You want that job, oh so bad! The pay is good, the bennies excellent and you have access to the company gym. Your current situation isn’t something to write home about either. You feel like a gofer, and the pay just about covers a small room…above a barber shop. There is one problem —the qualifications required for the job are just beyond your experience.
As HR Lady, I am constantly bombarded by résumés that are “embellished”. I can’t stress enough how fatal such a practice can be to your chances of getting a job. A recent study, based on 1100 résumés concluded that 43 % had one or more inaccuracies while 13% had more than two. Human Resource executives are constantly on the look out for tell tale signals of embellishments on the résumé, given the high probability of fudging. Since more than half the résumés are telling a tall tale, we tend to take the information that’s submitted to us with a fist full of salt.
The sad fact is that there is often no real need for that lie. A lot of times the position does not even require a college degree, but the applicant misrepresents his college credentials. The biggest problem I see is people who have not quite completed all the credits required to graduate from college. In the past such transgressions often got ignored. However, due to a few high profile cases the attitudes of the HR professionals have changed considerably. A recent RadioShack CEO claimed to have earned a degree in psychology from a school which didn’t even offer that degree. Needless to say, this incident caused a major embarrassment for the company, adversely affected the stock price and demonstrated the need for due diligence while hiring even in the top echelons. The people often feel that they have earned the right to the degree through their on the job learning, even though they are a few credits shy of the actual degree. My recommendation for them: be upfront and take the time off and get the formal degree.
Similarly, people are often unnecessarily embarrassed about being laid off, while most reasonable employers understand that in an efficient economy hiring and firing are natural activities.
Every once in a while, I see someone representing himself as a Director of Engineering, even though he was a senior engineer. It is quite likely that he thought he was doing the duties of the director, and using the embellished title is OK, but it doesn’t look good in front of a hiring manager. Such exaggerated credentials often put the candidate in a worse light than he deserves, and more often than not put that candidate out of consideration.
Larger organizations, with the budget often outsource the résumé and credential verification to other companies specializing in such activities. Smaller companies often have to pull together resources for the background check. Ultimately, most companies understand that the integrity of a professional is at least as important as his competence. No one wants a CFO with questionable ethics, and shady exaggerations on a résumé is a big warning sign.
For more information about HrLady visit: http://www.hrlady.com/resume-precautions.php
Ron Arthur is a Search Engine Marketer working for Carlsbad, CA based web-metrics company Sofizar. He is a member of the team developing a click fraud detection software, ZarTective. While not writing expose’s on the darker side of the web, he plays with his cat “Mano” and watches “Rocky Horror Picture Show” for the 17th time. Or maybe 117th.
