Hijack-ish story:
When I first moved to Austin and wanted ever so badly to be a computer game designer, I managed to get a tour of Origin Studios (back, yes, when it still existed and was in Austin). As I was directed around the GM area, I think it was, we paused at the desk of a man who had literally hundreds of little action figures and gumball machine tchotchkes arranged around his desk.
He gave me three of his little plastic ninjas.
That is how I chose my username on here. 
Not so. Especially if they work in IT. Just because they worked for a dot-bomb, it doesn’t discount their experience.
Well I can tell you of two cases in my last office where people lied on the resumes and either were not hired, or were terminated when it came out that they did not have the experience / education they said they had. One of them is a friend of mine. They lied about having a degree from a major university. There was no degree. Funny thing is, they would have been hired no problem without a degree. But the lie was a complete non-starter. The company would not hire liars. There may have been other cases that I am not aware of. Some employers do check past employers, and schools.
YMMV of course.
This job posted at your link caught my eye:
:dubious:
Me too. When I applied for my most recent job I was scared because I realized that not a SINGLE PERSON I worked with was still with the company that employed us. Not a single current employee would have even heard of me. Of my three previous employers, only ONE is still in business (with a completely new staff and management team than when I was there).
And someone who works for all of them?
Actually I don’t care if they are in business or not. I don’t hire people who have worked for six companies in 13 years. We’re in a different industry and I don’t hire people who change jobs that frequently. Sorry.
I don’t understand.
What would you conclude about an applicant that had such a history that makes them undesirable?
The company where I learned the most spun its billing operation off and contracted with some outfit to manage it. The original company (which is still in business) transferred all of its employment records to the contractor, which apparently vanished without a trace. All of this gave me a job I couldn’t prove I had until I found some pay stubs from both companies. (Not that it matters anymore because that job was 10 years ago and I’ve changed careers entirely.)
Nice to know you’d consider me a liar.
Robin
I think “assume” is a better word here than “conclude.”
If I remember, from my HR days, this is due to government requirements to ensure that no discriminatory hiring practices occur.
Further, I hope this is some small encouragement to those who face this…
In the past, I did a lot of interviewing and resume screening. In a lot of cases it was who the person was, and what they knew, not necessarily that they’d had X number of years. For instance, one of our interns at a company I worked at 10 years ago, had zero experience. He was still in school, but his degree program and his hobbies and interests were right up our alley. His resume was very intriguing and it got him the interview. In fact, I put him right on top of the five to be interviewed. The interview got him the job. There was just no contest, he had a great outlook and his personality fit right in.
Today? He’s a project manager at another company we both work at. Which reminds me, when we both worked at the company where he was an intern, I “stole” two employees from another company I’d worked for prior to that one. One was a very young, but super bright receptionist. She’s a technical writer for this third company we all three work at now. Never underestimate the power of your reputation, even if you are doing what you think is “shit work”, who you ARE, and your work ethics will make an impression.
I know you just want to rant, but it might help if you got the assistance of a resume writing expert, or some books. In the case of little or no experience, you want the style of resume that puts all of your skills (lined out to match the ad in which they are looking for those skills) at the very top of the resume.
I can remember in many cases overlooking lack of experience when skills on a person’s resume were really worth looking at (at least giving them a phone interview).
Most reasonable employers put their MOST WANTED skills and experience required in the want ad. That is what they are hoping to get. In reality, they know they’re going to have to compromise.
The “experience required” thing is a way to weed out wienies. Don’t let it stop you from sending in a resume. If they ignore it they ignore it. But let’s say you send one in, you don’t get hired, or even interviewed. But of course you’ve got to eat, so you maybe get a lowpaying job in a slightly related field. Or better, in your off time, you volunteer somewhere that’s totally in your field.
Six months later, you’ve got experience, and you’ve kept on sending resumes on “the rounds”. A resume screener sees your 3rd, or maybe 5th resume and name recognition, as well as the experience, stands out to him/her. And you get an interview.
A good way to get experience (if there is truly NO work in your field, even at the lowest minimum wage level), is to volunteer, or take a lowpaying job that is in a related field. My former boyfriend, fresh out of school with a computer science degree put in slave wage time at CompUSA in their training department, not exactly IT, but he could at least add experience to his resume.
I started out as a secretary for an environmental company, the way I got into my field is by always saying “YES”, whenever the bosses asked if I wanted to go on a remote site job. Any training that came my way “YES!” It took a while, but I’ve been in the enviro biz as a field tech (LOVE IT!), for about 16 years now.
This is the way it works, everyone has to pay their dues. It’s just as much to your advantage that you fit in at a company as it is for the company. Best of luck!
PS. Lots of people in this thread are saying it’s fine to lie and that everyone does it. I disagree. Like a few others have said it’s NOT a good idea.
This is how you get your “Experience” looked at, and get an interview, without having to lie on a resume. There is no rule saying you have to use the old-fashioned chronological (job history and salary first), style of resume.
If you use the best style of resume for the job (the name of this style of resume is eluding me at the moment, sorry, but a resume writing book would help), that is what will get you the interview.
For instance, someone mentioned IT. If the experience you had in IT is in working in the university lab, maybe on your high school newspaper, or even repairing, maintaining computers and training users among your parents’ friends, then you take all of the skills you have, that match the skills (buzzwords) that they are looking for (as are written in the ad), and you put them under a heading of “Experience” and then list them in a professional paragraph.
The next category and heading would be “Skills” and you list any other skills you think might catch their eye, such as a list of computer programs at which you are proficient. You can even use italics, bold, or more subtly a dark grey, to make a few specific skills and experience, really stand out. I did every other line in a bulleted list of computer programs in which I was proficient,with the most common and sought after ones at the top of the list.
Next put education, including again, all of the skills and experience that match their requirements as written in their ad. (As someone said, oftentimes some drone is matching the buzzwords from the ad to the resumes, all you have to do is get the words themselves in there, you don’t have to elaborate).
After all of the “good stuff” the next thing on the resume is to put your job history. And again, there are lots of styles of resumes, you don’t have to put every little detail of each job. If you volunteered at XYZ University, in the computer lab for 2 years, you don’t have to advertise whether it was a paying job or not. Simply put the job title (don’t lie and make up an impressive sounding one, no need, you’ve already put the “juicy” stuff in the first two paragraphs, and under education), the dates worked and the location. Continue for each job, whether paid or not.
Feel free to leave off any jobs that don’t match the industry in which you are hoping to work as long as it doesn’t leave a gap. Even though I’ve worked a few interim jobs, I never put them on my resume.
If you have any large time gaps, you may need to use them to show continuity, but you can always make sure you subtly state that they were interim jobs, or part time while in school or some such.
Last put a bunch of references, particularly ones that relate to your experience, like maybe Old Mr. Benson, the deacon at your parents’ church. Maybe you spent 6 months helping him set up the network for Sunday School (you get the idea) . NEVER say “references upon request”. That translates to “too lazy to include names and phone numbers”.
If you’ve got any reference letters, such as from college professors, include a copy. Again, best of luck.
Like I said, we’re in different industries so I’m not judging your industry. My industry doesn’t have companies going out of business right and left.
However, what I was looking at was having six different jobs in 13 years. That’s just a little more than two years per job. In our industry, it takes people over a year to really become productive and, if they leave just when they become an asset, we have to start over again. Even for salespeople, it takes a while for the clients to be used to new people.
There are industries where this isn’t the case. I read years ago that the restaurant industry has a 300% turnover per year. Obviously you can’t find people who stay for a couple of years. I know nothing of your industry so that work history could very well be normal.
In my industry, people tend to work for at least 5 years for the same company. If someone has one or two jobs which are less then I can understand, but if an applicant is constantly quitting companies, I’ll worry how long they’ll stay around. Does this person quit rather then work through problems?
If the average in your industry is two years, and an applicant has 15 jobs of less then three months, I’m sure that it will become increasingly difficult to get a job.
As noted by another poster, this not necessarily a forgone conclusion. Depending on the resume, I may interview the person. One example; we had an applicant for a sales job, who fit this pattern, having a string of jobs lasting about 2 years each. He seemed qualified otherwise, so I interviewed him, but didn’t get a good sense about him so I turned him down. A couple of months later, he gets a job with one of my clients, but only lasts about two years. There are other examples where it works out, which is one reason hiring people is always tricky.
Nice that you have good reading comprehension. As I noted, it would raise red flags; not that I’m calling you a liar. Also please note that in your case the jobs was 10 years in the past in a different career and I specifically said “relevant.” Usually I couldn’t give a shit about a job that far back in a different career.
And for everyone else, if you read the first paragraph of my first post, I talked about interviewing people for English teaching jobs, not dot-com bombs. (Working for dot com bombs unfortunately has another problem. Too much of the work was specific only to the excesses of that industry. How many companies need marketing managers who were good at overspending?)
I should clarify “red flags.” Perhaps I stated it too harshly. For me, that becomes a specific point which I will probe deeper to determine if this is someone being honest or not. It does not mean that I automatically believe the person is lying or that I wouldn’t interview them. There are other issues; such as people claiming an extraordinary education level for a particular job. If someone who says they have a PhD from Harvard and wants to be a sales assistant, I’ll sure as hell ask about that.
When I was interviewing English teachers, I would hire entry level positions. Numerous applicants would claim to volunteer experience in the States, as that would seem to be an advantage when competing with other entry level teachers. An amazing percentage of those volunteers worked at places which were no longer there. I would ask enough questions to determine if I felt comfortable with the disappearance of the organization.
I’ve found well more than my share of people who lie on resumes and I don’t hire them. If you were the assistant manager but who really ran things, then you will be able to tell me enough during the interview that I can tell, but if you lie and I figure it out then you can find a job with someone else.