An elite school name on LinkedIn can create instant credibility, even when the underlying affiliation is far more limited than people assume, such as an online course. That gap can shape trust, perception, and social engineering.
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There was a recent article about a con artist who got into the family office scene in the Hamptons and Palm Beach. Like Anna Delvey before her, she convinced people she came from the “right” family, knew the “right” people, and went to the “right” schools. I had a number of people reach out to me because the “right” school turned out to be my own, MIT. What she did and didn’t say is an important lesson for all of us.
On her LinkedIn profile, under Education, she listed a “Post Grad” class at MIT’s Sloan School of Management on “Transformative Leadership.” Then there were various keywords and LinkedIn skills. According to the article, she claimed she went to MIT, although what exactly she said was not specified.
When someone says they went to an elite school, we make assumptions. Getting in means you’ve passed a high bar. Here’s the catch: that bar only applies to matriculated degree programs. As a high school student, I went to Harvard Summer School and I’m pretty sure the standards weren’t as high as they were for degree-program students. In my programming class there were also adults who were paying for the class but not in a degree program (and I suspect they also were not subject to the admissions bar for undergraduate or graduate students).
I don’t know the specific class listed on her LinkedIn profile, but there are lots of free online classes you can take from MIT and other top schools. (MIT pioneered online learning with its OpenCourseWare initiative.) There are also executive education classes you can take at MIT and elsewhere that don’t really have a high bar for admission (but typically do cost a few thousand dollars). Many top schools have continuing education, summer school, online courses, and non-degree programs open to almost anyone.
If you take such a class, you have every right to list it and to say you took such a class at the school. In this particular case, the catch comes down to what exactly she said. “I took a class at MIT” is technically correct. “I was a student at MIT” is also technically true, but perhaps a little fuzzier. “I went to MIT” seems a step too far. None of them, however, would amount to perjury.
More and more, I’m seeing people do things like this. I met one woman who, having only listed the Ivy League school on her profile, told me when I asked about it that she did it explicitly so people would assume she had gone to school there (meaning in a degree program). I am very much in favor of more access to classes, including those from top schools, but it also means we need to reset expectations.
In The Career Toolkit: Essential Skills for Success That No One Taught You, I describe an interview site visit where someone who had seen my resume asked whether I was on the business side or had any technical background. When I mentioned that I had multiple computer science degrees from MIT, it landed like a mic drop, even though I did not mean it that way. Brand names and social connections act as shortcuts for trust. Psychologists call these mental shortcuts heuristics. Most of the time they are useful, but malicious actors can exploit them to make us believe things that are not actually true.
Social engineering remains the number one way of breaching security. Most people have received a fake email from a supposed co-worker or heard about fake kidnapping scams in which attackers impersonate someone’s voice. It’s not just online scams, though; the 2003 Antwerp diamond heist started when Leonardo Notarbartolo rented an office in the Antwerp Diamond Center building. He was not a diamond broker, but no one checked. He later got to know key security personnel and, in doing so, was able to learn more about the security methods the building employed.
I recently wrote the article “The Shift to a Zero Trust Society” about how technology will further enable the creation and spread of false information. We must also remember that technology itself isn’t needed, and simple conversation in a social setting can be enough.
When we meet people at events, whether social or professional, we don’t have the time or bandwidth to question everything. We often take people at face value. That’s ok, but we must remember the old adage: “trust, but verify.”
One way to do this is to defer the cost of validation until there’s something on the line. I once met the woman at the center of the article. I didn’t question anything about her, but then I also wasn’t actively risking anything with her. By risk, I mean we’re not even connected on LinkedIn and her friend request to me on Facebook remains pending because I would need to know her better before I connect on either platform. Being part of my network is valuable, and I do at least some low-level validation before letting people into it.
Of course, this requires discipline. Scammers often operate by meeting you in a low-risk environment where your guard is down. For example, they’ll meet you socially and connect to you and others on social networks. They count on length of time or repeated low-value interactions being incorrectly interpreted as trust. Years later, you may not remember that you don’t know the person well and may grant more trust than you should. Former FBI Special Agent Jack Schafer talks about these techniques in his book The Like Switch: An Ex-FBI Agent's Guide to Influencing, Attracting, and Winning People Over. Like any tool, it can be used for genuine or malicious intent.
Stories like Anna Delvey’s or this one remind us that bad actors are always knocking on our doors. We’ve learned that online we need to be ever vigilant 24/7. The same is true for in-person social interactions; we constantly make snap judgments based on credentials, affiliations, and social proof. We should remember that these are signals, not proof. Name brands and social affiliations can be helpful, but they can also be misapplied and abused.
For the record, I also took a Harvard Summer School class while at MIT, and I took some online Wharton classes through one of the online services. None of that appears on my resume or LinkedIn, since I just don’t think it’s that impressive. I have been teaching at MIT for decades. It’s been more than just a one-time lecture, so I list myself as an instructor at MIT, although what I’ve done specifically has varied over the years. I’m not a professor or a faculty member and have never introduced myself as one. That said, others have called me a “professor.” I correct people in person, but on podcast intros I can’t always do so, and I gave up interrupting them in the middle of the intro since the interruption came off as rude.
It’s critical to learn about corporate culture before you accept a job offer but it can be awkward to raise such questions. Learn what to ask and how to ask it to avoid landing yourself in a bad situation.
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Groups with a high barrier to entry and high trust are often the most valuable groups to join.
