A craving to get better work and stiff competition for roles is causing job hunters to talk up their skills and experience by lying on their resume. A CareerOne survey of Adelaide recruitment firms finds most workers are not telling the truth in some way to give them the best chance of being hired.<\/p>\n
But such actions are actually leading to the reverse and putting their employment prospects at risk.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Recruiters say the majority of resumes have some sort of untruth, overstatement, omission of fact or inaccuracy as job hunters try to get a better job than they have or edge their way into a position.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Lies increasingly are being found out because hirers now are checking with companies, whether they are listed as references or not, to determine a worker’s experience and skills.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Extrastaff managing director Declan Rowan says it is rare for workers to completely fabricate a resume but about 60 per cent of resumes contain “inaccuracies”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
He says job hunters want to give themselves the best chance possible of getting a job among “quite stiff” competition.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
“Most people who leave a job and go for their next job (do it) as a step up,” he says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
“They want to give the impression (of their role) as a more complex job than they may be doing, thinking it will help in their next job.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
McArthur state manager Matthew Hobby says employers do not trust their staff when they are found not to have the skill set they claim and workers are not given a second chance to learn it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
“They don’t hang around. They get asked to leave,” he says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
He says many employers now advertise roles as temporary, with the possibility for permanency, to test staff first for the skills they say they have.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Michels Warren Public Relations consultant Anna Keneally believes there is far more long-term gain for job hunters in being upfront rather than lying on a resume.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
She feels industry experience can be important but companies do not hire staff who do not have positive references or a good personality fit with existing staff.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
“It’s hard to break into an industry and people are inclined to embellish to get a foot in the door but I wouldn’t recommend lying,” she says.<\/p>\n
“Sooner or later, that information will be tested against your practical skills and knowledge – that’s if you get past the interview stage.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n “In public relations, a consultancy can be a high-pressure environment and if your resume experience doesn’t match your performance, it’s going to be very obvious.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n A UK survey by online site The Recruiter<\/em> finds about one quarter, or 23 per cent, of recruitment firms uncovered a lie in a resume. Among the more unusual were stating God as a reference, listing lion taming as a hobby and claiming to be a direct descendent of Vikings. In South Australia, job hunters commonly stretch the truth about their length of employment in roles.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n They list the time spent in a role in years, such as from 2009 to 2010, when in fact it lasted a few weeks from December, 2009, to January, 2010. Position titles often are altered to imply a role with greater responsibility than reality. Job hunters have been found to overstate their qualifications, saying they have done a bachelor degree when they did not finish it or have a CPA when they are an associate member.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Hobby says some job hunters make changes to their resume but forget organisations already have a previous document on file with which they can compare it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n “People embellish the truth and say they are an executive assistant but really they are a receptionist who looks after petty cash,” he says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n “(A resume) is a statement of fact, not a statement of opinion.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Lying by omission and leaving off jobs which they did not enjoy or lasted only a few months just leads to red flags and more questions from recruiters, he says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Resume tips<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Talk up interests or qualifications if they are relevant to the role or employer. Revealing you are amember of a football club, for example, may help if the employer is a sponsor of that club but is irrelevant or negative if it is a rival club’s sponsor.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n Use well-known employers as references if they are aware they are being named and will oblige. Anyone who can support your claims of being a good worker adds weight to your employability but they need to be willing to give a positive reference.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n Cover up any gaps in employment history. If you believe an employer will not understand a long period out of the workforce, for example, nominate activities you completed during that time.This can include any volunteer work completed for an organisation, suffering from a personal illness or relevant duties involved with raising a family.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n Don’t make up interests or qualifications to get a resume reader’s attention if they are not true. Suggesting you are a lion tamer in your spare time, for example, can get the application noticed but does not sound credible and can paint you in a negative light.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n Refrain from using references to talk yourself up, especially without informing them. Having worked for a well-known identity briefly in the past, for example, may make you sound good or impressive but if they cannot remember you, they cannot give a positive reference.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Telling fibs may put your chance of getting the job at risk. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1405,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,124],"tags":[91],"class_list":["post-1356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-career","category-resume-and-cover-letter","tag-resume"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.careerone.com.au\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.careerone.com.au\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.careerone.com.au\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.careerone.com.au\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.careerone.com.au\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1356"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.careerone.com.au\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1356\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1406,"href":"https:\/\/www.careerone.com.au\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1356\/revisions\/1406"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.careerone.com.au\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.careerone.com.au\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.careerone.com.au\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.careerone.com.au\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\n