The current system of job seeking often requires to lie on resume. It is even being highly recommended by people that coach people for job seeking, although with some moderation of course.
I’d say it’s not okay to lie, but embellishment is encouraged.
For example, I hire programmers. If you put on your resume you know some language or framework, I’m probably going to test you on it. If you can’t code hello world, or something basic I’m going to pissed off.
Now, if your role was technically something like a jr java engineer but you put on there that you were a mid level, meh I’m not going to check. As long as your skills are roughly in line I’ll let you through to the next round.
Yes, I hire programmers. I need core competencies in areas I care about. If the job is Java but you’ve mostly been working in C# I’ll take it on faith that you can figure that part out yourself.
If you tell me you’ve worked on ecommerce sites but can’t tell me the steps of a credit card transaction, I’m concerned.
What I really care about is your ability to articulate your answers, clearly enumerate assumptions underlying your reasoning, and so on. If I have to pull teeth to get answers, I’m not hiring you. I’m an introvert, I used to love being left alone to write code in a dingy basement office, so I get that attitude but you need to be able to talk to people to get a job.
Part of that interaction is proving you have an understanding of the tools you will be using. If you lied about that knowledge and understanding, it will be painfully obvious very quickly.
I interviewed a guy who claimed on his resume that he ported a Blizzard game from PC to mobile. The way it was worded heavily implied that he worked for a company that was contracted by Blizzard to port the game, or at least that this was an official project in some sense, like maybe he worked with a group on the internet to do as a passion project, like how people reverse engineer and make open source versions of games.
Not only was it a school thing, it wasn’t even like a project that he did. It was an example that his teacher went over in class.
He didn’t know a single thing that was on his own resume. But he got the job anyway, even though we never did a technical interview for him. Guess whose daughter was his girlfriend? Yup, the VP of software.
Yeah that’s a better way to put it to me. I honestly don’t care what language most people code in, but I hope you can explain how you’re doing stuff. I interview with the expectation of “a lot of red squigglies” expecting it not to compile. I don’t care if you call .Sort instead of writing your own. Just show me you can code.
Sadly though, my latest question is for web developers and is mostly made up of calling a simple GET api. I have failed at least 80% of the engineers that take that test simply because they have no idea how to call an API in any language or framework, something I do I’d say on a daily basis. It’s basically “call a fake endpoint /foo and show the results” and that takes mid level engineers the entire hour to do.
We just overhauled a programming test we use of we aren’t certain a person can do what they say they can do (which is most of the time when you hire remote) and yeah the old one disqualified tons of people. It was very simple. I have had lots of people have someone else do it and then act very surprised when I wanted to discuss it with them.
People are taking an hour for
import requests
res = requests.get("https://your-domain.com/foo")
print(res.json())
or javascript’s fetch that I don’t want to type on my phone any more code for? Maybe I should think higher of my skills.
I’m not sure if this is embellishment or not but I wrote some sales software for a moving company. Then they used it for 15 years, and my resume now says I wrote software that brought in like $30m to the company.
Do not lie on your resume. Especially if you are a software engineer! When I give interviews, I typically don’t ask random technical questions. They are catered to what’s on your resume and if you can’t explain it, that’s a huge red flag
I think OP may need to explain further. There’s embellishing your work history, or tailoring it to a particular position you’re after. That’s fine and part of the CV-fu. Then there’s outright lying about hard facts, which can be a huge problem if checked.
Hard facts are things like who you worked for and when and on what position, or where you got your degree and what it says on it. Provable skills and certifications also fall under this category.
I wanted to hire a guy and then we found a lie on his resume. He said he had graduated but in fact he had a few weeks left to graduate. He would have the degree by the time he started the position. Our agency wouldn’t touch him after that. A lie on the resume was a deal killer.
If he said “Degree expected on <date>” rather than I have a degree he would have the job now.
If he could prove he was graduating in a matter of weeks then that’s fucking ridiculous. I was accepted to grad schools before I even passed my final undergrad classes. It’s just on a conditional basis, but nothing changed when I actually got the degree. Besides, there’s time between the last classes ending and commencement, then months between commencement and getting the actual degree in the mail and your transcripts being updated.
I’m hope he feels like he dodged a bullet.
I don’t think it requires lying. I do think you can advance yourself faster by doing some lying, but you should stick to things that aren’t actually job related. Length of time working jobs, increasing your previous job titles by a level, making your roles sound more critical are all good ones. Saying you can do something that you cannot can definitely get you in to trouble if they decide to ask you about it, or worse, you get hired and then they need you to apply the skill you don’t actually have.
That being said, I have seen people straight up lie about their qualifications, get the job, flounder for a while and then become at least minimally capable and then hold the job long term. If you consider trying this, at least have a fall back plan for if you get fired.
I’ve got a funny story about that last paragraph!
A man I know who’s retired now worked as a teacher for years in the 80s/early 90s because the secretary had to look in the phonebook for the phone number of the person that actually applied for the job. She tried the first person with the same name and he just went with it. He winged it during the interview, got the job and his sister who was a teacher taught him how to do it 😂
It really doesnt. Youre welcome to submit your resume into a place even if you dont meet all the qualifications(in fact, I’d recommend it) but lying comes off bad pretty much anywhere. If you cant show that your resume even kind of reflects your skillset any potential employer is gonna write you off
