Jeffrey Chiang: Business School Asians Behaving Badly

By Elaine

We Asians finally have our own version of Aleksey Vayner, the Yale graduate who applied for a job on Wall Street a few years ago with an eleven page resume (complete with video) that claimed he could bench press 500 lbs, leg press 1650lbs, and was employed by the CIA and Mafia, among other things. Meet Jeffrey Chiang — current student at The McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin — whose unfortunate story has been spreading throughout the interwebs like crazy.  This 2010 graduate supposedly lied to not one but two big firms: Bank of American and Morgan Stanley.  According to Bess Levin of Dealbreaker:

Chiang apparently interviewed at Bank of America, where he was asked if he had any offers from other firms. Jeffrey claimed that he was in his second round of interviews with Morgan Stanley. An associate at BofA then contacted his friend at Morgan about Jeffrey’s prospects. The Morgan guy said that contrary to popular belief, JC had only had a phone interview, at which time he claimed to have gotten a full-out offer from BofA. As proof, JC provided a fabricated email allegedly from a recruiting woman at Bank of America, who would probably be surprised to be informed she’d offered Chiang a job (and that she didn’t know how to spell “America”). The Morgan people forwarded the faux letter of employment back to the people at Bank of America who were doing recon and from there it was forwarded to the entire free world.

Both Blippitt and Dealbreaker also have copies of Chiang’s emails, along with his resume where he claims to have run a “5k marathon.”

Am I the only one truly appalled not by Chiang’s conduct, but by the fact of how boring his fake email was?  At this point, lies and deceit in business are all par for the course, and what really gets my goat is the utter lack of creativity and spellcheck he displayed. Levin seems to agree, saying “Obviously, the lies here are not good form but what’s most upsetting is the lack of effort.” Misspelling “America?” Come on!

I have to admit, this story is especially near and dear to my heart because I too am a UT student, albeit one on the opposite side of the spectrum – The College of Liberal Arts. As many of you may know, UT is known for its business school, which usually ranks very highly. This story comes at a rather timely moment; UT is planning major budget cuts with what seems to be extremely vague reasoning.   According to the Texas State Employees Union and Communications Workers of America, The College of Liberal Arts may lose 20-33% of non-tenured instructors (about 78-300 people). 40 support staff from IT and the College of Engineering were laid off in the past two weeks.  As one of my professors Tom Palaima once questioned, if UT has one of the best business schools in the nation, how are we in this financial mess?  I’ll agree with him, and raise him this: If UT is truly one of the best colleges in the nation, how come we make internet news not with stories of success but with stories of ridiculous budget cuts and Jeffrey Chiang?

Photo courtesy: Blippitt

ABOUT ELAINE: Elaine Wang is currently a senior at the University of Texas at Austin.  She stumbled upon 8Asians while at work in a research lab.