THE PUBLIC SERVICE Commission, a vitally important state agency that suddenly finds itself without an executive director, needs to do a better job picking its next one than it did its last.

Commissioners knew when they hired Bruce Duke in January that there were questions about his resume, which claimed he had served in the Marines from 1974 through 1977 and had a master’s degree from USC. Mr. Duke resigned after a local newspaper reported that USC had no records of a master’s, and military records showed he served in the Marines less than 17 months.

It’s disturbing that commissioners are saying Mr. Duke has nothing to apologize for. It’s also tempting to ask whether their motivation in hiring him was to try to win favors in the Senate, where he had worked and developed close relationships, at a time when the Legislature was considering dramatic changes in the way the agency does business — and thus in its power.

That should never be the motivation for picking an agency director; the motivation should be to find the person best able to run the day-to-day functions of the agency. Policy is the business of someone else — ultimately the governor and the Legislature, and in this case also the commissioners themselves.

Now that the Legislature and governor have settled on changes for the way the PSC regulates electricity and phone companies and other utilities, the commissioners need to focus on finding the person best able to carry out that new mission.

But the commissioners aren’t the only ones who should take a long, hard look at how they’ve done things in the past, and consider changing how they operate in the future, in light of this situation.

This marks the second time in less than a year that the director of a state agency has been forced out because of questions about the accuracy of his resume. In September, James McClain resigned as Gov. Mark Sanford’s appointee as Probation, Parole and Pardon Services director after questions were raised about his claims of being a Marine pilot.

We all like to think we can trust what people tell us when they apply for a job — particularly people we already know, as PSC officials did Mr. Duke, through his background working for the Legislature.

And the overwhelming majority of people who apply for jobs do tell the truth about their qualifications. But in both the public and the private sectors, the number of people who are padding their resumes — or at least, the number of people getting caught — is on the upswing, and it’s growing fast enough to demand attention. It is simply not reasonable to expect that an employer — in these cases, the people of South Carolina — can trust an employee who would fabricate qualifications.

Prudent employers should make a point of checking references and demanding proof of degrees. It may take more time, but it can save a lot of embarrassment. More than that, it can save the extra expense of going through the hiring process, and any training process, a second time if discrepancies later come to light. And when the person in question is an agency director or someone else in a crucial decision-making position, having to go through the process again costs more than money: It costs time, leaving the agency adrift and unable to perform as well as it should.