Lying on your resume is never a good idea. Even if you're lucky and it doesn't get you knocked out of contention for a job or get you fired when the company finds out, lying can have repercussions later on. Ex-FEMA chief, Michael Brown, was relieved of his hurricane duties and then resigned after accusations that he exaggerated his disaster relief experience. Now, Radio Shack CEO David Edmondson has resigned after admitting that he lied on his resume about two college degrees he didn't really have.
In many cases, employers will verify your past employment and check your references, so, it's always wise to be honest. Especially because you never know when the truth will come back to haunt you!
Lets be real if a Ceo can get away with being hired and working for years with lying on resume so should any of us. Furthermore lying is the only reasonable approach at getting a job when employers ask for the sky in their resume adds. It is better to get hired and fired in a 2 week spand because you at least get a glimpse at the core experience required if you get to work or see others working. Whare as if you don’t lie you get nothing…
The problem is that you don’t know if you’re going to get away with it. A good percentage of employers perform background checks and if they do, you’re caught.
If you get fired, it’s only going to make it harder to get the next job. Even if you don’t mention it, the next employer can check and find out about it.
And is it really worth the trouble of spending two weeks (or 12 years) worrying about getting fired?
It might be for you, but, it wouldn’t be for me.
Lying on a resume is just plain dumb, especially now in post-9/11 America. The trend seems to be to check an applicant’s references out more and more, unless you’re a burger flipper.
IMHO, an posting for a job is a “laundry list” of things that the “perfect applicant” would bring to the table. If you can meet a good portion of the qualifications, then go ahead and apply. There’s no such thing as a perfect candidate for a job, only an approximation.
Could it be that the higher up the career ladder one goes, the more inclined one is to lie on resumes? An article I wrote a few months ago mentioned one politician who was never “a visiting professor at Princeton”; another politician was not “a lawyer”; a potential purchaser of an NHL franchise had a degree in Social Work, not an MBA, and a ‘doctor’ who practised medicine in both Canada and the US for 10 years before being caught.
Lying on resumes, regardless of your status, just does not cut it!
While honesty is the best policy, the “termination-happy” attitute that employers have regarding the most minor misrepresentations is a bit excessive since it doesn’t distinguish between one who merely adds a penny to his or her salary and an escapee from a maximum
security prison who pretends to be “Mother Teresa”. Furthermore, no one is ever expelled from public school for cheating on one exam.
Therefore, the concept of automatic termination regardless of the circumstances of the misrepresentation is the “easy way out” on the employers’ part.
I agree with the first comment. People who get ahead are the ones who take some educated risks. I’ve seen people not get calls for months, then get called when they blatently alter their resume from the very same companies that were ignoring them. HR is usually one large automaton that doesn’t look for these sorts of things until they are specifically asked to.
In other words, “win if you can, lose if you must, but always CHEAT” – Jesse Ventura
Well, if you start lying on your resume and you get caught, how are you going to explain it to the next possible employer??? Plus, it shows that you have no integrity and would lie about any and everything to get yourself out of a tough situation. In the long run, lying on your resume does not help your chances of landing a “new and exciting” job, but hurts your chances of even landing that mundane-run of the mill job that most people take for granted. Also, did anyone of these people think that because of the lies that they told or are telling on their resumes that they are causing better candidates for that particular job to get looked over….maybe that’s what causing decent professionals with integrity to be stuck in low-paying, no-growth jobs…just something to think about.
I have never lied on a resume until I left my last job.
I joined a company and three months later my job and manager had completely changed. The man who hired me left and I ended up with a toxic female boss.
I finally left this company after 15 months with no notice. My manager caused so much stress in my life that I thought I was having a nervous breakdown.
Since I left, I have had friends from other companies call to get a reference for me (hoping that they would at least verify my employment dates and salary) and HR did not return the phone calls and my former boss hung up on one of the people who called.
I have decided to leave them off of my resume and go on with my life. My husband and I own a business and I have put down that I have been working in that business during the time I was employed with this company.
If the truth should come out, I will have to deal with that at that time.
Any comments?
Hate To Lie