Article

Should you tell lies on your resume?

If you can easily get a job without lying, then the answer is no, don’t lie.

If your qualifications and experience exactly match what the employer is asking for, then you are one lucky son of a gun. The job was made for you.

But consider this scenario; You see an advertisement in the situations vacant column. The prospective employer is looking for an admin manager with two years experience in running an office in an accountancy practice.

Now, you have worked in an accountancy practice for four years and when the office manager is away on holiday or off sick, the boss gives you the job of taking over her duties. In effect you HAVE done the job, you know what is entailed. If the present office manager was to leave you would be given the job because YOU CAN DO IT.

So you have a problem. The new job offers a salary double what you are on now. Money is tight. The bills are piling up. You need this job, but, you don’t exactly fill the requirements of the job specification.

To lie or not to lie, that is the question.

Before you decide, think about this; in a recent survey, more than 50% of those questioned admitted to lying on their CV’s.

In Silicon Valley it’s even worse. An amazing 80% admitted to falsifying their qualifications and experience.

Pulitzer Prize winner Joseph Ellis falsified war records, as did Oregon congressman Wes Cooley.

Washington Post reporter Janet Cooke exaggerated her record to get hired by the paper, then wrote a story about a fictitious heroin addict which won her the Pulitzer prize which had to be returned when the lie was discovered.

Do you think that politicians tell the truth all the time? Do you think they ever tell the truth?

Do you think everything published in newspapers is the truth?

Do you think that the commercials you see on TV are telling you the whole story, or maybe just leaving out a few significant facts to make their product that much more appealing?

What about employers. Do they ever tell lies? When employees ask for salary increases, do you think employers are always truthful when they say they can’t afford it because business is slack.

Think about it. You are being lied to every minute of the day, from all sides, governments, politicians, big businesses, the press, your employer.

And in the middle of all this duplicity, here you are, trying to get a job to feed your family, get out of debt and try to improve life, and what are you told.

The advice you read over and over is, “don’t lie on resumes, don’t lie at interviews, be open and honest at all times”.

Its your decision.