Lying on a resume?

[Robert Maxwell]

MNM wrote:

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No, both are lying.

No, they are not.

[RevDMV]

Some of the placement consulting firms are just plain scummy.

I'm late to this party, and it's been said pretty much already, but I'll toss this in from my angle.

I've been in the software development business in different positions for almost 30 years now. Early on a joke was made that someone's resume should have been submitted for a Hugo.

Especially now with the ease and ubiquitous background checking I would follow the following:

NEVER, lie, fib exaggerated about a class, training, certification or degree. IF you didn't earn or take it. Don't put it down. You'll be found, and the consequences are quick and long term.

If you're working on a certificate or degree, put down the expected completion date. Honestly, software is the one business you can get away with experiences and self training. Outside of the bigger shops, like MS and Google, who are trending to only folks from major uni's anyway. (I don't have a BS, left to pursue a start up)

As far as technical experience, programming languages, databases, etc. My take is, if you think you know enough to defend your knowledge in an interview go for it. Again, don't lie about a project, "I've worked on it at home on my own" has never been a problem with me. Again software is different that way, as a hiring manager, I only care that you have the skill.

[Robert Maxwell]

RevDMV wrote:

---

Some of the placement consulting firms are just plain scummy.

I'm late to this party, and it's been said pretty much already, but I'll toss this in from my angle.

I've been in the software development business in different positions for almost 30 years now. Early on a joke was made that someone's resume should have been submitted for a Hugo.

Especially now with the ease and ubiquitous background checking I would follow the following:

NEVER, lie, fib exaggerated about a class, training, certification or degree. IF you didn't earn or take it. Don't put it down. You'll be found, and the consequences are quick and long term.

If you're working on a certificate or degree, put down the expected completion date. Honestly, software is the one business you can get away with experiences and self training. Outside of the bigger shops, like MS and Google, who are trending to only folks from major uni's anyway. (I don't have a BS, left to pursue a start up)

As far as technical experience, programming languages, databases, etc. My take is, if you think you know enough to defend your knowledge in an interview go for it. Again, don't lie about a project, "I've worked on it at home on my own" has never been a problem with me. Again software is different that way, as a hiring manager, I only care that you have the skill.

This is all consistent with my experiences, too.

I have heard of people lying about getting degrees and holding certifications. I understand there are even companies who will provide fake references for you.

[Tora Ziyal]

Robert Maxwell wrote:

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I have heard of people lying about getting degrees and holding certifications. I understand there are even companies who will provide fake references for you.

Why does this not surprise me? One can buy everything from a high school book report to a doctoral dissertation, so why not a reference?

So sad.

[Finn]

Tora Ziyal wrote:

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Why does this not surprise me? One can buy everything from a high school book report to a doctoral dissertation, so why not a reference?

So sad.

This reminds me. One also needs to...ensure they actually graduated. I know it doesn't make sense. But when I was a Junior in college back when I was working on my biology degree, an older student joined the program. He was late in his 20s or maybe early 30s.

Apparently, he was in the program some years before and apparently he left thinking he had graduated. He actually marched in the graduation robe and all...

After a couple of years doing odd jobs, he finally got an interview for a job that actually required a BA/BS in Biology. All was going well and it looked like they were going to hire him. But when the employer checked with his transcripts and the university, it turned out he didn't graduate and did not earn a degree. He was very dumbfounded when they told him that they couldn't hire him because he didn't have a degree.

It turned out he had to take a couple of courses. While universities do sometimes give graduates those diploma things without the actual diploma due to paperwork, waiting for a signature or whatever, he had to have gotten permission from the registar. Plus I don't know how he didn't notice how the diploma didn't arrive (I got my first diploma four months after my official graduation date). I have no idea how this happened to this guy. He was nice and does know his stuff when it comes to biology.

Also, a lot of people undersell themselves. They may forgot a couple of things they did in an earlier job that did not fall under their job description or when they told the employer about their experiences.

[doubleohfive]

Tora Ziyal wrote:

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Why does this not surprise me? One can buy everything from a high school book report to a doctoral dissertation, so why not a reference?

So sad.

Didn't this just happen with the former CEO of Yahoo? And wasn't he ousted because of it?

[Robert Maxwell]

doubleohfive wrote:

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Didn't this just happen with the former CEO of Yahoo? And wasn't he ousted because of it?

Yeah, I remember that. Although in Thompson's case, he never submitted a resume and it's not clear how the bogus computer science degree wound up in his bio.

Here is an interesting article about it.

[DonIago]

Hmph. I referenced that back on page 1...

[Robert Maxwell]

DonIago wrote:

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Hmph. I referenced that back on page 1...

Pardon me for skipping your contextless one-liner. (I didn't remember the CEO's name until I looked him up for the post above.)

[DonIago]

[137th Gebirg]

I experienced resume-padding personally, but almost in reverse. While looking for a new job many years ago, I contacted a consulting company to find me a web development job. I sent them my resume to pass out to other companies. They got me an interview with a potentially good place doing "interface development". Being a web guy, that sounded right up my alley. After about 5 minutes in the interview, it was clear that my definition of "interface", being that which is used for presentation layer/front-end design for web sites, was not the same as theirs - being that which is used as "middleware" to help a front-end communicate with a back-end database, transferring data back and forth for larger multi-tier fat-client systems. I'm familiar with the middleware-style of interfaces, but it wasn't what I thought I was there to interview for (nor was it anything I was even remotely interested in doing). I asked to see the resume they were sent from the consulting firm I was going through, only to find out that it was completely rewritten, skewed towards that type of interface design. There was still enough of my resume in there to know that it wasn't mixed up with someone else's, so the only thing remaining was that my resume was heavily altered by the consulting firm, without my knowledge or permission, leading to an extremely embarrassing situation for everyone involved. And it was no accident or miscommunication on the part of the contracting company, but an intentional deception. Needless to say, I didn't do business with the consulting firm, and I lit their asses up for engaging in such unethical business practices. They told me that "everyone did it all the time", or something of that ilk. Last I heard, they went under back in late 2008. Yup. Lots of companies go out of business all the time, too.

So my short answer - under absolutely no circumstances should anyone lie on their resume. Sooner or later, it will catch up to them, especially if they're asked to do something that the resume says they're supposed to know, but can't even explain the most rudimentary aspects of said task at a conceptual level. Red flags fly quickly in that kind of scenario. Embellishment, focusing and tailoring a resume to fit a target business is okay, but pure, unadulterated fabrication? No fracking way...

And as a side note, akin to the Facebook Wall Post debacle, employers are regularly checking those social networking sites to gather additional metrics on what kind of people are applying to positions. If they see someone photos of an applicant doing bodyshots and funneling in their underwear, they shouldn't be surprised that they can't aspire to a position higher than that of Walmart Greeter.

[Robert Maxwell]

137th Gebirg wrote:

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I experienced resume-padding personally, but almost in reverse. While looking for a new job many years ago, I contacted a consulting company to find me a web development job. I sent them my resume to pass out to other companies. They got me an interview with a potentially good place doing "interface development". Being a web guy, that sounded right up my alley. After about 5 minutes in the interview, it was clear that my definition of "interface", being that which is used for presentation layer/front-end design for web sites, was not the same as theirs - being that which is used as "middleware" to help a front-end communicate with a back-end database, transferring data back and forth for larger multi-tier fat-client systems. I'm familiar with the middleware-style of interfaces, but it wasn't what I thought I was there to interview for (nor was it anything I was even remotely interested in doing). I asked to see the resume they were sent from the consulting firm I was going through, only to find out that it was completely rewritten, skewed towards that type of interface design. There was still enough of my resume in there to know that it wasn't mixed up with someone else's, so the only thing remaining was that my resume was heavily altered by the consulting firm, without my knowledge or permission, leading to an extremely embarrassing situation for everyone involved. And it was no accident or miscommunication on the part of the contracting company, but an intentional deception. Needless to say, I didn't do business with the consulting firm, and I lit their asses up for engaging in such unethical business practices. They told me that "everyone did it all the time", or something of that ilk. Last I heard, they went under back in late 2008. Yup. Lots of companies go out of business all the time, too.

So my short answer - under absolutely no circumstances should anyone lie on their resume. Sooner or later, it will catch up to them, especially if they're asked to do something that the resume says they're supposed to know, but can't even explain the most rudimentary aspects of said task at a conceptual level. Red flags fly quickly in that kind of scenario. Embellishment, focusing and tailoring a resume to fit a target business is okay, but pure, unadulterated fabrication? No fracking way...

And as a side note, akin to the Facebook Wall Post debacle, employers are regularly checking those social networking sites to gather additional metrics on what kind of people are applying to positions. If they see someone photos of an applicant doing bodyshots and funneling in their underwear, they shouldn't be surprised that they can't aspire to a position higher than that of Walmart Greeter.

That's nasty.

I remember this one recruiting company that was trying to fill a position for a VAX cluster administrator. My resume said I did have a little bit of VAX/VMS experience, and they wanted to know if I'd be willing to stretch that out on my resume to make it sound like I was an experienced administrator. And I said, "Well, I'm not going to lie about it!" They pressed on for a bit, but eventually gave up.

I've had a few other experiences like that with recruiters. They want to fill the job quickly, and if that means massaging someone's resume (and even padding it with bullshit), it seems there are some less ethical firms that'll do it.

[137th Gebirg]

^^^ Yep. This one in particular was a very small company, and I guess they felt that the only way to be competitive with the big boys was to make their applicants look like IT gods and charge accordingly. Not a very reliable business model in the long run, yet many of these companies rarely ever look that far ahead to see the inevitable pitfalls inherent in that way of thinking.

Oh, well...I chalk it up to Corporate Darwinism™.

[Robert Maxwell]

I will say that I can't be too hard on recruiters. I got my current job through one, and I get a lot of interesting prospects from recruiters trying to fill various positions. It's nice to have the jobs come to me.

[137th Gebirg]

Oh, sure. I've worked with many recruiters in the past as well and the vast majority of them are very ethical and treat their people well. However, there are enough out there who aren't to warrant a certain level of caution when approaching someone new in general. And in this current dog of an economy, I suspect there is more motivation to be a little bit less truthful in such matters when it comes down to putting food on the family dinner table. Things are probably much worse now than a decade ago when my thing happened.