Have you ever lied on a resume or during a job interview? We all want to put our best foot forward to win a job or a promotion, but have you resorted to outright lying just to get what you want?
I was reading on the Comcast homepage about resume cheaters and the like (there was an article linked with the headline “Jobs: Should you lie on your resume?”) and there was one study that suggested that more than 50% of people lie on their resume. What do they lie about? Here’s a partial list:
1. Academic credentials
2. Hiding employment gaps
3. Beefing up job titles
4. Exaggerating your responsibilities
5. Fake companies
6. Taking sole credit for a team effort
How ’bout you? Ever do anything like what’s on this list?
–PK
Rollins Band “Liar” (Listen HERE)
11 thoughts on “Little Lies/Big Lies”
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No, at least not that I know of anyway. Maybe I should 😉 Just kidding!
I was thinking that #4 would apply to many people, but they are probably just minor, um, embellishments either on a resume or in a job interview. 🙂
Yeh, probably #4. I think everyone does that to some degree. I’m usually like the guy from Office Space in interviews. It’s funny too because I end up with a job offer. 🙂
#4 for me, but when they ask me about it during the interview, the truth always comes out…
If anything, it would be four as well, but I just try to think up really fancy terms for what I was doing. I’m not sure I ever made up something that I never did.
When I worked as a career counselor, I found that men tended to claim total credit for any project they were involved with in any degree (found the cure for cancer turns out to be, served coffee at the staff meetings) and women tend to say they helped to do things that actually they had led.
Lots of people, sadly, wanted to claim education that they didn’t have.
There are some jobs I’ve left out, and “stretched” other jobs’ times to fill out. I guess that counts as #2…
I’ve never lied on a resume. As a matter of fact, I’m very modest about describing my accomplishments and the like.
They make a big deal when there are gaps in the resume. I have had people say clean that up, it does not look good. So I took their advice. I really don’t care since most of the resumes I sent out electronically never get printed out. They say a future employers will only take 2-30 seconds to look over a resume any way. Looking for a job really sucks. Being in a stupid job sucks even worst.
I’ve run into different schools of thought on #4.
In order to get hits from resume search engines, lots of people put in skill keywords in their resume so they come up in more queries.
Some people feel that just because they used a skill 10 years ago, that they should note it on their resume. Where other people feel that you should only note those skills which are you up to date and current on.
Oh for sure! For sure. Guilty, guilty, guilty! How do you think I made it so far in radio? Oh, actually, I haven’t really made it anywhere. Maybe I shouldn’t have lied afterall.