Lie on your résumé? One job-seeker's moment of truth

http://msn.careerbuilder.com/Article/MSN-3095-Cover-Letters-Resumes-Why-lying-on-your-r%C3%A9sum%C3%A9-wont-pay-off/?SiteId=cbmsnhp43095&sc_extcmp=JS_3095_home1

by joeyespo • 14 years ago

43 58 14 years ago

msn.careerbuilder.com

pnachbaur• 14 years ago

Great comments from 52 days ago http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4312097

toyg• 14 years ago

Yeah, I remember reading this possibly even earlier than that -- I am in the same position (sort of) so obviously it resonated with me. I can't understand why people would lie on their resume; but then again, I usually don't understand lying at all.

klibertp9• 14 years ago

Lying is good.

You cannot live without lying. We all lie, everytime we open our mouths to say something. Whatever we say it's always biased, subjective, emotional (to varying degrees, ofc) - we, as humans, are simply incapable of comunicating the "truth", at least beyond very formal systems.

The only thing for us to decide is how much to lie on any given topic. Or what story to tell - it's really the same thing worded differently.

We do not value the truth. We value narrative, stories. Don't do yourself a disservice and don't make your story sound pathetic and uninteresting for the sake of the "truth".

In my country not too long ago there was a public debate about some very famous journalist (after his death) who used to (as his biographer insisted) put factually incorrect sentences and paragraphs in his reportages. He lied! There is evidence of this, and much of it. But there's a catch here: fragments of his works were lies, yet read as a whole they conveyed the truth in a stunning, poetic way which many hoped to copy but failed. The debate I mentioned was something along the lines: do those lies invalidate the truth he told? I'm very, very strongly convinced that that's not the case. Through his lies he almost touched the truth.

I'm talking about Ryszard Kapuścinski biography, if anyone is interested, BTW.

greyman2• 14 years ago

My wife works for a recruitment agency and lying in the resume (especially about work experience) happens sometimes. Why people do it? Because if you are not an expert on anything and want to break into sales or lower management, for example, your CV might compete with another 100-150 CV's. So you need to have some good-looking work experience in there, otherwise you are not considered for interview.

But it usually doesn't work, since she gives the interviewee very specific questions about his work experience, so the laying is quickly discovered.

kghose• 14 years ago

Was he actually a member of Mensa?

klibertp9• 14 years ago

AFAIK yes

phaus4• 14 years ago

I would guess that he is. Being a member of Mensa isn't really a big deal.

pc86• 14 years ago

What about having an IQ in the top 2% isn't a big deal?

qdog• 14 years ago

He said so, at that time probably not a big deal to put it on a resume. These days, I recommend against it, as soon as most interviewers I know see it, it's suddenly high noon on the whiteboard to prove the interviewer is just as smart as the Mensa person.

Edit: I'm not in Mensa, I've just seen how interviewers react to it. Petty sure, but I'm talking programmer interviews, people often look for reasons to exclude someone.

michaelochurch2• 14 years ago

What I find amazing is how many just plain stupid resume lies people make. What does a 50-year old executive gain by listing a fake college degree? Nothing. (And it's not hard to unwind a lie, which you should do as time passes and the benefit of the lie approaches zero while the cost remains constant.)

I think what happens is that we hear about the sensational and embarrassing lies. This stuff gets dug up when the decision to fire an executive is already made, in order to reduce severance. If the lie is small and reasonable (slight title inflation) it doesn't much matter because that's so common, but if it's something immensely embarrassing like faking a college degree when he actually flunked out, it gets broadcast. Most of those public humiliation stories are cases of failed severance negotiations in which the company decides to be a dick and play the nuclear option against his reputation to get out of a contractual severance agreement (e.g. extortion against the fired employee.)

This is not to condone lying on a resume. I don't, but I think the public shaming that accompanies these digging expeditions is a bit much. When someone is shamed over an irrelevant resume lie, he's usually being shamed because someone (often the ex-employer) wants it that way.

gordonguthrie2• 14 years ago

I got hit backwards. My CV had PhD (failed) on it. I had had a chunk of good jobs, tried to start a bank, got nowhere, went back contracting in a dept with a lot of academic firepower.

After I had been there 8 weeks someone made a crack about 'all you doctors' including me in - and I said 'I'm not a doctor'.

'Your CV said you had a PhD' came the response.

Luckily I had my laptop at work with the original copy of my CV on it. I went ballistic, phoned up the recruitment agency, and finally got them to send a formal letter to the people who had interviewed me. I never did find out who 'tidied up' my CV - but a dodgy CV is just a burning fuse on a bomb that could go off anytime.

Evbn4• 14 years ago

If you called your resume a CV, you are have way to lying abounding an academic already.

gordonguthrie2• 14 years ago

In the UK we have Curriculum Vitae. The term resumé is not used.

Lie on your résumé? One job-seeker's moment of truth

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