Man Who Claimed S1 Degree on CV Shocks Employer by Actually Being Good at Job
He never earned the degree. He never needed it. One CV fraud case in Jakarta turns the spotlight on lazy hiring practices.
JAKARTA — A 27-year-old man who falsely claimed to hold a bachelor’s degree (S1) on his CV has stunned his employer by demonstrating competence, professionalism, and independent thinking once hired.
The individual, identified only as “Rizky,” joined a mid-sized Jakarta-based marketing firm last month after applying for a junior strategist position. His resume confidently listed a Bachelor’s in Communication from a well-known public university. It was only during routine reference checks that HR discovered he had only completed a D3 diploma and one semester of freelance YouTube consulting.
Despite the discrepancy, internal reports confirm that Rizky "just kind of knew what he was doing," completed his onboarding in two days, and began optimising digital campaigns before anyone could bring up the missing paperwork.
According to sources within the company, the discovery initially triggered the standard internal emergency protocol known as “CV Code Red.”
“We gathered the team leads. We cancelled the welcome lunch. The HR manager locked herself in the break room,” said one witness. “We were all prepared to deliver the usual ‘we’ve reviewed your documents and unfortunately…’ speech.”
But before they could act, Rizky had already fixed a broken client funnel, rewritten ad copy that had been underperforming for weeks, and politely corrected a senior executive’s use of ‘your’ and ‘you’re’ in a deck sent to a multinational client.
“He was doing the job,” whispered one team member. “Fluently. With initiative. Without being asked.”
The company has since decided to postpone disciplinary action while “figuring out how to deal with the emotional complexity of this situation.”
The case has sent shockwaves through Indonesia’s HR community, where the presence of a verified S1 degree is often used as the primary proxy for competence.
“I’m going to be honest,” said Wulan Setyowati, a senior recruiter at a well-known tech firm. “If someone tells me they don’t have a degree, I assume they can’t open Google Docs. It’s how I sleep at night.”
Many HR professionals are now grappling with uncomfortable questions, such as whether someone can, in fact, be skilled without having sat through a 200-level “Introduction to Marketing” lecture on Zoom.
The National HR Association has called for an emergency roundtable discussion titled “Degrees, Deception, and the Dangers of Actual Skill.”
In the meantime, several companies have begun discreetly reviewing the performance of team members whose degrees were verified three times but who still don’t understand how to use filters in Excel.
Officials have issued an official statement urging companies not to abandon qualification requirements altogether, reminding the public that “degrees are important symbolic artifacts that maintain order and harmony within hiring bureaucracy.”
“We understand this is a challenging time,” said one spokesperson. “But let us not forget the importance of credentials in promoting social trust, and family pride.”
Rizky, meanwhile, has declined to comment, citing a “tight deadline” and his desire to “just finish the Q3 media plan before the meeting.” Colleagues say he remains quiet, focused, and oddly unbothered by the controversy, leading some to speculate that this might be part of a broader conspiracy involving meritocracy.
“This changes everything,” said one startup CEO, who asked not to be named. “What if we’ve been filtering out good people just because they didn’t frame the right piece of paper? I need to sit down.”
As of press time, Rizky had been invited to lead a cross-functional workshop on marketing analytics, leaving the HR department torn between promoting him and figuring out how to make his existence less awkward in their recruitment metrics dashboard.
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