Eric Parms enrolled at an Everest College campus in the suburbs of Atlanta in large part because recruiters promised he would have little trouble securing a job.

He'd seen the for-profit school's television commercials touting its sterling rates of job placement, and he'd heard the pledges of admissions staff who assured him that the campus career services office would help him find work in his field.

But after completing a nine-month program in heating and air conditioning repair in the summer of 2011 -- graduating with straight As and $17,000 in student debt -- Parms began to doubt the veracity of the pitch. Career services set him up with a temporary contract position laying electrical wires. After less than two months, he and several other Everest graduates also working on the job were laid off and denied further help finding work, he says.

Even that short-lived gig wasn't secured on the strength of Parms's degree. The college had paid his contractor $2,000 to hire him and keep him on for at least 30 days, part of an effort to boost its official job placement records, according to documents obtained by The Huffington Post . The college paid more than a dozen other companies to hire graduates into temporary jobs before cutting them loose, a HuffPost investigation has found.

Everest College's $2,000-per-head "subsidy" program in Decatur, Ga., stands among an array of tactics used for years by the institution's parent company, Corinthian Colleges Inc., to systematically pad its job placement rates, according to a review of contract documents and lawsuits and interviews with former employees.

More than a marketing tool to lure new students, solid job placement rates allow the company to satisfy the accrediting bodies that oversee its nearly 100 U.S. campuses, while enabling Corinthian to tap federal student aid coffers -- a source of funding that has reached nearly $10 billion over the last decade, comprising more than 80 percent of the company's total revenue.

The practice of paying employers to hire Everest graduates ended in Decatur in late 2011, a year before Corinthian shuttered the campus. But it wasn't the only Corinthian school to try this approach, according to a lawsuit filed in San Francisco in October by the California attorney general. That complaint accuses Corinthian of employing a broad range of fraudulent marketing techniques, including overstating its job placement rates . It specifically accuses two Corinthian campuses in California of paying a temp agency to hire graduates .

Former employees in career services offices at Everest College campuses in six states described a culture of data manipulation inside the company, one where hitting monthly employment targets took priority over finding quality positions for students. They told HuffPost that their supervisors instructed them to seek out potential employers with typically high turnover rates: That way, as one graduate left or was terminated, a spot opened up for another, enhancing the college's job placement record.

"I was directly told, 'You need to find a company that is willing to take on your students for a short period of time, and who cares if they stay?'" recalled James Proby, a former director of career services at an Everest campus in Colorado Springs, Colo., who left last year after souring on the company. "That becomes a broken system. And that's what Everest is."

Corinthian rejected that characterization, citing official data showing that 69 percent of Everest students gain employment within 18 months after graduating. A company spokesman, Kent Jenkins, portrayed testimonials from former students as "clear and compelling evidence that thousands of our graduates get good jobs in the fields for which they trained, year after year." He said the company's job placement services are "far more extensive than any we know of at a traditional public college."

In an emailed response to questions, Jenkins described the payments made to companies that hired graduates of the Everest campus in Decatur as a "one-time-only initiative" designed to ease a difficult job market. He said the program "did not violate any accreditation or regulatory standards" and was undertaken "with the best interests of our students and graduates in mind." When the program failed to achieve desired job placement rates, the company closed the campus, he said.

Jenkins declined to answer questions about claims that two other Corinthian schools have paid temp agencies to hire students. In a response to the California lawsuit, Corinthian accused the state attorney general's office of relying on "selective, misleading and out-of-context quotations" from internal company correspondence in making allegations that were "offensive and demeaning" to employees and students.

Those who have worked and studied at its campuses say Corinthian is a powerful marketing machine finely calibrated to exploit hard economic times. Its business has grown swiftly during and after the Great Recession, which left tens of millions of Americans unemployed and many in search of the kind of training advertised by Corinthian's schools. Between 2007 and 2011, the company's revenues nearly doubled as enrollments soared from 62,000 to more than 93,000, according to securities filings. Corinthian's ubiquitous advertisements -- "A better career, a better life, a better way to get there" -- have proved alluring for workers seeking a path to new livelihoods.

"Before I signed up, they said, 'We'll find you the job,'" recalled Johnna Heath, 46, who enrolled three years ago in a course in medical billing at an Everest College campus in Everett, Wash., about 30 miles north of Seattle. "I was like, 'Oh boy, that's great. That just takes all the weight off my shoulders.'"

After years of fruitlessly searching for a job in her field, she recently moved back in with her elderly parents in California.

Annual Revenue For Corinthian Colleges