Many employers now have written policies in place that give them the right to fire employees, who intentionally falsify information on their resume and/or their job application. And they can even fire you years after they hired you.
How do companies determine that you have outright lied on your resume? Through background checks. Thanks to the Internet, even non-hiring decision-makers can stumble on questionable facts about you before you're hired. And again, even if you get hired and the company decides to do a background check after the fact, they are well within their legal rights to fire you upon discovering that your resume contains falsehoods.
Background checks can easily uncover a criminal past, dishonest embellishments, and "puffed up" education. And speaking of education, the technology has existed since the mid-1990's to verify if someone has legitimately earned a post-secondary diploma or degree. Furthermore, if you have inflated your job title where - for instance - you said you are a manager (when in fact, you are a non-manager), the chances are very good that a background check will reveal this fact.
The 7 Resume Lies
We've already talked about the consequences of fudging your education and job titles on your resume. Here are the 7 most common lies, any one of which could easily get you fired:
1 - DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES: Some people think it's acceptable to artificially raise the level of tasks they perform on their resume. For example, you say that you manage 6 locations instead of just 2, or deliver regular training to your co-workers when in reality, you only dispense advice to them once in a while. The problem arises when your new employer puts you a situation, where you don't have the right knowledge to carry out a task that your resume said you performed in the past.
2 - CERTIFICATIONS: Just as with education, it's lying if you claim that you have a certification, when you don't. It's also lying if you list a certification where you've taken the course, but did not either finish the course or pass the exam.
3 - SALARY: We all want to earn more money, so you might think it's acceptable to "elevate" your previous salary by a few thousand or so. This is wrong and yet another lie that WILL come back to haunt you. You can count on your prospective employer talking to your previous employer as one of your references.
4 - EMPLOYMENT DATES: If you have a gap in your employment that you don't want to call attention to, you might think you can get away with "extending" dates around it. DON'T! Ninety nine per cent of the time, you WILL get caught. Fortunately, a Certified Professional Resume Writer will know how to properly - and effectively - address this problem.
5 - RESULTS: Ideally, your resume should be filled with achievements, backed up with numbers, dollars, and percentages. Don't be tempted to inflate these figures, because those numbers will be verified by the hiring decision-makers.
6 - LANGUAGE KNOWLEDGE: Don't make the mistake of a recent English-speaking job-seeker, whose resume stated that she was fluent in Spanish. It was discovered in the interview that she only knew 2 phrases - hardly deemed "fluent" status. The interviewer called in a fellow fluent-in-Spanish employee from the office next door, and the job-seeker was humiliated on the spot.
7 - SOFTWARE KNOWLEDGE: Don't claim that you are a whiz at using Microsoft PowerPoint (for example) when in actual fact, you barely know it. Computer program testing software is widely available today, and the prospective employer will almost certainly schedule you for a test.
To summarize, hiring decision-makers will automatically assume that you have low character if you embellish your resume. Ultimately, you are begging to remain unemployed if you lie on your resume - something that you have the power to prevent.
To learn more about designing a resume that avoids many job-killing mistakes (including the errors discussed above), look into this highly-recommended authority amongst resume writing companies, who can increase your prospects of landing interviews... read more...
