand. And on the other, to the extent that investors have a right to know, they do have the information readily available to them, if they choose to follow up.

    Why are you doing all of this checking, though? How did you “notice” and why did you feel the need to follow this up with some “fact checking”? I think that interrogating that would be a useful exercise and help you to figure out what you next steps should be.

    Also, you say “Also, our suspicions about this person’s truthfulness go well beyond his work history.” I would ask why? Are you seeing something that leads you to that, or is it the general principle that if someone is a liar, then you can’t trust them anywhere? If it’s that latter, I get it. But from what you say, you simply don’t have enough here to really reach that conclusion.

    Having said that, if you are correct and I were in charge of hiring, I would not hire him, and if I “inherited”, I’d be looking at his work*very* carefully. So, I get why the issue is bothering you.

    1. Nodramalama*

      Yeah, like I don’t know about America but in Australia the kind of stuff you get concerned about with misleading is investors is like, has the ceo concealed a conflict of interest or have they recieved a sanction or something from the regulator. Not, is their linked in accurate.

      1. Cj*

        I think it’s the lack of integrity that is is the real problem, not necessarily that the things in their bio that might be false or cause an issue for an investor.

        1. Captain dddd-cccc-ddWdd*

          Yes, any time something concerning happens it’s common (and right imo) for the natural response to be “yes, and what else?” Is it symptomatic? and most often it is, or turns out to be.

        2. Nodramalama*

          I mean they specifically talked about investor concerns. But if LW is cross referencing their bio in a press release against their linked in and thinks there’s an inconsistency, an investor can also do that if they’re that invested (lol) about a specific csuites experience

      2. Vaguely Sauntering*

        In Australia there have been some infrequent high profile sackings of an Exec who faked qualifications but they’re rarely mentioned in media.
        There’s a 9year old news article of an exec who pled guilty in court of attempting to obtain financial advantage by deception, (for outright lying through several jobs) and sentenced to 400 hours community service.
        There was also the 2016 reports of a Telco exec who apparently resigned for personal reasons during news report allegations of falsifying academic quals.
        But in each case I’d say the newsworthiness was due to the company size and brandname in Aus, not of the person

        1. Nodramalama*

          I would say that faking qualifications is much worse than your linked in being wrong.

    2. Nocturna*

      I’m wondering if the general suspicions about the CEO’s truthfulness are why LW went looking. It may be that they have a sense of something being off in general, but the CEO’s work history was the only thing they could actually look into themselves, so they’re trying to use it as a sort of bellweather as to the CEO’s general truthfulness.

      1. The Unspeakable Queen Lisa*

        Yeah, I think this is the case. C-Suite is a lying weasel, so when OP saw the press release they thought they had something concrete to nail them with. And leaking it to the investors seems like a handy tool to get the weasel ousted.

        1. Slow Gin Lizz*

          I’ve been in a similar situation wherein I had a coworker who was a liar about work things and just for fun (I didn’t have a ton to do at that job) I went digging into her work history and uncovered some lies there as well. But I never did anything about them because it was irrelevant; the work lies were the issue, it was only that discovering she’d lied about her work history helped solidify my impression that she was not a truthful person. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much I could do to convince the higher ups that she was a liar so I left that job when I realized that my bosses weren’t going to change. Worked out nicely for me though because now I am at a job where I get paid almost as much as lying liar does whereas at OldJob I made about half what she did. I’m kind of thinking of doing the petty thing that someone said her husband did to his OldJob wherein when his salary at his new job reached double what it had been at OldJob he sent a thank you card to his old boss and when it reached triple he sent flowers. Except I don’t want to remind this person that I exist so I won’t. Maybe I’ll send flowers to myself instead.

      2. Miette*

        We don’t know that the guy’s the CEO or not, just that he maybe held an art director position based on LI and the bio claimed it to be a higher position.

      3. New Jack Karyn*

        Yeah, I’m kind of here. I recall at least one letter in which the applicant lied about something (in one case, a high school diploma), and there was a large faction who wanted to fire her because of the dishonesty. She was killing it at the job, but people advised LW to fire the woman because she lied about something that was not necessary to succeed in the role.

        And here’s everyone breaking their backs to excuse a C-suite exec for playing fast and loose with his background. Make it make sense.

    3. Four Cats*

      LW is assuming the exec wrote the bio. It is entirely possible this was the handiwork of a communications person. Ideally you should be reviewing such text about yourself but that doesn’t always happen, esp if there is a rush to get content posted for some deadline.

      1. HSE Compliance*

        ^This! Even I’ve (def not C-Suite level) have had someone either send to me for review OR just go ahead and send out completely wild things for intro to company type of bios. Usually they just don’t know enough about my field and use terminology/wording that doesn’t mean what they think it means. Or math is hard. I’ve managed to gain degrees I don’t have and decades of experience I didn’t have. Sometimes it’s copy paste from something similar-ish and details are missed.

        Not to say that the CEO may *otherwise* be untrustworthy, but the exec bio could have been not actually from him.

        1. sparkle emoji*

          Yep. In my current, non-C suite role, my manager wrote my internal company bio and included some details he half remembered. He also misspelled my name. I corrected the name because that’s kind of important, but I let the rest go. If someone called me a liar because a bio I didn’t write was wrong, I’d be miffed. I’d leave this alone because there’s too many other reasons for inconsistencies besides the Exec lying.

    4. Sneaky Squirrel*

      The concern for the investors seems to me like an ingenuine excuse to escalate their discoveries. It’s giving the vibe of someone who had a bone to pick with a particular C-suite executive. It’s possible they already didn’t trust their C-suite executive for other reasons and that lead to the search.

      I think it’s entirely possible, maybe even likely, that the C-suite executive inflated some of their titles. I’m not so sure this is something that I would care about if it were reported to me. The evidence appears flimsy, not based in anything that could be considered a hard fact and nothing that LW lists is something that I feel changes the C-suite executives qualifications to do their job. I’ve seen a number of resumes where someone claims to be the Executive or director in a company of 1. I roll my eyes at it, but I don’t consider it to be a lie.

  8. Captain dddd-cccc-ddWdd*

    OP3 (are you obligated to share every piece of feedback): You’re a manager, not a parrot. This is where the managerial judgement and stakeholder management comes in. If the stakeholder is a bit of a ‘whiner’ generally and it is an outlier, there’s probably nothing to be done (although make sure there isn’t a repeat of whatever was complained about). If it’s a pattern, address it. Right now it’s the start of a potential pattern (but so are numerous things that never end up becoming a pattern).

    In some cases (not sure if it’s true here) part of the management role is defending your own direct reports against criticism like this, if the stakeholder is in the wrong.

    1. Person from the Resume*

      The answer for this type of incident seems to be it depends and will this help future interactions/actions. The answer is probably the manager doesn’t need to pass it on, but should keep an eye out that the new employee needs further guidance in this area. But it could be helpful if they work with that internal stakeholder again so they can adjust their communication. It really depends if the manager thinks the employee is weak in that area or just was learning the process.

      Feedback managers should not pass on … somebody (not named) said you are X (like rude) but there’s no context or details so nothing actionable. So and so said that you are X (like violating dress code) but I don’t agree. If the manager doesn’t agree with the feedback, they probably shouldn’t pass it on.

    2. learnedthehardway*

      Considering the source is definitely a good idea here. It might also be a good idea to let the new hire know that the source is extra picky, too.

      1. Lw3*

        I’m LW3! Anchoring on feedback about actionable things is so important. I’ve been at “heavy feedback” orgs before where every little thing was expected to be communicated (usually anonymously) so I may be a little skewed because of that. My current company has a lot of politics and the stakeholder in question is an “OG” so I’m leaning towards sharing the feedback as an FYI on perception/politics, not criticism.

        1. Kit*

          Yeah, being careful about framing it as “this might help you navigate our internal company politics better” is a great way to make sure that your employee knows their performance in general has been good, but that they may not have been aware of the nuances of interacting with this particular big cheese. I would have absolutely appreciated that kind of heads-up as a lower-level employee, and it’ll reassure them that you’re trying to support them across all aspects of the job.

  9. Observer*

    #2 – Possibly burnt out coworker.

    Whatever you do, do not even consider going to your manager over this. It’s not your job to make sure that everyone is doing top notch work and toeing the line on every work policy, no matter how important it is (not).

    Your work is not being affected, no one is being put at risk, there is no potentially illegal or unethical behavior going on here, and your boss has at least as much information here are you do. And there may be a lot going on that you have no idea about. Which means you have no standing to report this.

    Now, if you have a fairly strong connection with this guy, you could say something to him. But that’s where it ends.

    1. Brain the Brian*

      Agreed. I am forever burned out and find it hard to motivate myself, and I would appreciate it if one of my close coworkers told me in confidence that my performance was obviously slipping. I would *not* appreciate them going to my manager.

    2. LW #2*

      Talking to the manager was only on the table because we share the same manager, and I generally trust that the manager has everyone’s best interests in mind. However, my manager has only worked at one company (this one) and I’m not entirely confident would be able to recognize burn out if he hasn’t seen it. I wanted to nudge my manager to maybe offer help but I don’t think I can do that in a way that won’t cause collateral damage.

      Ultimately, it’s not my job to manage this situation, and I’ve realized that me trying to help is just as likely to cause more grief.

      1. Observer*

        That’s the bottom line. I don’t think there is much you can do here. Unless you are aware of resources that he might not be. In which case you could say that it looks to you like he might be having a hard time, and these are resources that might be useful.

        It is kind to want to help. But, as you can see, it’s important to make sure that what do is not actually harmful.

  10. Trick or Treatment*

    #5 (travel for training): I’m also a remote worker and have been asked on several jobs to attend training/onboarding at the office in the first week.
    Very often, the company is not setup to book it for you or pay it upfront, because you’re not in their system yet as an employee to attach it to. So in my experience, the expectation has always been that this one time I book (and prepay) myself and then submit as an expense once I’m officially employed.

    I would expect that yours is the same but if in doubt, Alison’s script seems excellent to clarify. It’s a very normal question, and there’s absolutely no need to get into your personal financial situation.

    1. CompanyMustPay*

      I have never been asked to pay for this and would not agree to do so. Most people I know could hot afford to spend thousands of dollars on work- related travel. This us especially true if they have a gap between jobs. Even if they could afford it, expecting someone to outlay that much money in hope of eventually getting reimbursed when there hasn’t been a level of trust built from actually getting paid on time is ridiculous. If companies can pay for travel for candidates, they can pay for employees.

        1. Somehow I Manage*

          I’ve traveled twice for recruiting trips and both times, I’ve had to pay for my flight, rental car, and submit for reimbursement. Hotel was covered because the company had a relationship they’d established.

        2. I'm just here for the cats!!*

          Exactly! If they can do it for someone who is not even hired yet they can do it for someone who is. It just takes someone entering the information into their system. Now I can see not having a company credit card in the person’s name, as that can take several weeks to go through. But they should still be able to at least book a room for the person and reimbursse for meals.

      2. Trick or Treatment*

        That may be a regional difference then? My experience was in Europe (2 different countries) – our countries are smaller, travel usually not as expensive. I understand though. If it’s that much in the US (or elsewhere) it would be too much of a financial burden.

        If companies pay upfront in your experience, then even better!

      3. Somehow I Manage*

        IF (big IF because I’d hope that a company that has remote employees coming for training would have something set up internally to cover costs) an employee is expected to pay and be reimbursed, the company needs to be very up front about the reimbursement process and timing. If I’m floating a hotel cost on my credit card, I’m going to want to know that I’ll receive my reimbursement in time to make my payment.

      4. Not the class clown*

        This was how my most recent job worked – employees booked their own airfare and hotels, paid out of pocket for meals and other expenses during the trip, and only got reimbursed for it after, usually a month or so later. It’s a terrible practice, but I don’t think it’s uncommon :(

    2. Person from the Resume*

      I feel like the question asks “they haven’t offered me any info on travel, do you think that means I need to arrange it myself and pay for it?”

      No. They haven’t mentioned the training yet, ask about it. That doesn’t mean you’re expected to pay for it or handle all the arrangements yourself.

    3. Beth*

      I’m especially unsurprised that they’re not proactively reaching out about this because it’s a startup. There are many great things about working at a startup, but one of the downsides is that their processes are often in flux as they’re still being built! Like Alison suggests, reaching out to ask for what you need is the fix (and you should expect to continue to do that when you find “wait, we don’t have a process for this?” moments in the future).

    4. Ginger Cat Lady*

      You absolutely SHOULD be set up in their system as an employee when you are in the office doing training for the job. If they can schedule you to be there for training, they can get you set up for expenses.
      Not to mention lots of companies manage to pay expenses to fly people in for interviews, and those people haven’t even been hired yet.
      NEVER front a company expenses for training. Or anything, really. Companies should not be asking employees to cover business expenses at all. If your excuse is “we’re not set up to do that in our systems” then get your act together and set up a system for doing that!

      1. New Jack Karyn*

        This isn’t really reasonable for a lot of people. Lots of places have folks submit for reimbursement, and it’s not a huge deal. I’m thinking meal vouchers, gas/petrol costs for driving–not airline tickets or hotels, those are too big and the company should set those up.

    5. Rana*

      Exactly this. Almost certainly you will be asked to book your own accommodations and then get reimbursed once you are an employee. They likely aren’t set up to easily reimburse you before your first day.

      So ask, just as Alison lays out. If they explain that they want you to pay and then get reimbursed after you start, and if this is a hardship for you (don’t have enough credit, just generally nervous about it, whatever the case may be), you can politely ask if they would be able to book the accommodations on a company card instead. If it’s not a hardship to wait a few weeks to be reimbursed, I would generally trust that this is going to happen and not worry about it. But it is not unreasonable to ask for it to be put on a company card if you need that.

      Many, many companies ask employees to book their own travel and get reimbursed. This is very normal and nothing to be outraged about (as some commenters in this thread are). If it is a hardship to outlay the money and wait for reimbursement, all reasonable companies will work with you (as a new hire like this or as an existing employee) and go outside the regular process. But it is not outrageous for the standard process to be a reimbursement. In fact, many employees much prefer it because it makes the booking process much easier (no back and forth with an admin), more likely to accommodate your specific preferences (since often you get to be the one picking the hotels, within cost guidelines), easier to adjust if needed (because everything is under your name and card, so no need to loop in an admin), plus you get to keep reward points from your own credit card. Again, for some people this won’t work and they should feel free to ask for a different process – but for the majority of people and companies, it works just fine.

      Now if you are expected to pay the cost yourself with no reimbursement, *that* is actually a big deal and you should push back regardless of your financial situation.

  11. Dark Macadamia*

    #4, one of the search results is an AAM post from 2018 (“you need to write a better cover letter”) where people complain about this phrase in the comments!

  12. Richard Hershberger*

    LW4: I find bizarre the idea of even thinking about penalizing an applicant for a crappy cover letter, or even for copying a crappy cover letter from somewhere else. The point of a cover letter is to highlight your application. It is not itself part of whether or not you are qualified for the job and would do well at it. Well, I suppose if the job involves creative writing or some such it would, but in the general case it does not.

    I have seen this before. Some piece of advice is put out there on best practices for job hunting. The post-interview thank you note is another example. This piece of advice then gets turned around and treated as a check box by some employers. No thank you note? Bad cover letter? Into the trash can! This is ridiculous. Imagine comparing two candidates. A is more qualified than B, but B had a gangbuster of a cover letter! Which do you hire?

    1. unintended consequences*

      But surely the more frequent issue is that candidates A through D are close enough to equally qualified that the hiring manager is looking for differentiators.

      I think an unspoken underlying issue with job hunting is that due to the internet, it’s easier than ever to apply for many jobs. Unfortunately, that means that due to the internet, every job posting has more applications than ever before, even if there were zero change in the ratio of applicants to postings. As such, hiring managers are looking for ways to differentiate a flood of candidates that otherwise may look pretty similar. Then, the obvious top candidates will likely end up with multiple job offers, while dark horse candidates have to wait for the top candidates to sort out their own decisions.

      Now, with tools like generative AI, it is becoming easier than ever to prep materials for a job posting (not necessarily high quality materials, but materials nonetheless). This will soon mean that every job posting will be receiving EVEN MORE applications, thus intensifying the above cycle.

    2. Insert Pun Here*

      If a job involves a lot of writing or communication, a cover letter is extremely relevant information about the applicant’s skills and does, indeed, give the person reading it additional information about their qualifications.

      With that said, for an entry level writing-heavy position, I wouldn’t ding someone for some formulaic text as an opener or a closer in a cover letter. But an obviously AI generated letter goes right into the trash.

    3. Snow Globe*

      As AAM says, the point of a cover letter is to improve your chances. A cover letter should be used to explain things, like how past jobs involved skills A and B, which will translate well to skill C, a requirement for the job in question, or to explain things that could be problematic, like a gap in a resume or plans to move to New Job city in the next month, etc. A cover letter of vague blandness that doesn’t say anything substantive doesn’t help your candidacy, even if the hiring manager doesn’t “ding” the person for it.

    4. umami*

      The materials usually come into play well before choosing a candidate – it’s about narrowing down your pool to the candidates who seem to be the best fit. If I am reviewing applications (and yes, I look at ALL submitted materials), I will definitely single out the ones who present themselves the best. If someone has a great resume and a crappy or boilerplate cover letter, but 10 other candidates have great resumes and cover letters that are tailored to the position, why would I put the first one in the pool? It’s about differentiating yourself to the hiring manager, and when you are reviewing sometimes hundreds of applications, it starts with submitting everything that was requested, and then having done a good job with each item.

    5. Excel Gardener*

      Agreed, and I don’t think most hiring managers do this.

      One of the few things I disagree with the AAM conventional wisdom on is the importance of cover letters. Even though I’ve always put a lot of effort into cover letters and followed Alison’s guides on writing them, I’ve never had a hiring manager even once mention my cover letter. In fact, I’ve had bosses say they view cover letters more as formalities. And I see many job postings that don’t even request cover letters anymore.

    6. NotAnotherManager!*

      The jobs I typically hire for have a heavy proofreading/copyediting and attention to detail component, and cover letters generally demonstrate how proficient the candidate is at both. The sentence LW4 provided is also grammatically incorrect, so, yeah, I do care about a copy-paste in which they couldn’t find/fix the grammatical error. They also have to communicate with people who write for a living, so being able to draft a coherent, filler-free email is also important.

      To me, it’s like audio/visual presentation with courtroom arguments – if they’re used correctly and seamlessly, they enhance the presentation. If there are technical hiccups and lags, it greatly detracts from the actual point. If you submit a bad cover letter with a good application, it can negatively impact you more than just not submitting one. I would not bounce my only qualified candidate for it, but a qualification tie would go to the person who can write/edit well.

    7. Observer*

      The point of a cover letter is to highlight your application. It is not itself part of whether or not you are qualified for the job and would do well at it.

      That’s not necessarily true. The cover letter can tell you things about a candidate that can matter. Like, for most jobs, if you take a candidate out to lunch, it’s not going to matter what they order or they choose the “right” fork (assuming there is more than one fork on the table.) But if you happen to notice that this person is rude to the wait staff, that’s relevant information. If the chitchat that often happens shows some negative behavioral traits, that can be relevant too.

      It’s not that interviewers take candidates to lunch as a secret test – at least they SHOULD not. But it’s still ridiculous to ignore relevant information that shows up in that lunch.

      Same here. Not very good cover letter? Not a big deal. A cover letter that shows that someone hasn’t used any sense or critical thinking? Or, in the case of IT, that they can’t figure out which tool to use and how to do so, why would I ignore that.

  13. No I in Team*

    A couple thoughts on letter #1. First, as someone who just moved our executive team CVs and certifications into our data room, I would assume serious investors will not rely solely on a press release or LinkedIn to do their due diligence on an executive team if previous experience is critical to the investment decision. When team matters the most is in earlier stages and investors, in my experience, take a close look. #2 Remember that executive roles are not confined to large companies. Totally possible that one of those executive roles in a nameless company was a position on a three-person team. #3 While it seems fishy, an eye-rolling explanation for title inflation could be to give context to the previous role. “Art director” in a tiny company may report to the CEO and function with certain responsibilities that you’d expect in a more senior title. I think it’s unnecessary to inflate and causes more confusion than clarity. But it happens and wouldn’t necessarily be a stain on integrity.

  14. Secret Service DEI Hire*

    LW 1 – Just admit you don’t like the C Suite member and would like to see them gone. Then, move on. Not your problem.

    1. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

      I wonder if the OP dislikes him because he is a jerk, or because he has made decisions which have adversely affected her, e.g. reorganisation, raises, promotions, extra hours.

      If he were just a coworker I’d definitely say MYOB, but he’s dishonest C-suite, so she is trying to punch up, not down or sideways. Morally I’d have no problem pushing a senior jerk / fraud into the shite, but in practical terms it would likely be difficult to raise the matter without damaging her own image.

  15. Irish Teacher.*

    LW1, my immediate thought is that if you and a coworker could find this information, then the odds are somebody on his level of the hierarchy or higher could find it too. His executive bio and his LinkedIn would surely be relatively easy for anybody to check if they wanted to do so.

    So if you are not in a position where you have the standing to raise this, I think you can safely leave it. It sounds like there’s a good chance somebody who does have the standing will find it, if there is an issue here. And they’d be better placed to tell if he actually is lying.

    Of course I don’t know what your position is or your coworker’s, so this is just if you are in a position where it’s not really your problem.

    1. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

      Sounds like she has no duty/responsibility to report, but either is in principle angered by a senior bod bigging himself up, or has a grudge against him specifically – maybe he’s a jerk or his decisions have harmed her career or working conditions.
      Likely safest to grit her teeth and MYOB.

    2. Hyaline*

      And related, in hiring this guy, most likely did exactly this and would have seen anything they viewed as a discrepancy. So they either are fine with the job title inflation and padding, or it actually isn’t inflation or padding and LW doesn’t have the insight to know any better.

      1. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

        Or another C-suite deadweight who landed a cushy job because he knows the right people, went to the right schools, so of course they don’t need to check his resume.

  16. Iced coffee*

    LW 4: I mean, I think the main issue is that these are cover letters for an administrative role. If that’s a requirement of the application process, I’d 86 that required step. If people are voluntarily sending these cover letters in, then I kind of don’t see the point of going all Mean Girl about it.

    1. Ginger Cat Lady*

      Is there something about administration roles that you think they should be exempt from cover letters?

    2. Jiminy Cricket*

      Asking for a solid example of clear written communication from someone who’s job requires written communication (as a corporate admin absolutely does) is Mean Girl? Did we watch a different movie?

  17. bamcheeks*

    very likely misrepresenting his work history

    LW, what you’re doing here is exactly what the people who write in saying, “How do I talk about non-conventional career paths?” are afraid of. Nothing that you’ve found here is evidence of someone misrepresenting their work history, and putting down the parent company rather than the subsidiary is not “a flat-out lie”!

    A lot of people don’t have straightforward or conventional “did my degree between the ages of 18-22, got my first job, then my second job, then my third job, all full-time with no overlap, no gaps and clearly defined job titles consistent with my responsibilities”. We see lots of letters from people saying things like:
    “how do I represent my freelance work”
    “I took a break in my studies and didn’t start/finish my degree until I was older”
    “my company changed name/structure during my employment there”
    “I was doing the work three steps up during my boss’s illness but didn’t have a formal change in job title”
    “my small company is weird about job titles and what I was doing there is what other people would call a VP role even though I was only a secretary”
    “technically I was on the payroll for this organisation until July 2022 but I stopped working for them in March and was on FMLA until I resigned”

    and so on and so forth– you could very well be seeing the answer right here!

    The executive’s bio does not need to meet legal standards of proof, consistency or accuracy, as long as their managers are happy with it. It’s not a legal document, it’s a press release. What you’re seeing as “misrepresenting” and “flat-out lying” could very easily be someone with less conventional career path but tons of great experience and transferable skills. You’ve got nothing, and if you tried to “raise concerns” based on this, I’d really be questioning your judgment.

    1. blah*

      Thank you. If someone on my staff came to me with this, my reaction would be, “how much time have you spent on this research?”

    2. Alphonse*

      I agree with EVERYTHING you wrote especially the final sentence (and I would also question why the original letter writer was investigating this in the first place — what motivated them to start comparing/contrasting information?); something doesn’t sit right with me here.

      But regardless, sounds like maybe the official bio needs an update, which is (in my experience as an events person) fairly common. Marketing or comms may even have been responsible for having written the bio and the exec just never proofed it (which is also fairly common).

    3. Peanut Hamper*

      THANK YOU!

      The executive’s bio does not need to meet legal standards of proof, consistency or accuracy, as long as their managers are happy with it.

      Exactly. I presume that they interviewed this person, did some verification, and ran a background check probably. This whole letter sounds like LW has an axe to grind, and if that is the case, they should really focus on that. Maybe that is the thing they should have written in about.

  18. El l*

    OP1:

    Will your company be doing something illegal if you don’t report this?

    Will your company be clearly exposing itself to massive liability if nothing is done about this?

    Will someone’s safety be compromised (e.g. they’re a commercial pilot flying on a fake license) if no drastic steps are taken?

    If you can’t answer yes to any of these, then thisll be the guy in the Mad Men episode talking about his boss’ past. “Mr. Campbell, who cares?”

    1. Alphonse*

      I wrote my reponse to another letter thinking of the exact same thing but you said it better than I could have. Who cares if Don Draper isn’t Don Draper – he brought in tons of $ and has a remarkable way with clients.

  19. Maggie*

    I was reviewing cover letters a couple months ago for the first time in years and it’s shocking how many are clearly AI. I didn’t let myself immediately disregard them but not surprisingly they were weak candidates. It’s really a shame how shortchanged people are in learning to write and it’s getting much, much worse. It’s all going to be meaningless word salad like LW4’s example soon.

    1. deesse877*

      The horrible thing is, people who use AI in this manner often genuinely can’t tell that it sounds awful and makes them look bad, because their skills are overall too low to realize how corny it is. They just know that it sounds different from their own first draft, and they assume that different = better. They might also have been rewarded somewhere along the line for using it to sound “more polished,” since after all plenty of audiences are fairly naive as well, and some affirmatively prize AI’s aggressive white and upper-class rhetorical coding.

      1. Humble Schoolmarm*

        I hate to blame yet another cultural phenomenon on helicopter parenting, but there is such a significant number of parents (not even close to a majority, but significant) who will pitch an absolute fit if you accuse their child of AI or plagiarism that I know a lot of the teachers at my level (middle school) will let it go because the risk of conflict (and that the powers that be will side with the parent) is just too high. Now, you might say that middle school is exactly the time to learn uncomfortable lessons about academic honesty (because it really doesn’t matter, at least where I teach), but there are plenty of parents who don’t see it that way.

  20. Apex Mountain*

    Sure the paragraph in the cover letter is unnecessary, and I don’t know why it would be considered such great advice that everyone is doing the same thing.

    But, we’ve seen here that when it comes to certain aspects of job hunting such as thank you notes from an interview, not everyone has the same background and knowledge about these things and we make allowances for that. Maybe cover letters are similar in that regard.

    1. Paint N Drip*

      I think you’re right and cover letters are SPECIFICALLY something that freaks people out! So they search online for guidance/reassurance or a draft to work from, and subpar copy becomes nearly universal. Unless the role requires graceful copywriting or being specifically savvy to hiring norms… we could all just give people some grace around this I think. The fact that we read this blog makes us a self-selected top 1% (or 5% or whatever) of people most interested in work culture, best job application/interviewing/hiring practices, etc. and MOST people aren’t (they just want to DO the job, which is a reasonable take I think)

    2. Hyaline*

      I agree with giving a little grace, but copying boilerplate bs from the internet is a) lazy and b) suggests the applicant has very few skills in terms of learning new stuff, figuring things out on their own, and displaying good judgment.

      1. Apex Mountain*

        Yes, if the candidate can’t learn new things or figure things out then I’d say they’re not a strong applicant. But I don’t think you can jump to that conclusion from a few sentences in a cover letter.

        I suppose it comes down to your candidate pool – if you’ve got lots of strong ones you can be very picky. If you don’t, maybe better to overlook things like this imo

    3. firelizard*

      Agreed- a lot of the business world also involves following certain forms to fit a “professional” image, most obviously dress codes (many/most unwritten). Cover letters and resumes have elements of that too. I can easily see people thinking some kind of intro sentence like this is expected in a professional-sounding cover letter since it’s so common, whether they think it’s logical or not. Just like including “statement of purpose” or “intent” in resumes is an outdated practice that some people still follow and may still be recommended by out-of-touch career centers. So yeah, I agree it’s dumb but wouldn’t penalize people for meaningless boilerplate most of the time.

      It’s good to get the word out that it’s unnecessary so applicants can avoid including it though!

  21. Thank someone I no longer work there*

    Re L1…I worked in local government for years. It’s not uncommon to have a generic title like Clerk 3 for HR purposes and what feels like 100 different titles like Volunteer Coordinator that people are actually using. Call HR and they’ll tell you the title is Clerk 3 and they may not even know what the department they work for uses for that person. I learned when hiring to look at the duties and ask if the duties were consistent with Clerk 3 duties in their city/county.

  22. Antilles*

    For #3, you need to review all feedback that comes in about employees and evaluate it before you do anything. All because feedback comes in doesn’t mean it’s valuable, doesn’t mean it needs to really be discussed, and frankly doesn’t even mean the feedback itself is right. I’ve certainly gotten some feedback about some of my staff which was completely wrong.
    It’s very much a case where managerial judgment comes into play.

    1. The Unspeakable Queen Lisa*

      And IME the worst thing a boss can do is say, “Well, I don’t really agree, but I had to tell you anyway.” Why? If you don’t agree and it’s not actionable, why dump it on me? It then leads me to wonder if maybe the boss does agree but wanted to pass it off as not their own idea. Ugh.

      1. MsM*

        I think it’s okay if it’s more of an “I don’t agree, but in case the complainer does decide to bring it up directly with you, I want you to be aware.” But yeah, just putting it out there with no further guidance would have me suspicious, too.

        1. Lw3*

          I like that framing! I’ve since heard that the stakeholder shared the feedback with a few other people before it got to me so I can head off any chatter that my direct report may hear. As I mentioned above, there’s a lot of politics in my org so if I do share, I intend to frame it as how you’re perceived/politics rather than criticism.

  23. heyella*

    #4: I work in one aspect of hiring at a large institution where I review every application that comes in for every posting and I’ve seen that exact wording probably once a week for the past couple of months. I think that it’s somewhere in a form cover letter generator because it’s usually accompanied by a very stock resume that is even more common. I cringe every time I see it because it’s just SO obvious–of course we are looking for someone who can do the job!

  24. JP*

    The company I used to work for solicited everyone and anyone’s feedback for employee reviews, and I learned then that you absolutely do not need to share every little bit of info that you receive with your employees.

    1. Lw3*

      I was at a similar company and I think that’s why I might be a little skewed! I’m going to do my best to filter the BS but still give her what I think will help her in her role and interactions.

  25. blah*

    LW1: are you concerned about this executive’s work? Is their work negatively affecting yours in some way? If not, why were you looking in the first place? I’m confused on how you got to this point in the first place.

  26. Somehow I Manage*

    OP5 – While we should be careful about making assumptions about anything, I think it is very safe to assume in this case that the company would be paying for accommodations, and probably other things related to the training. I too think you should reach out to HR and ask a few questions:
    1. How are arrangements handled for accommodations? Does the company book that directly or would I be booking that and turning in my expenses?
    2. What is the timing of the training?
    OP, you mention at one point that it could be up to three weeks, but later you mention hotel for a week. There’s quite a difference here. Being away for a week is one thing, but being somewhere for 3 is much greater. Is there an expectation that you’ll go home on the weekends? Is Friday a half day of training and you’ll be home by 5, or will you be getting home at 9? Are there training aspects that occur on a Saturday? Forgetting the cost of the hotel for a minute, they should be able to provide you an outline of what the day(s) look like.
    3. Are there other things I need to consider when I’m there for training? What are the hours, expectations, and logistics?
    For instance, are you expected to bring your lunch every day? Are there after-hours portions of the training? Do you need to bring anything with you? How far is the office from your hotel? Do you need a parking pass if you’re driving there every day?

    They have to have a reasonably solid outline of what training looks like when they’re bringing remote employees in, and it isn’t unreasonable to ask some questions.

  27. ecnaseener*

    LW3, if I were your report I would want to hear about it unless you think it’s truly useless like the dress code example (or unless your report clearly already knows about it). Starting a new job involves so much calibrating to your new office’s norms, hoping to get feedback so you’re not just flying blind, trying to make good first impressions.

    If you’ve been very pleased with their work so far, you’ve probably had little or no criticism, so this isn’t going to seem too nitpicky, especially if you’re clear that it’s a small thing.

    1. Lw3*

      Thanks for this reminder! My org is fast-paced and a little messy so making assumptions is rarely a good idea. The more I think about it, there is a way to frame it that’s not too critical and gives her actionable steps moving forward.

  28. Jay*

    To #5: The company I work for also requires these kinds of remote trainings, and all expenses and arrangements are covered by the company. Trainees are also paid for their time during this training. Just go ahead and ask them about arrangements. You might be surprised to find that they are quite reasonable and will treat a prospective new hire going through training quite well.
    To #1: That sucks. It really sucks.
    -It might just be that, like other people have said, you don’t have anywhere near the whole story. There is nothing you should be doing about this.
    -It might be, as has been pointed out, that this is just bragging and exaggerating on some things that don’t really matter much to his job duties. There is nothing you CAN do about this. And it’s not important enough to even try.
    -It could be you have run smack into the double standards between C-Suit and everyone else. It could turn out that he was hired less on the strength of his qualifications, and more on the strength of his parents belonging to the same country club as half the board of directors. His “resume” is just a bunch of random crap that looks good enough on paper to make it seem slightly less gross to a casual observer. A lot of very mediocre people rise very high in this world with such “qualifications”. I wish I could say you could do something about this. But you can’t.
    -It could be that you have stumbled onto a con man who plans to drain your company dry before moving on to the next one.
    If you have a well meaning, but slightly clueless upper management, in theory you might be able to do something. In practice you probably can’t. Your best bet is to get out while your current job still looks good on your resume.

    1. Raisin Walking to the Moon*

      #1 OP1 LW1 we had a very similar scandal at my current job, with a new executive who lied about an advanced degree and previous position. he was moved to a different physical location, but his title didn’t change, and he stayed for years before moving on.

      #4 OP4 LW4 in high school once a guidance counselor handed out a page of “scholarship opportunities” that were really just essay contests. One of them, from a horse riding academy, had a promp that I will never forget. “In 1,000 words, describe how our 10th Anniversary theme, ‘The Gait of Success’ has changed your life.”
      All I can say is that whoever managed to conjure a thousand words on how a throwaway party theme for a horse club they didn’t attend CHANGED THEIR LIFE probably gets flushed reading that sentence of yours. And those people end up, like, running companies and the government.

  30. el l*

    OP5:

    A company with remote workers will pay for onsites – it’s just a cost of doing business! Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Of course they’re going to pay for your travel costs and don’t expect you to.

    If you’re not hearing anything – well, could be disorganization. OR, a lot of companies with plenty of remote workers (e.g. mine) just leave you in charge of handling your own travel arrangements. I’d just phrase my request as, “I’m booking the travel arrangements, and you’re reimbursing me – right?”

  31. Nathan*

    Re LW3:

    I once had a manager share some feedback he had received about me with the framing of “someone said this and I don’t agree with it, but I wanted to pass it along anyway”. It was mildly negative feedback and I also did not agree with it. Either it was not accompanied by specific examples or he redacted them to preserve anonymity, so to me the feedback was largely useless. I left that conversation feeling unsettled and second-guessing myself, but with no concrete action items.

    I think there can be value in managers passing through some feedback they don’t agree with. Something like “I heard from one team member that you come across as aloof and unapproachable. You’ve always been warm toward me and made yourself available, but I wanted you to know that’s not everyone’s experience with you” could be helpful and actionable. Something like “I have heard others say they do not believe you have the public speaking abilities required by your role, but I have found you to be a good public speaker” is not helpful, since what exactly are you supposed to do about that?

  32. Sneaky Squirrel*

    #1 – What’s the right thing to do here depends on how large the falsehoods seem to alter the executive’s qualifications, how much evidence you have of actual untruths, and how much of a responsibility you have to your company to ensure that the investors are being given the truth.

    Many of your opinions of falsehoods seem to rely on social media profile and your expectations of traditional titling systems. There could be title inflation happening here, or there could be stories and explanations for many of the examples you listed that wouldn’t be considered falsehoods:

    -We both noticed that his executive bio, which is provided to press, doesn’t align with his LinkedIn profile.
    ^ LinkedIn is a social media platform and not a formal resume. People often conflate their titles, omit jobs, let their linkedin go out of date.

    -He claims in the newer one to have held multiple executive positions in two industries (no mention of companies!) prior to jobs at the director level AND prior to finishing his degree in this field.
    ^I’ve seen this a few times with small businesses, start ups, and contractors who establish their own business. The few staff who work in these businesses often hold a number of hats.

    -He claimed to have been an executive creative director at two companies where he was actually an art director, which is about 3-4 levels lower on the ladder.
    ^Do you know this to be true of the companies he claimed this to be working in or are you basing this off of traditional titling structures you’ve encountered? In small businesses, titles often get blended. They may have been both executive and director.

    4. Also, he worked for small subsidiaries in both cases, not the parent company.
    ^ In many cases, it’s actually easier to verify employment with the parent company than a subsidiary, especially in the case of a subsidiary that was bought out or where paychecks may have been handled by the parent company.

  33. MM55*

    #1 The disk – I used to send mail files to our ad agency, and almost sent a cover letter that started with “Enclosed you will find one floppy dick…” I am so glad I caught the error, the letter would have been framed for eternity.

  34. Trina*

    Yeah, both in general attitude and in their views on cover letters! Alison’s been banging the “a personalized cover letter can really strengthen your candidacy” drum for years and we’ve had plenty of folks follow up with accounts of how it did actually work for them, and to look at these comments you’d think cover letters had literally never been mentioned on this blog before!

  35. Industry Behemoth*

    Re OP5: Of course the firm reimbursed, but I’ve seen candidates and new hires make their travel arrangements themselves because they wanted the credit card points.

    Also, these days it may be better if they book their airline flights. To ensure no discrepancies between their name on the reservation, and their ID.

  36. gnarlesmarx*

    No, this is the worst cover letter in the world. It was sent to me for a position about 4 years ago:

    “I have lived for 18 years with a woman how had colitis and has gone through 10 or so surgeries (lost count) and now has Crohns. Been there and understand it. Progressive and diversified WHAT with proven effectiveness in project/contract management, contract negotiations, business development, litigation, and creative solution identification and implementation. Proven effectiveness in scheduling, budget development, goal setting, and team building, as related to multi-million dollar projects. Recognized ability to adapt senior management visions into goal-oriented and focused actions driven to yield continuous process improvement and improve the bottom line. Participated in litigations, on behalf of the company, assisting with researching, procuring resources, planning, risk management and process improvement. Utilizes strong leadership, organizational, and communication skills to maintain scope of project, adjust as needed, and ensure senior managements visions are successfully implemented.”

  37. CTA*

    #5

    Definitely get clarification from your employer about if they are paying for it. Usually, they should be paying your expenses.

    I once once interviewing for an apprenticeship and during the process I learned that: 1) 4 out of the 12 weeks required relocation to their HQ for training, and 2) the company wasn’t paying expenses for relocation and I would need to find and pay for my own housing. They didn’t even pay more than $20/hr for a fulltime, 12 week apprenticeship. If they required this of all their apprentices, they should have a housing plan and budget in place or do away with the training at HQ (why couldn’t it be done at the location we’d be assigned?). I know folks will say an apprenticeship isn’t the same as an employee. But I found it weird that this company I was seeking an apprenticeship with was offering to buy my plane ticket to go to an onsite interview for the apprenticeship. It was also suspicious that the temporary relocation requirement wasn’t mentioned in the apprenticeship listing at all. When I complained about it on Glassdoor, their apprenticeship page coincidentally was offline after that.

  38. Alton Brown's Evil Twin*

    OP1 – I think you’ve buried the lede, to use the old newspaper expression.

    You say at the very bottom of your letter “Also, our suspicions about this person’s truthfulness go well beyond his work history.” I’m assuming that’s important stuff about the business – lying to clients, fudging numbers, playing staff against each other. But it sounds like you’re only able to get some hard evidence about the resume stuff.

    If this person’s behavior causes you issues in your work, then you bring those actions up as appropriate one at a time. Starting out by calling a senior executive a habitual liar is probably not going to get you anywhere.

  39. Cat Lady in the Mountains*

    LW3: If you decide you want to share the feedback, I’ve found this kind of thing goes better when it comes with clear expectations about what you want your direct report to do with it – like “I realized I haven’t been explicit about this, but Stakeholder has the expectation for our team that [whatever the thing is], can you make sure that happens going forward.” That makes it feel like very routine, minor feedback that’s easy to implement. That framing also names that they may not have known about the expectation, and you didn’t spell it out for them, so it’s less “you messed up” and more “let’s get aligned on this.”

  40. Jack Straw from Wichita*

    RE #1 – Alison mentioned this, but as an illustrating example of titles varying between organizations: I am currently titled as “Team Lead, Accounting” where the same role at a previous organization was titled “Operations Manager” and at a third org I’ve worked it was listed as a “Director of Accounting.” All the same job functions, same level of responsibility and mostly same sized team between all three roles.

    At a previous company, my title was “Special Projects Coordinator”–I was a project manager. I spoke to that boss when I started looking for a job and asked if I could use “Project Manager – Special Projects” instead to accurately represent the role because I was applying for PM roles. (He said yes.)

    All that to say, they sorta mean nothing and that’s why providing detail and specifics on your resume is SO important.

  41. Danish.*

    #4 is interesting because I’ve seen that phrasing suggested as good to use… but in the way where it’s not generic.

    As in “it sounds like you’re looking for someone who is familiar with [a specific task, rephrased so it’s not just copied from the ad] and can [do X or y]”

    It’s supposed to demonstrate that you did in fact read the post thoroughly and are not just sending a generic letter. Of course, the suggestions I’ve read also say you should follow that statement up with an example of how you are familiar with Task and have performed x/y in the past.

    The completely empty example given in letter four reads like “I am so excited to apply for this position at your company” instead of “I’m so excited to apply for the copywriter position at Copywriters United”

  42. Tisserande d'Encre*

    Ha, the #5 sentence even has a joke about it on an NPR blog (don’t want to post the URL but the title is “How to write a cover letter for a journalism job or internship”)

  43. Headdesk*

    LW 4, I agree with those above that that is A) a circular and useless sentence, and B) job hunters are probably really struggling to find good help with cover letters. I know that whenever I google anything, the first half dozen results are identical AI generated junk that I then have to filter out or fact check. Cover letters are such a weird genre, that I sympathize with job seekers. I don’t know what your hiring pool looks like, but I’ve taught undergrad writing and a shocking percentage of students cannot identify a reliable source of information for love or money. I could see some of them thinking “Oh, these all say the same thing, so it must be true.” Copy/paste and assume the person reading won’t notice is also really common.

    I am currently looking for work and having the exact opposite problem in that every time I mention experience related to something specific in the job description in an interview I get told that the hiring manager didn’t know why that was there and it’s not relevant. I totally understand your frustration with stock replies that state the obvious, but my knee-jerk reaction was that often that sentence isn’t actually true. I get that HR sticks its nose into the ad and sometimes they just haven’t been updated, but really. Maybe that’s a Friday open thread problem. But also maybe you could be less snarky?

  44. Alice*

    Dear LW 2 — if you have a friendly relationship (not even friendship, just friendly) it would be fine to check in.
    BUT
    I noticed you lead with this:
    “more frequently working from home (we’re in office two days a week but he works remotely every other week with a new excuse)”
    This is not your business and it’s not your problem. You said yourself, his work rarely intersects with yours and his slow pace affects you to a small degree. Why are you even noticing how frequently he works from home? And investigating or at least evaluating his “excuses”?
    Eyes on your own paper!
    If you bring that up with him, he will think that you are paying him way too much attention (and he will be right).

    1. LW #2*

      We have a standard morning team meeting and he posts in team chat when he’s going to work from home. Because working from home when I’m otherwise expected to be in the office has been something I did in the past, I might be paying more attention to it than other people, but I’m not having to do anything I normally don’t to see this happen.

      1. Alice*

        That explains why you are aware of his location and his explanations. It doesn’t explain why you are evaluating them (“excuses”). This guy is taking up away too much of your attention.

      2. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

        Do you resent the fact that he can wfh so much while you would like to, but feel you can’t?

  45. Dawn*

    #2: If he’s “making excuses to work from home every other week” and otherwise seems run down, not super engaged, etc, those are all more likely signs that he’s dealing with something in his personal life – my guess would be that it’s medical – and that you need to butt out and let him look after himself.

    Just because you “went through this” for different reasons, doesn’t mean that your experience is shared by everybody, and he’s perfectly within the bounds of reasonability to “make excuses” if he doesn’t want everyone in the office to know, for example, that he or a loved one has cancer.

    1. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

      Also perfectly possible he just wants to wfh as most commenters here seem to. And he’s likely fed up with work, something most of us have experienced.

      1. Dawn*

        Absolutely, but the fact that it could be something else means that the OP even more so than normal shouldn’t be prying or assuming.

        Also, I think that’s a little less “likely” than you seem to. “Getting fed up with your work and dropping the ball on it” is less universal than you might think.

        1. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

          I’ve found people drop the ball more often because they are bored or fed up with the job than because they are ill or have problems outside work, but YMMV.

          However, it doesn’t affect her own work and she’s not his manager, so the OP should MYOB. Whether he’s bored or has personal problems she should keep her nose out.
          He hasn’t asked for her advice and alerting a manager would be a nasty overstep.

  46. The Other Dawn*

    RE: #2

    I think LW 2 could ask the coworker if they need help with a certain task or their work in general, but I think that’s as far as I would go. I wouldn’t tell them it seems like they’re burned
    out.

    As someone who has been burned out (years ago), I don’t think I’d want someone pointing it out to me. Had someone said something, it’s not as though I could have done anything about it. I was in a very small company with really no one I could delegate to. Sometimes it was because of a hiring freeze and other times it was because my boss would hire less-than-stellar people and they wouldn’t be around long enough to fully train. I couldn’t quit because money was really tight, and there weren’t a lot of jobs around.

    And now, as someone who is deeply unhappy with my work (new position in my current company), the only people I’d want saying something to me would be either my direct boss or my former boss, who is my boss’s boss. They didn’t, so I said something myself. I told them both recently how unhappy I am. It’s mostly because the position turned into something much different after I moved into it, mainly because of a leadership change. It’s not what I want to do, I’d never choose to do it, and I’m not good at it. As a result, things will be changing thankfully.

  48. Lapsed Historian*

    LW #1: You’re correct that this is securities fraud, because everything is securities fraud. If the company is misrepresenting the exec’s lies to shareholders as truth, that’s definitely securities fraud. But if the company isn’t publicly traded, you’re right that the SEC probably will care less and opportunistic investors will be less likely to sue. Still, though, definitely securities fraud.

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