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I always say lie at your own risk on a resume. It is surprising how many people do it.
I don't see the risk in doing it. If they don't check... you get the job. If they do check you don't get the job. Well, probably would have happened anyway. (cause everyone else lies)
People lie all the time and frankly, I have told my bosses they are lying and they simply don't care. They get to brag about the credentials of people they got to work there, and if they suck at the job, well, that must mean you as a manager suck.
One time I happened to find someone claiming she had worked in her own business and one of her clients was a big company who she advised about their member contracts. Unfortunately for her... I had worked for the same company advising them about their member contracts but, that job was a "temp" job. Contracted through a temp agency. She left that part out. It would be akin to someone working at McDonalds and claiming on their resume they had been working at "employeee name consulting" - consulting with McDonalds on management and supply side issues.
I told my boss... didn't care. Went around telling everyone she was a big wig who's clients included this big company. It made him look like he got the best and brightest employees.
I don't see the risk in doing it. If they don't check... you get the job. If they do check you don't get the job. Well, probably would have happened anyway. (cause everyone else lies)
Or, you get the job, they find out you lied, and you lose the job.
"Everyone else" does not lie. Some do, and karma nearly always catches up to them. When you start lying, you have to tell lies to cover the lies, then keep track of all the lies you're telling. And this is why employers ruthlessly hunt down liars... if you'll lie today, you'll lie tomorrow, and maybe you'll be lying to them.
Just be honest. Always. Those who look like they're getting ahead by lying will probably get their comeuppance. But if not, I still have to live my life in a way that lets me look in the mirror. And i never have to worry about who I told which lie to and what happens if they meet
In the case of fake references, call each reference twice. First, call from your work phone so that caller ID clearly announces the origin of the call. Ask the typical reference questions. Then call from your cell. If the person answering does so in a different manner, you are talking to the applicant's cousin and you cut them loose.
Wow! That's a VERY smart way to weed out some liars!
If you worked or got education in other countries, I doubt they have a way to check, which sucks pretty bad if you indeed did but for wtv reason don't have the papers or wtv like a tax return slip.to prove it.
As for the question, the answer obviously varies. Like if you're gonna work highest clearance on.nukes I hope.they am g letting just anyone through. Lol. On the other hand, it do and really matter who is hired to work at.some restaurant. Could be a.former killer. As long as he served his time and I leave alive I'll.neber know.
Gaps in a resume depends on the position you are applying for. If it is a position that is in high demand and qualified people are scarce, you will still likely get a call back and be asked for an explanation. Project Managers in the construction industry are this way right now. Contractors sometimes pay tens of thousands of dollars to a placement agency for a PM. They certainly are not going to throw away a qualified PM resume because it has gaps, they will explore the issue. However if they get a stack of resumes for a position that there are dozens of qualified individuals, they need some way to narrow it down to four or five quickly, one good way to do that is to dump all the resumes with gaps.
When I was in private law practice, I sometimes had to review lawyer resumes. Young lawyers are dime a dozen, so we would get a hundred or more resumes for a given position. Administrative people would vet out the clearly unqualified persons and hand over 50 or so resumes all pretty well pedigreed. I needed to pare that down to not more than 10 and preferably about 5 in as short of time as possible. Every hour I spent sorting through them was an hour of uncompensated time away form my family and things that I enjoy doing. Thus, I made a quick glance through for qualifications/experience - most were about equal by the time the stack got to me. Really it came down to finding some way to just get rid of a bunch of them. Bizzarre formatting, big gaps in employment history post college, people who included college jobs and things like summer camp counselor or back line at McDonalds, cutesy comments, butterflies in the margins (yes someone really did that), abbreviations or use of non-words or contractions, whatever I could find to quickly ditch 40 plus resumes.
As an aside, the use of advise rather than advice, or alot, or the wrong word for there, their, they're (although contractions are also a red flag), generally means you get to the reject pile. If they are that careless on their resume, what kind of work product can we expect from them? - in reality it may not be a reflection of anything, but it makes a convenient means of narrowing the field. The importance of no errors and no weirdness in a resume cannot be overstated. It can outshine an impressive pedigree in some instances.
I once got a resume from a person claiming to be from Yale law. That was a big deal. We typically topped out at the Michigan, Berkley, Virginia level, lots of USC, UCLA, SDSU, Loyola, etc. We did not get resumes from Harvard or Yale often (we were not a big firm and did not pay big firm wages, plus a construction boutique firm is not a sexy kind of field for most people. Few people go to Harvard or Yale thinking "I am going to be a great construction lawyer"). However the Yalee's resume was full of typos and incorrect grammar. Either the candidate did not know English well enough to write properly, or they were drunk when they wrote the resume, or they were lying about having a Yale degree. Regardless, that resume went into the reject pile without further consideration. That example is not alone, just the most extreme. I just happen to remember it because it was so odd. Why go to the time and expense to attend Yale law and then spend 15 minutes writing your resume? Realistically, a good resume takes at least 8-10 hours to prepare, review, refine, edit etc. It is a good idea to have several people read it and make suggestions.
Keep your resume clean, clear, and honest. Follow the standard form. If the employer has to search for the key information they are looking for, they are not going to waste their time. You name, contact information, pedigree (degrees etc.) and experience should jump right out. It is interesting how commonly people submit a resume without their contact information. Unless you are applying for one of those high demand positions, it is unlikely a potential employer is going to go look up your name to try to find a phone number or E-mail address.
Now, if you are in one of those high demand low supply positions (like project manager), then it hardly matters. Your resume would have to be unbelievably awful to not get intense consideration.
"My name is Bob I had 15 years experience managing large complex construction projects." They are going to track you down for further information. However yet another unemployed lawyer? Your telephone number and E-mail better be right below your name top and center, or do not bather submitting the resume.
Last edited by Coldjensens; 03-20-2017 at 08:03 AM..
I will add that if you are someone like me who has ties into an industry, it is very likely that whatever company you are applying for has someone working there that knows you or at least knows someone who knows you.
I can't tell you how many times I have had coworkers come up to me to ask me about John Doe from XYZ company because he was coming in for an interview. I know darn well, the same applies to me when I am applying elsewhere.
I worked with a guy that was supposed to be a subject matter expert but had trouble reading PowerPoint slides (just reading the bullet points). I got hold of his resume and he had put down he had a BS in Business from NC State and an MBA and PhD from Vernell University in NY. No way this guy had a PhD.
I grew up in NY and went to college there and never hear of a Vernell University. A little more investigation and we discovered Vernell was a diploma mill- a school invented by his friend on the web where you just ordered up your degree. The website was actually quite good. It talked about buildings and directions to how to get to various buildings. The undoing was the class descriptions which described one of the math classes as "working with fractions" and the "WhoIs" that listed an individual in NC at yourdegreenow.com. Found out years later he hadn't completed the BS either. He was let go from a number of jobs in various companies for that lie.
You've pretty much summed it up. I will say that I saw someone let go after working for several years in a highly paid news producer job when someone actually checked his college background to see if he went to the universities he had stated.
Problem is if you are ever caught in one lie--that's pretty much it.
That happened some years ago to one of the big network meteorologists. Someone checked into where he said he went to college. He'd never gone to college. He was fired.
Someone else hired him, because he was popular with viewer. Can't remember the name now.
Someone I worked with was fired because she said she had no conflicts of interest at the job. She was working for a public agency on a specific construction project, and it turned out her brother was on the jobsite working for one of the contractors. Someone found out, and she was gone.
This might count against you if you leave it unexplained. A simple notation that company X has been purchased by company Y would suffice to get around this.
It's pretty easy to verify most employment and get around false references. Simply start by checking dates employed, which every company I have called is willing to do. Look for oddities in the pattern. If a person has worked for a series of large employers, and there is one small, defunct employer in the middle, dig into that.
If the applicant claims something really cool on their resume, ask them for contact info of somebody involved in that project. Verify that.
In the case of fake references, call each reference twice. First, call from your work phone so that caller ID clearly announces the origin of the call. Ask the typical reference questions. Then call from your cell. If the person answering does so in a different manner, you are talking to the applicant's cousin and you cut them loose.
This level of reference checking can be time consuming. I don't bother for entry level jobs, but I do for jobs that require technical expertise, financial responsibility, or managerial authority.
I once had an assistant whose job it was to do references on small, minority, and women-owned contractors to see if they were qualified to be on our list. Some of these places ran their operations out of their homes and their references could also be shaky.
The assistant called one, and the woman who answered started asking her, "Who are you and what do you want with my Robert?" The assistant said she was doing a reference check on so-and-so and the woman at the other end said she was lying and got angrier and angrier and started accusing the assistant of being the woman that her Robert was cheating with and threatening to mess her up. It was hilarious. She had to call the contractor and tell him to provide another reference, because that one wasn't working for him.
Very true. A resume is a marketing instrument, though, and leaving gaps doesn't look good.
I think it's fine to leave irrelevant experience off the resume. I once left a job after 7 mos. While, I didn't put the job on my resume, I did include it on the actual application for employment verification & background check purposes.
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