WATCH out would-be fibbers.

Business schools are cracking down on those who lie on their resumes.

This comes after a wave of cheating expulsions at several business schools in the US.

Admission officials at several top business schools have found a growing number of lies and half-truths in the resumes they review, reports BusinessWeek.

Though the number seems insignificant - about 1 per cent of the applicants are caught annually - the actual number of fibbers could be much higher.

And as applicant pools widen and competition intensifies, resume puffing is becoming a serious issue, several deans told BusinessWeek.

Mrs Mae Jennifer Shores, assistant dean and director of MBA admissions at the Anderson School of Management said: 'These candidates are going to great lengths, sometimes too great, to differentiate themselves. We (the admissions staff) have essentially become watchdogs.'

Puffing is a quick fix for the ones with less than desirable credentials. After all, prestigious MBA programs attract premium prospects with sky-high GMAT scores and several years of experience.

How they puff

During her 15 years at Duke's Fuqua School of Business, associate dean for admissions Liz Riley Hargrove has encountered several types of embellishments.

She said some applicants inflate their job responsibilities. Others invent extracurricular activities. A few even write their own letters of recommendation and forge a professor's signature.

If caught, they face harsh penalties from a call demanding explanations to being dropped from the admissions list altogether.

While Ms Hargrove calls resume puffing 'unfortunate', she admits it's tough to track.

Short of calling every source on every application from every candidate, Mr Bruce DelMonico, director of admissions at Yale School of Management, said they 'can't make sure information is 100 per cent accurate'.

But they are getting close. At Duke, recommendation letters are now cross-checked at random via personal phone calls.

At UCLA, candidates submit contact information for all extracurricular and volunteer activities.

At Yale, applications pass through Kroll, a third-party verifier.

After running a full background check, the service confirms each applicant's employment and education history, and resume discrepancies are flagged for staff review.

This article was first published in The New Paper on Sept 6, 2008.