May 7th, 2012 
AT2W Staff 
Photo courtesy of techtouche.com
Yahoo! CEO Scott Thompson Risks Job for Misrepresentation on His Resume
It’s always been clear to us, as many of AT2W’s staff have worked in Corporate America, that many people exaggerate their resumes’. It was also evident that certain people are able to get away with it for some time as they rake in some serious wages, while they have misrepresented themselves. The bad part is when a corporation gets wind of it and what they actually do about it. Do they turn a blind eye because it’s embarrassing or are they even concerned about deceiving others?
Well, see for yourself what happened at Yahoo!:
Scott Thompson’s reign as Yahoo’s CEO is in jeopardy after just four months on the job because he allowed an inaccuracy about his academic credentials to recur for years.A major Yahoo shareholder who exposed the fabrication is now leading the charge to oust Thompson for unethical conduct. In a letter Friday, activist hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb demanded that the board of the struggling Internet company fire Thompson by noon EDT Monday or face possible legal action.“CEO’s have been terminated for less at other companies,” wrote Loeb, who controls a 5.8 percent stake in Yahoo through his hedge fund, Third Point LLC.Yahoo reiterated Friday that “the board is reviewing this matter and, upon completion of its review, will make an appropriate disclosure to shareholders.”Thompson’s troubles revolve around an exaggeration about his education at Stonehill College, a small Catholic school near Boston where he was graduated in 1979.Since announcing Thompson’s hiring in January, Yahoo had included two bachelor’s degrees — one for accounting and the other for computer science — on the executive’s biography. The dual degrees appeared on Yahoo’s own website and in an April 27 legal document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.After being confronted Thursday by Loeb, Yahoo confirmed that Thompson received only an accounting degree from Stonehill. Yahoo has since removed all references to Thompson’s education from his bio on its website. The company hadn’t amended its SEC filing with the inaccuracy as of late Friday.It’s unclear whether the inaccuracy about the computer science originated with Thompson or someone else at Yahoo.But Thompson’s bio with dual degrees periodically cropped up before he joined Yahoo. He was listed with a computer degree on a website touting his appearance at the Web 2.0 technology conference in 2010 while he was running eBay Inc.’s PayPal payment service. The computer science degree also has appeared in Thompson’s bio in connection with his 2008 appointment to a Silicon Valley startup, Zuora.EBay listed only Thompson’s accounting degree in its SEC filings while he was working at PayPal.Even if Thompson didn’t personally write his biography, he almost certainly reviewed the information at some point and should be held accountable for the distortion, said Charles Elson, director of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware.Elson believes Yahoo’s board needs to dump Thompson or “it will face questions about its own effectiveness.”
Read the entire report HERE
UPDATE: Yahoo CEO issues apology: “We have all been working very hard to move the company forward, and this has had the opposite effect,” Thompson wrote. “For that, I take full responsibility, and I want to apologize to you.”
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