The truth always comes to light.

 

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE:WMT)’s official resigned after a misrepresentation in his résumé was learnt when a due-diligence screening was done by the U.S. retailer giant.

Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT)’s former chief spokesperson and former vice president of communications David Tovar resigned on September 12^th after an anomaly in his résumé was discovered.

 

For eight years, his 1996 Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Delaware has been in his official biography. However, the company’s due-diligence screening process revealed that their vice president of communications did not in fact earn such a degree. Rumor has it that the screening was due to an investigation on an alleged fraud in one of the company’s internal divisions.

 

While Tovar did go to the University of Delaware’s College of Arts and Sciences, academic records assistant of the university, Janice Wiley states that he discontinued on May 25^th 1996. The remaining semester, which mainly involved the graduation requirements like year-end coursework and projects, was not attended to.

 

His boss, Dan Bartlett, executive vice president of corporate affairs for Bentonville, Arkansas-based Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE:WMT), gave the former a chance to explain his academic records. However, Tovar did not address the queries about his university background.

 

Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) released a memo regarding Tovar’s departure on September 12^th but did not detail why he left the company. The questioned academic record was also not included in the farewell letter Tovar distributed to the media.

 

Tovar was responsible for managing Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT)’s communications on food stamps, product innovations, and sustainability. He has been the retailer giant’s voice as well on the ongoing investigation about the company’s alleged violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Moreover, the company included the handling of communication activities across all its businesses in the United States in his list of responsibilities too.

 

While the recent months have been challenging for its competitors such as Target Corporation (NYSE:TGT), Supervalu Inc. (NYSE:SVU), and The Home Depot, Inc. (NYSE:HD) due to breaches in their payment processing systems, Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) has been able to prevent such attacks in theirs. The company is currently extensively involved in strengthening their relationship with customers and neighboring communities through their international expansion and welfare campaigns.

The discovery, however, revealed a crack of the company’s recruitment and verification procedures.

 

While it cannot be denied that Tovar had the skills and talents that an effective vice president of communications should have, one cannot help but wonder how his academic background detail remained unknown to one of the biggest retail companies in the Unites States for eight years: negligence or disregard? Either way, Tovar probably impressed his interviewers immensely as an applicant; and as he went up the corporate ladder, neither their human resources department nor the company’s management in general thought of running the compulsory background check that is done for every applicant.

 

Embellishment of academic credentials is nothing new as this has already happened to several companies such as Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO), RadioShack Corp. (NYSE:RSH), and Microsemi Corp. (NASDAQ:MSCC). Currently, Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) is on the hunt externally for prospective candidates to fill Tovar’s seat.

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