Would You Lie On Your Resume?

New websites make the temptation to lie even harder to resist.



Would you lie on your resume? We all know that when you are looking for a job, your resume opens doors. How would it feel to know that the only reason those doors opened at all was because of your lie? Just knowing that if your boss ever found out the truth, you would be branded a liar and out of a job?



Lying on your resume is always a bad idea. It's one thing to promote yourself and your accomplishments and another to outright lie. Take most corporate marketing for example, in the commercials they may exaggerate a little or only tell you how great their product is, but they don't usually go so far as to actually be untrue. I think that all of us share that same type of morality, however there are still many people out there who think that lying to get a job is ok, and that everyone else does it, so why not?



In fact, there are two new websites that make lying on your resume even easier. I would tell you their names and give you a link, but the site takes every mention of them and lists it on the front page as an endorsement. Recently, Good Morning America mentioned the site briefly and now the page says "As seen on Good Morning America". Of course, you can't really expect a site that offers to help people lie to be honest in their marketing.



This particular site offers to provide job references for people in exchange for a small feel. How it works is that you talk with their representative and they help you decide which of their fake companies you should list on your resume as previous employers. Then, when a hiring manager calls them for a reference, they say that you were an excellent employee and even will say that you earned whatever amount of money you agreed on ahead of time.



Although they refuse to give phony work verifications for the purpose of getting loans, for everything else, they are more than happy to help you with your lies.



There is another site that is probably owned by the same company that offers an e-book on how to fake a resume that gets results. In their advertising, they say that even when people have been caught in lies, it isn't a big deal. In fact, they claim that everyone else is lying on their resume, so trying to compete while being honest is next to impossible. They propose that lying is the only option if you want to get a good job. The site goes on to claim that most employers assume that applicants lie and being honest about your experience and job history just makes you a sucker. This is completely not true.



The world in today's digital age is becoming smaller and smaller. It is very easy for an employer to check your work history, your background information and verify the information on your resume. Besides, you never know when you might find that someone in your office is someone you know from a previous job. Lies are tricky and they always have a way of catching up to you. If you were to get caught in this type of a lie, you would likely be branded a liar and your professional reputation would be ruined for the rest of your career.



If you have work history that you aren't particularly proud of, there are ways to downplay that which is always a better choice than lying. Even though these sites give examples of professionals who have lied on their resumes and still achieved success, they are the exception to the rule. Most people who are caught lying have been humiliated and some have even faced criminal charges.



Don't let this happen to you. Use your resume as a marketing tool, but don't lie to your employer. Besides, if you aren't qualified for a job on your own merits, then how can you expect to do a good job at it? Working at a position you aren't qualified for is just a set up for failure. Before you know it, you'll be out looking for a job again, still having to use a service to cover up how incompetent you were at your last job.



Have you ever lied on your resume? Did you get caught? Let me know in the comments.



By Melissa Kennedy- Melissa is a 9 year blog veteran and a freelance writer for LogisticsJobsiteBlog, along with helping others find the job of their dreams, she enjoys computer geekery, raising a teenager, supporting her local library, writing about herself in the third person and working on her next novel.