Common Resume Lies You Probably Don’t Know
Have you ever exaggerated your skills while telling about yourself in resumes? If you think that you are the only one job-seeker, who enriched his resume with falsehood in attempt to make his background seem a bit more impressive and his skills sound more qualified, you may have a sigh of relief. Are you still scourged by the memory of your past misdeeds? If it’s any comfort to know that you are far from being alone, we are going to shock you with the truth. More than 50% of resumes are half-truthful. The applicants lied, lie, and it seems that this tendency will never start decreasing.
Skeleton in the Wardrobe
One thing, which every applicant should remember, is that the truth will be discovered by an employer sooner or later. Even if your fictional resume catches the recruiter’s interest at first, your skeleton in the wardrobe will be found right during the first face-to-face contact with you. Competent hiring managers interview hundreds (sometimes even thousands) of candidates daily and such great experience let them find the length of the job applicants’ feet immediately.
Why are people afraid of nothing and continue fudging the truth about their past lives? There is no common reason why applicants can’t help fibbing. Some of them do this in attempt to conceal their criminal record to not let it ruin their future, while others want to fill the gap in their work experience and pass for the most suitable candidate.
In fact, there is no limit to what candidates fib on their resumes, though the consulting agencies have already sorted out the top most widespread lies. Here are 5 gimmicks that toss a challenge to a recruiter and make him double check your CV.
Honesty Is the Best Policy: Control Yourself!
- ‘It’s easy for me to do this.’ The adverts about free vacancies usually contain the lists with all the needed skills the best candidate should have to be hired. While the employers do this just with a desire to find the best worker quicker and sort out those, who don’t suit them at once, the applicants manipulate the potential bosses. By ascribing the skills that don’t belong to them in fact, the applicants try to make themselves more appealing to the employers. Although such a lie as telling a recruiter about your advanced foreign language skills may be considered as your intention to improve your basic knowledge in the near future, claiming that you are a certified specialist, when you even have none of the certificates, is a criminal.
- ‘I designed this project.’ Lying about the previous job’s duties and projects, in which an applicant has been involved, is among the most favorite maneuvers to get a desired job. By telling that you were a chief cook in one of the most prestigious restaurants while, in fact, you were just a bottle washer, you do yourself more harm than good. Checking this info is an easy task for a recruiter. Just several phone calls or a five-minute search on the Net will be enough to get the truth about your magnificent achievements.
- ‘I worked here for 5 years.’ Hiding of the real periods of employment is the next trick, which the potential candidates use to seem more experienced. It is considered that working somewhere for a too short period of time is a bad thing. Unwillingness of the employers to give employment to the dilettantes forces the applicants to fabricate the real dates in attempt to add several years to their career path. While telling lies, don’t forget that you may lose yourself in your fiction.
- ‘I was a vice president at this company.’ Are you really ready to blush when your lie is disclosed and a hiring manager gets know that you were just one of numerous office workers at the company that was mentioned in your resume? As the tendency of mistaking the wish for the reality is growing daily, the hiring managers check the info, which they get from the applicants’ resumes. Just a call to the past employer will clarify the situation. Enhancing your titles is really a bad thought.
- ‘I have a university degree.’ Have you never been a student of Harvard University? You can’t even imagine a flurry of troubles that will fall on your head as soon as your employer gets know that the info about your education has been fabricated! Don’t show yourself as a liar because such info as educational degree is checked more than easy.
Want to Tell a Lie? Hold Your Tongue!
Yes, people lie. Those, who suffer from being unemployed, lie twice as often. Their desperate state of mind is understandable, though a desire to improve a living is not a solid reason to sell fictions as the real merits and achievements. By embellishing things you won’t become better or more talented than you are. Moreover, lying on the resume won’t end the very day when you are finally hired. Each episode of your lie should be kept up till the last day of your career. Will you be able to memorize all the facts, which you contrived?
A fear not to get a job makes people act impulsively. When a desire to hide the truth on the resume appears in your head next time, remember that, in fact, none of the employers is waiting that you should be perfect and endued with supernatural talents. Although you’ve decided to keep on lying, it’s time to think that if you are obliged to pretend, this place is not for you at all. Maybe it’s better to look for another vacancy?
It’s much preferable to use fair methods while fighting for your place under the sun. Composing of correct, errorless, and informative resume will be enough to be hired on the post. Aren’t you sure that you are able to create it? Resume-writer.net is at your service! We will highlight all your strong sides so professionally that your potential boss will understand at once, ‘I was in search of HIM!’ We want you to remember that whenever you tell the truth, you don’t need to remember what you said.