With so many more people looking for jobs than those actually up for grabs, the labor market right now can be a truly harrowing place. Some choose to deal with it by redoubling their efforts. Others, for lack of a better term, ‘sex up’ their resumes. The risks of getting creative with your credentials.

Inflated academic credentials in the nation's executive suites may be more common than generally thought.

A survey of 358 senior executives and directors at 53 publicly traded companies has turned up at least seven instances of claims that individuals had academic degrees they don't have. In some cases, the slip-ups don't appear to have been intentional, and may have been caused by misunderstandings.

Among the executives whose credentials don't check out: Dennis Workman, chief technical officer at Trimble Navigation Ltd., a big maker of global-positioning-system devices; and James DeHoniesto, until Wednesday the chief information officer at Cabot Microelectronics Corp., a supplier of chemicals and pads used to polish microchips.

Misstatements have cost top corporate officials or directors their jobs in the past few years at companies including retailer RadioShack Corp., vitamin maker Herbalife Ltd. and Usana Health Sciences Inc. The discrepancies at the latter two companies were unearthed by corporate sleuth and sometimes short- seller Barry Minkow.

Mr. Minkow also conducted the latest survey, which doesn't profess to be a scientifically valid sampling of corporate America. Mr. Minkow examined only certain companies or industries he already suspected of being prone to hype.

But the misrepresentations he uncovered may be enough to raise investor concerns about executive credibility as well as company procedures for vetting key management and board members and compiling their official biographies.

At the companies concerned, "You have to ask yourself, as any good investigator would say, what else might be there?" says Mr. Minkow, who heads the San Diego-based Fraud Discovery Institute. Mr. Minkow, who served prison time for the ZZZZ Best stock swindle in the 1980s, has won kudos from the FBI since his release for his role in uncovering frauds on the Internet, in the real-estate field and elsewhere.

After choosing the companies to survey, Mr. Minkow says he cross-checked their top officials' biographies -- usually included in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission -- against a database of college degrees open to private investigators.

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