How to Lie on your Resume (and get away with it)
Posted on April 28th, 2009 by Jake under Business, LifeIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
I follow lots of searches on Twitter and happened upon one denying some guy his right to learn how to lie on a resume. His grievance is none of the search results for How to Lie on a Resume actually turn up any advice. He’s absolutely right, learning to lie on your resume is a tricky thing. The key to any lie is the truth it contains, so use your language skills creatively and you’re sure to succeed at lying on your resume.
Brandon has some great thought provoking phrases in what I would call the ultimate guide to lying on your resume. I don’t think that’s what he intended, so I’ll analyze a few of his gems as a great starting point:
Trying to downplay your lack of employment or temporary self-employment in your quest for a sales job, try this: “Worked with a constricted budget was careful to leverage sales”
Need a temporary PhD? A search engine won’t notice the period (or the rest of the word) when you randomly add the sentence, “Tested water Ph.Determined amount of chlorine to add accounting for the volume of water.” Bonus reference to accounting helps you rank better in resume search engines too.
Under-qualified for that Java programming position? Make up for it with clever keyword usage: “Played Elf Bowling and other Java games.” I’m going to co-opt this one and suggest that rather than admitting to playing games, you might state you did “scalability testing of Java applications through hours of rigorous testing.” This not only sounds better, it gets away from admitting to game play.
Notice that none of these things are outright lies, they are merely creative uses of language. Think of them more as positioning statements, not lies, however, if you are caught lying, it’s not my fault. You simply weren’t creative enough. ;) Go forth and update your resume.
Feel free to share your resume lies in the comments below.
July 25th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
If information can’t be verified, than go ahead and lie. Also (this is very important) look at what the job is asking for, i.e., skills, experience, and so on. I bolded the most important qualities the boss is looking for from a recent job posting:
Strong financial background and expert proficiency with all Microsoft Suite applications – Excel, Word etc.
Best qualified candidate will be a self-motivated, multi-tasking guru, able to work independently but definitely a team player… Attention to detail is a MUST
So, it says self-motivated, try to come up with an example from your past employment that will show the boss that you are self-motivated. Do this for each key word in the job posting. This is the main point, so listen carefully, give the boss what he or she wants. They have a particular person in mind, so try to be that person. Just think about it, and remember, GIVE THE BOSS WHAT HE OR SHE WANTS AND FOCUS ON THE KEY WORDS!