I’m an incredibly honest person. Really.
But I think my resume needs a tad more kick, you know? And I’m considering exagerrating the truth a bit.
Anyone else ever lie on their resume. And if so, to what extent, you lying bastard?
nope, I haven’t , but I’ve recieved a bunch that contained lies - how did I know? I checked their references and prior employers, and in some cases, was the actual prior employer they lied about (we’d used a blind PO box).
I see through embellishments all the time (rememer one guy who had 2 paragraph descriptions for every single job he’d had - none lasting more than 6 months, and one phrase I remember loosely translated to ‘attended staff meetings’ :rolleyes:.
I’d rather see you post some info and I’d try and help you construct something that would work.
Remember, you can use volunteer work and so on (labeling it “experience”)
I generally lead mine off with the double doctorates in Biochemistry from Cal Tech and Romance Languages from the Sorbonne.
Like, anybody’s gonna CHECK that shit.
Interesting, wring. But how closely do you check GPA’s, for example? Or club membership? How much leeway would you give me?
(Ike, you lying bastard.)
Elvis, you might not have to lie at all.
Is it possible to see your resume? You may get help here on the boards, I spent a few weeks on mine before I went applying for jobs, and changed it tons of times.
Mostly, it’s the order I put things in, things I forgot to include that I didn’t think would be important at first…
If GPA is an issue, dont’ include it IMO. Find something else to substitute, like the actual courses you majored in, and the hands on you have with them.
I’ve worked for staffing agencies and executive recruiters, and so you know, people check degrees very often, but may or may not check the GPA. I never had to; I just had to verify that they received the degree. Sometimes I would find out that the people did, in fact, lie about degrees (and often the schools volunteered information about GPAs) and they were blacklisted. Don’t know your field but if you ever go through an search firm, word gets around.
I don’t mean to suggest that my GPA is terrible. I had one really bad semester. I didn’t think that I wanted to go to school anymore, and I got some piss-poor grades. I don’t want to have to explain that semester to every potential employer.
Anyway, what I really wanted to know was if employers checked really closely into extra-curricular activities and the like. I’m involved in a lot of stuff, but I wondered if I threw in a “vice-president of” here or there if any employer would check up on me.
If anyone would like a peak at my resume to offer constructive criticism, I would be more than happy to email it.
(I’m graduating from Law school in the spring. I don’t want to lie, simply embellish. Okay, I want to lie.)
Ok. I probably wouldn’t check the club membership (frankly wouldn’t care about it either). GPA, I’ve never put on a resume unless it was good - and didn’t like to see 4.0’s anyhow. One trick I’ve seen and used is to use a subset of GPA - for example “GPA in major” “GPA as upperclassman” sort of thing.
I’d be more interested in experience, so say you, as a club member, helped organize a retreat or event - put it in (that’s more impressive to me than "I was sec/treas of the glee club).
“Working while attending school” also gets noticed. Is your email listed? I’ll be happy to look at it (but am on my way home tonight).
Argh. It’s people like you who give people like me odgeda(sp?) at times like now. I’m going through a job-search now and I didn’t lie or embellish at all, and I worry that some asshole will falsify his/her background and bump me out of an interview slot or something.
Don’t do it. It’s just wrong.
Greeny, no no no no. Like I said, I’m very honest. But some people aren’t. I want to embellish a bit, not flat out lie (I know that I previously said that I wanted to lie, bit I don’t. It was a joke.). I was just curious about the things that employers look at, and how closely, and whether other people lie on their resumes.
Truth be told, I’m looking for justification for embellishing. There, I said it. Consider it a sort of pre-emptive strike. God Bless you Senor(a) Bean for being totally honest on your resume. And I don’t like the “asshole” characterization.
Anyway, this is supposed to be a poll. Has anyone here lied on their resume?
Hmmm. I’m afraid that might have come off a little assholish. It wasn’t meant to be. I really do applaud the Bean for not lying on his or her resume. I would like to do the same. But I’m afraid my resume may not be persuasive enough.
And my email is listed, if anyone is interested.
C’mon, dammit. Surely someone has lied on their resume.
Well, if you don’t do it, then you’re not an asshole. (It’s Senora Bean, btw.)
Not only have I lied, but a few friends and I got together, wrote reference letters for each other, and even took follow-up calls from HR depts. I was kinda fun making them think I was the CIO of fictious company. We all got the jobs we wanted and have since moved on to other jobs. What did we learn: Entry level jobs can be done be any monkey smart enough to write a resume. Moving up in your job or onto a better one is entirely based on how you perform your job an as long as you can do it (or at least fake it) well enough you’ll be fine.
just don’t get caught. Supposedly they can sue you, but I kinda doubt it.
Years ago I claimed experience on a piece of hardware (I’m a programmer) that I’d never worked on. But it was very closely related to what I was already working on, just that it was the latest and greatest machine, so it had a few extra features. So I read the manual and became thoroughly familiar with it, to the point where, first day on the job, I was able to do tech support for it better than a guy who’d been at the company for a couple of years.
That was nearly twenty years ago, so somehow I think the statute of limitations has run out on that small embellishment.
Sue? who knows? but what they can do is fire your ass, no matter how long you’ve worked there, no matter how good of a job you’ve been doing. A material lie in your application is always and forever grounds for dismissal. and last time I checked, if you were fired for cause, you cannot collect unemployment insurance, not to mention the fun time you’ll have explaining to your next employer why you left your last job.
I’ve done that too. Got some people together and made up a bunch of keyword crap. We took calls for each other and gave glowing endorsements of our work history (Under the table, of course, we didn’t want to break the law).
We didn’t feel we were doing anything that bad. Like you said, anyone with half a brain can do the most advanced entry-level job.
I can’t believe some of the earlier comments. Saying that someone doesn’t exaggerate or ‘pad’ their resume is like saying that your shit doesn’t stink. No one wants to admidt it, but I’d venture to guess that most people have done it.
I’m not advocating walking into a hospital and saying you’ve been a surgeon for the last ten years when you don’t know the first thing about a stethoscope. But for an foot in the door kinda job, why not?
{innocently} So, Green Bean, where are ya applying?
“Well, Ms. Bean seems like an excellent candidate, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt to have a fellow with these biochemistry credentials down on the loading dock.”
Well, I auditioned to be an exotic dancer, but the guys down at Liquid Assets said that I was way too sexy and would probably cause a riot, so they didn’t hire me…
But seriously, I am suffering from “ex-grad-student syndrome,” where I have a wide variety of skills, but my honest resume does not show a coherent career path. I am applying to temp agencies at the same time as permanent jobs, because I have good enough “secretarial skills” that I can easily get a temp job. But I would really like something permanent in my areas of interest–consumer products/retail (headquarters, not sales floor) and publishing.
So, if any of you good Dopers know of any openings in north/central Jersey or NYC, please let me know. Thanks in advance.
No, you’re not.
wring is right. If you won’t reconsider this because it’s wrong, reconsider from a practical perspective:
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If you apply at my law firm, you will have to supply copies of your transcripts. We have a whole HR staff that does nothing but make sure the paperwork is accurate and that all references are checked.
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No potential employer cares a whit whether you were vice president of a club or not. Especially if you are applying for a legal position. Have you ever heard of your state’s “Character and Fitness Committee?” They have this thing about wanting lawyers to be honest in court and to play straight with clients.
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What wring said about your permanent record. This will be a lie in writing which your employer will keep forever. Any problems (or nominations to government office) in the future, it will be dragged out and reviewed.
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If you do this, you will never know if you were really qualified for the job. Do you want to be an imposter in your mind forever?