Do you remember Marilee Jones? She used to be dean of admissions at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Hers was a long and noteworthy career. Jones started as an admissions officer and ended up in charge of admissions at an elite, selective school. MIT honored Jones with several, prestigious awards. Jones wrote a book on the admissions process for students and their families that won praise from reviewers. By all accounts, Jones was particularly good at her job.

In 2007, Jones left MIT after it became widely known that she had lied on her resume, adding academic degrees that she had not, in fact, received.

In France, where I live, the potential consequences of falsifying a resume are not always clear. If a candidate invents professional qualifications –as a doctor, a lawyer, a surveyor– his employment can be terminated. If a candidate invents past performance –employment at a specific firm, or achievement of specific results– her employment can be terminated, if the the misrepresentation concerns an essential point, without which the employer would not have offered the position to the candidate, and if the falsification is discovered fairly soon. By contrast, a candidate who lands a job with a falsified resume, and who performs well in the position, probably cannot be fired for the falsehood.

Marilee Jones’s case was not contested before courts in the United States –maybe legal defenses were open to her– and of course it did not reach a French court. So I will not go so far as to pronounce a legal difference in employment rules in France and the United States. But I am struck by a difference in expected response to resume fraud.

American commentators on the Jones affair accepted the justice of Jones’s departure. Hers was an original sin, repeated in each iteration of her resume. She deliberately made a false statement in order to obtain employment. She lied. This suggests dishonesty, unreliability, a penchant towards fabulation.

But does it, really?

I’m not sure. By all accounts I’ve seen, Jones was not only competent, but a star performer in her chosen field. Does schooling done (more than) 25 years earlier have any bearing on what she had accomplished and was doing in 2007? I think not.

By contrast, French commentators on hiring practices seem to be moral relativists. Employers and candidates all accept that the resume should be truthful. But all seem to expect –or accept– embellishment. Many employers are complicit in “made up” (the French term, maquillé, refers to make-up that women wear, not the act of invention) resume entries because they do not verify new hires’ resumes.

Do the French tolerate what are just white lies?

I’m not sure. Shouldn’t a candidate be hired for what she can do, instead of where she has already been? Are degrees awarded really so important? Are honors and distinctions received in the past really good predictors of future performance? Is exaggeration or self-flattery to gain an edge over other candidates in a hypothetical pile of resumes truly unrelated to character?