Do employers actually know or care about lying on resume?
The current system of job seeking often requires to lie on resume. It is even being highly recommended by people that coach people for job seeking, although with some moderation of course.
Do employers actually know or care about lying on resume?
The current system of job seeking often requires to lie on resume. It is even being highly recommended by people that coach people for job seeking, although with some moderation of course.
I’d say it’s not okay to lie, but embellishment is encouraged.
For example, I hire programmers. If you put on your resume you know some language or framework, I’m probably going to test you on it. If you can’t code hello world, or something basic I’m going to pissed off.
Now, if your role was technically something like a jr java engineer but you put on there that you were a mid level, meh I’m not going to check. As long as your skills are roughly in line I’ll let you through to the next round.
Yes, I hire programmers. I need core competencies in areas I care about. If the job is Java but you’ve mostly been working in C# I’ll take it on faith that you can figure that part out yourself.
If you tell me you’ve worked on ecommerce sites but can’t tell me the steps of a credit card transaction, I’m concerned.
What I really care about is your ability to articulate your answers, clearly enumerate assumptions underlying your reasoning, and so on. If I have to pull teeth to get answers, I’m not hiring you. I’m an introvert, I used to love being left alone to write code in a dingy basement office, so I get that attitude but you need to be able to talk to people to get a job.
Part of that interaction is proving you have an understanding of the tools you will be using. If you lied about that knowledge and understanding, it will be painfully obvious very quickly.
Yeah that’s a better way to put it to me. I honestly don’t care what language most people code in, but I hope you can explain how you’re doing stuff. I interview with the expectation of “a lot of red squigglies” expecting it not to compile. I don’t care if you call .Sort instead of writing your own. Just show me you can code.
Sadly though, my latest question is for web developers and is mostly made up of calling a simple GET api. I have failed at least 80% of the engineers that take that test simply because they have no idea how to call an API in any language or framework, something I do I’d say on a daily basis. It’s basically “call a fake endpoint /foo and show the results” and that takes mid level engineers the entire hour to do.
Exact same problems, especially remote. I honestly don’t know what is happening with engineers coming out of school/bootcamps, they just legit cannot code but go for these coding jobs. who is hiring them? I remember making fun of “fizzbuzz” as an interview question because it’s too easy but I legit have had people fail fizzbuzz! In languages they chose!
I hate technical interviews, I’ve been given questions like “implement binary search”, like okay, I can do that, but this is an annoying question. So I try to keep mine very light, “let’s just chat about code, show me you can do basic stuff”, and I’m just constantly disappointed.
People are taking an hour for
``import requests res = requests.get(“your-domain.com/foo”) print(res.json())
or javascript's fetch that I don't want to type on my phone any more code for? Maybe I should think higher of my skills.The current system of job seeking often requires to lie on resume.
This has not been my experience at all, but maybe it depends on what kinds of jobs you’re seeking.
In my line of work, detecting lies on resumes is one of the reasons we spend time interviewing candidates. If you are caught out in a lie, you can kiss any chance of an offer goodbye. As an interviewer I have never knowingly given a “hire” vote to a lying candidate and if I did, I wouldn’t have my job much longer.
Remember: It’s not just a fact of, what’s going to get me the result in this particular interaction. It’s a question of, what type of person do you want to be?
Lying on your resume, within reason, is probably a good strategy for getting the job. It’s not a good strategy for life.
it really depends on what
padding the years of experience for a specific skill from 4 to 7.. not really a big deal in my opinion. someone's 4 years could be more valuable than another's 7
if you're making up whole degrees or careers.. then it becomes impractical because you'll have to walk the walk. if you're frank abagnale, maybe you can do it. for us regular folk it'd be hard to convince someone who knows what they're doing that you know what you're doing when you actually don't
If one person’s 4 years can be more valuable than another person’s 7, then considering the number of years is a waste of time anyway.
Like if you’re applying to a company with a hard limit of minimum 5 years’ experience, and you have 4 that you think qualifies you, and the company isnt willing to consider you because of it, that’s not a company you want to work for.
I’ve only ever even had one job call anyone I had on my resume.
I know this, because every contact info other than my own on my resume for the last 15 years has been fake and will forward to my own phone so I can pretend to be my own reference if I need to.
I could probably lie about being able to actually do the job and having past experience in it, too; but that would be a little silly since I wouldn’t be able to actually do the job and they would find that out pretty quick.
Nope. I just saw the forwarded number and act. Remember now, I’ve only ever actually had one place actually call. And they called everything.
I did also get the job.
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if you’re entry level you don’t have access to the high paying jobs
Uh … yeah? How does this equal the system forcing you to lie?
It’s like of I put out an ice cream sundae and say it’s only to be taken by someone who can bench 400 lbs, and you lie about how much you can bench to get the ice cream sundae.
Did I force you to lie? Not at all. You lied because you wanted the ice cream sundae, not because I had a gun to your head.
A system where you can lie and get a higher paying job than you’re qualified for, isn’t a system that’s forcing you to lie.
Did you read what I just wrote or you skipped right to that part?
Entry level paying jobs are a no go because they ask for years of experience, better paying jobs are also a no go for the same reason, what then? Well, you lie about your experience to land the option where they can’t afford to fire you, i.e. the option that doesn’t pay well so you don’t have any competition.
Experience does not necessarily mean job experience.
I never lied on my resume and I don’t plan to. That would be considered a huge social taboo in Germany, in my limited experience.
When your choice is lying or not paying rent you do what you have to do.
You studied IT and all jobs require 5 years of professional experience in network management, what does someone who just got out of school do to acquire that experience?
I’ve been homeless and if my only choice is between lying and not paying rent, I’m not paying rent.
I’ve never run into that situation though. I don’t actually believe that there aren’t any jobs you can get without lying.
Unless maybe you’re in SF.
I think OP may need to explain further. There’s embellishing your work history, or tailoring it to a particular position you’re after. That’s fine and part of the CV-fu. Then there’s outright lying about hard facts, which can be a huge problem if checked.
Hard facts are things like who you worked for and when and on what position, or where you got your degree and what it says on it. Provable skills and certifications also fall under this category.
Employers love it because it gives them plausible legal cover for two essential freedoms:
If they like you anyway, they can hire you and defend any discrimination claims with the fact that you had the strongest resume.
Whenever they stop liking you, they can expose the lie and fire you on the spot for good cause.
So really, it's a win-win situation for both you and your prospective employer.
It’s all relative, depending on the place your applying at, the lie in the resume, the hiring manager…
But the biggest reason is because the resume is usually used as a filter to filter out people who definitely won’t be hired. And in job postings companies usually ask for more than what they need.
Once you have the first real interview (i.e. not the phone screen) they’ll be able to tell if you don’t have enough knowledge for the position. And then you’re no worse off than prior to the interview.
But if they think you do have enough knowledge than who cares about the lie…
If he could prove he was graduating in a matter of weeks then that’s fucking ridiculous. I was accepted to grad schools before I even passed my final undergrad classes. It’s just on a conditional basis, but nothing changed when I actually got the degree. Besides, there’s time between the last classes ending and commencement, then months between commencement and getting the actual degree in the mail and your transcripts being updated.
I’m hope he feels like he dodged a bullet.
Why do you think it requires you to lie? If you’re lying on your resume it’s (I can only assume) you are not actually qualified for the position you are applying for. I also assume that you are at more of an entry level in terms of your skills/qualifications. Is that accurate?
If you have success with that strategy good for you, but I’ll caution others - as you get further in your career, interviews get longer and more in depth. If you say you know how to do something, you are often asked technical questions on that thing, or in-depth questions on how you’d implement that thing/skill/strategy/into the position. As others have said lying and embellishing are not the same thing. You can oversell your skill to a degree, but be prepared to need to put in extra work (probably off the clock and in your own time) to get yourself to the skill level you said you had. You may not need to! But in some positions, you may be RELIED on for that skill you’re not as good at as you said you were.
Also - UPDATE your resume and keep it current. If you learned a new thing and can do it, put it on there before you forget you did it. Also, prioritize. Remove old things from your resume as you get further into your career and those skills/accomplishments are less impactful or Relevant. Replace with newer things. Keep track of what’s going on in your field and stay up to date with buzz words and topics and be able to speak to them even if it’s not your area of expertise.
I don’t think it requires lying. I do think you can advance yourself faster by doing some lying, but you should stick to things that aren’t actually job related. Length of time working jobs, increasing your previous job titles by a level, making your roles sound more critical are all good ones. Saying you can do something that you cannot can definitely get you in to trouble if they decide to ask you about it, or worse, you get hired and then they need you to apply the skill you don’t actually have.
That being said, I have seen people straight up lie about their qualifications, get the job, flounder for a while and then become at least minimally capable and then hold the job long term. If you consider trying this, at least have a fall back plan for if you get fired.
I’ve got a funny story about that last paragraph!
A man I know who’s retired now worked as a teacher for years in the 80s/early 90s because the secretary had to look in the phonebook for the phone number of the person that actually applied for the job. She tried the first person with the same name and he just went with it. He winged it during the interview, got the job and his sister who was a teacher already taught him how to do it 😂
Totally depends on the employer. Some are hardcore, many aren’t. I used to be in the IT field, one of the companies I worked for hired a guy who claimed he had 10 years of IT experience. He got fired after 3 days because apparently he couldn’t even install a printer on people’s computers.
If he was able to get past the interview, then anybody can lol. Better not to outright lie, but embellish for sure, just be ready to try to sound like you know the basics at least. Often, calling things fancy names is enough to get by, here’s some examples:
Seems stupid, but trust me, it works with HR all the time. And once you get into the interview, you can add details to flesh out your experience better. A lot of it is how you say something, not what you say.
Don’t say, “I set up a Minecraft server once for my friends to play.” Say something like, “I spun up a Minecraft server instance for my friends and I to utilize. I managed scheduled software updates and patches for the server, verified the disk health and hardware usage, and set up regular backups for the world files and resources.” Doesn’t matter that your hardware monitoring was just Windows Task Manager and your scheduled backups and updates were just Windows Restore point and Microsoft updates, most staff will just hear that description and move on, especially if you add a little banter, they will normally just go, “ah cool” and keep going down the list.
Obviously this varies based on the job experience level, but for entry level jobs to get your foot in the door, it works very well.
True, but I don’t mean he couldn’t get a printer to work. I mean apparently he didn’t even know how to add one to an employees computer.
Printers are the devil’s imps though lol.