How far is too far when it comes to embellishing your resume?

Answer 1

Always tell the truth on a resume. It will almost always come out if you lied and you could lose your job. No amount of embelishing is OK by my standards.

The truth will set you free, but it can also hurt. But you shoul never feel you should need to lie. For those who may have a "blemish" in their history - There are different ways to truthfully disclose information that might otherwise hinder your chances if you put it out there in black and white. For example, there are a lot of kids that end up in a continuation school. They were the ones who skipped class frequently, fought with administrators, you know the "trouble makers". Well, there are also kids who made mistakes and learned from them. Putting down the name of a well-known school for the problem child as the place the graduated from can make for a lifetime of lower paying jobs. Kids that graduate early so they can get a headstart on college also attend these schools to obtain their G.E.D.'s. They too caould be afftected by the stigma associated with a certain learning institution. TRUTHFULLY all of these children, alond with the kids from every high school in that district, received their diploma from the 'Where ever School District". Don't you know every working mom in America prior to their paid job history was a "Domestic Engineer"! For those who feel they lack qualifications for the position - Sometimes no experience is a good thing. A fresh mind, free of prior methodology, to teach and train just the way they want the ideal employee to be. It doesn't hurt to inquire if there are substitutions for job prerequesits. There are a lot of transferrable job skills that you can apply from a seemingly unrelated job field. BUT NEVER EVER EVER LIE. Just think of how awful it would be to land your dream job, and be employed with the same company your entire life... a model employee even- never calling in sick, or being late...and one-week prior to your retirement where you looked forward to getting all those company perks for your years of service, and !WHAM! You get fired. All because you lied on your job application, or gave false information that your hire was based upon. That's a darn hard way to learn a lesson about how cheaters never win. That was a true story by the way. The person lied about having a high-school diploma.

Never lie. It will come back to haunt you. Instead, simply use the sin of omission. If your career began in the Stone Age, omit that first job, or two. If you don't have a degree, but have taken courses at a college or university, technically you can say: "Candidate, AA, Business" or "BS, Science" or whatever.

Nothing will upset a hiring manager as much as an embellishment on a resume. It will earn you a trip out the door. An embellishment may help you in the door, but it WILL be detected during an interview and it WILL cost you the job opportunity.

One tactic I have used, as an interviewer, is to suggest that "we" both call the references, right now, on the speaker phone, to verify the "facts" of the past .

At that point the applicant usually "drops the ball" and admits to lieing about their qualifications or history. I then put their name onto my e-mail list to be sent to a wide circle of my business associates. They do the same for me, all the time. You would be surprised how many of these liars turn up at somebody else's office, some time later.

Think about the implications of lying. If you lie in a job application you are indirectly saying that you think your potential employer is stupid.