Every year from March 20th through April 7th, millions of basketball fans are glued to their television sets watching the playoff progression of 64 starting college basketball teams that are eventually whittled down to one victor that is left standing at the end. This is the NCAA equivalent of the NFL’s Super Bowl. However, instead of just one big game in the case of the Super Bowl, there are 63 “Super Bowls” over a 3-week period to decide the NCAA men’s basketball champion.
Additionally, this is major executive recruiting event for colleges seeking a new head coach to improve their basketball fortunes. As a result, their management recruiters regularly scour through coaching accomplishments to uncover the best candidates for their needs. Then, they aggressively recruit the hottest prospects with offers of more money, better facilities and an increased chance to win the championship.
Steve Masiello was hoping to improve his status during this process. He thought he had finalized a job offer to leave his current head coaching position at Manhattan College for a more lucrative one at the University of South Florida including a significant raise to $1 million per year. Unfortunately, he not only lost his new opportunity, but also may have lost his previous one as well. A background investigation uncovered that Masiello had not graduated with a degree from the University of Kentucky as he had offered and the official bios on the University of Louisville and Manhattan College (his last two employers) websites had listed.
Lying about coaching credentials is a problem that has occurred previously in major NCAA sports. In 2001 Notre Dame’s executive search team recruited George O’Leary away from George Tech to become the head coach of their men’s football team. Unfortunately, a few days after he was hired, inaccuracies were discovered in his published biographical sketch and he was forced to resign. For example, he never earned a master's degree from “NYU-Stony Brook University”, which in fact was a non-existent institution and actually two separate institutions over 50 miles apart. Furthermore, he had taken only two courses at SUNY - Stony Brook, and never graduated!
Dishonesty about academic credentials is not isolated to NCAA coaches. In fact, many engineering recruiters, scientific recruiters, R&D recruiters, IT recruiters and technical recruiters regularly encounter this problem during searches for engineers, scientists, R&D, IT and technical talent. That is why as I recommended in a previous article at “Hiring Errors Prove the Need for Thorough Background Investigations!” to take an investigative approach to interviewing. As part of this approach, I recommend at least four investigative checks:
1. Criminal records.
2. Civil records (e.g. bankruptcies).
3. Educational credentials.
4. At least three thorough reference checks.
This is the case because past behavior is the best predictor of future job performance. Therefore, you should thoroughly investigate all job candidates before hiring. This will help you avoid mistakes like Steve Masiello or George O’Leary when you are recruiting for an important position at your company.
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