WA Labor’s Darling Range by-election candidate has downplayed suggestions she wrongly claimed to have completed an MBA.

Hours after the party announced it had preselected Regional Development Australia chief executive Colleen Yates on Tuesday, it emerged she had only finished the prerequisite course, a Graduate Certificate in Business.

“As most postgraduates understand who are also working, it’s very difficult to undertake a work-study balance and my job is something that dictates that,” Ms Yates told Nine News.

The quickest an MBA can be completed is one year as a full-time “intensive” course, and Ms Yates admitted it was “fairly ambitious” to have written the date range of 2016 to 2018 under the LinkedIn entry.

She said the community shouldn’t place too much stock in LinkedIn profiles.

“LinkedIn is a fairly informal social networking site,” Ms Yates said.

“It’s unfortunate that some people have read into it wrong but there’s been no misrepresentations at all by myself to anyone, especially the Labor Party.”

Senior WA Labor MPs have defended Ms Yates.

But it’s an embarrassing gaffe given the seat she’s vying for was vacated by disgraced serial fibber Barry Urban, who quit before he could be expelled from Parliament for repeatedly lying about his background.

Planning Minister Rita Saffioti said it was “the height of hypocrisy” for the opposition to seize on Ms Yates’ travails.

She said the Liberal candidate for Darling Range, Alyssa Hayden, had not disclosed on her LinkedIn page she worked part time as the electoral officer for Liberal Member for Geraldton Ian Blayney.

Ms Hayden does list her role as director of strategy and business engagement for Opposition Leader Mike Nahan.

“If the Liberal Party want to attack our candidate, they should have made sure their candidate was squeaky clean,” Ms Saffioti said.