Dear Annie: For the past six months or so, I've been working as a temp at an architectural firm where I've really hit it off with everyone -- so they've hired me for a permanent position that they created just for me. This is great, but there's just one problem. The personnel people want me to fill out a bunch of paperwork (a W-4 form, health-insurance application, etc.) and all the forms require my date of birth. I know that certain nosy coworkers here have access to these files. Do I have to reveal my true age? What is the law? -- The Botox Kid

Dear Kid: You've been fibbing about your age? Oh, my. Well, it's time to come clean. Holly Weiss, an employment attorney who is a partner at Schulte Roth & Zabel in New York City, notes that employers are prohibited by law from making hiring decisions based on age. (Of course, that doesn't stop some companies from doing so anyway, but that's another story.) "However, once you have already been hired, employers legally can, and usually do, ask for your date of birth," Weiss says. They may need this information in order to comply with governmental reporting and record-keeping requirements -- the Social Security Administration, for example, has an obvious interest in knowing the year of your actual birth -- or to provide accurate information to insurers. So, advises Weiss, put your real birthday on the paperwork.

"Employers readily fire people who lie during the hiring process," she observes. "Finding out that you put false information on these forms would be of far greater concern to your employer than finding out that you fibbed about your age to someone in the past." Why should your coworkers care how old you are, anyway? Can't you just tell the personnel department that you'd appreciate it if your file could be kept confidential? It's worth a try.

Dear Annie: I keep hearing that IT workers in India are beginning to insist on higher pay and, in some cases, are even forming unions to put wage pressure on U.S. employers who are shipping jobs over there. If and when Indian techies' wages catch up to ours, will it stop the outflow of jobs? Is that likely to happen soon? -- Hopeful in Houston

Dear Hopeful: If Indian tech workers' wages do catch up to what their American counterparts earn, then yes, that will certainly give U.S. employers less incentive to send jobs offshore. But don't hold your breath. According to Marc Hebert, an executive vice president at the Silicon Valley outsourcing firm Sierra Atlantic, it is true that Indian IT pay has gone up a bit in the past year, to an average of about $12,000 annually. "But there is still a huge gap," he says. "American tech workers still make anywhere from four to eight times as much as people doing the same jobs in India. Besides, there have been impressive productivity gains in India, so that even the rise in wages there hasn't really increased the overall cost of doing business. To expect that U.S. companies will stop sending tech jobs overseas anytime soon is really wishful thinking." Sorry.

And speaking of Asia, online diploma mills -- those fake schools that issue "college degrees" to everyone with valid credit cards -- have apparently extended their reach across the Pacific. Responding to the discussion here a few weeks ago on how to spot a phony diploma, reader Paul Kelso writes from Tokyo: "I have worked in Japan for 15 years as an English teacher. For several years I was involved in vetting applicants for positions in a large private school here. One young American woman presented a B.A. diploma from the University of Minnentosa (sic). Another candidate sent in a letter of recommendation purporting to be from a Harvard professor. The stationery had a Thai watermark. (It is common knowledge among expatriate teachers that there is quite a diploma industry in Bangkok.) The American president of the JALT (Japan Association of Language Teachers), a nationwide organization, was recently exposed as not only not having a Ph.D., as he claimed, but no degree at all. Japanese school administrators are notorious for not bothering to check credentials, so the beat goes on." Doing any international hiring? Verify candidates' education as carefully as you would at home -- and watch out for those Thai watermarks.

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