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Lying On Your Résumé: Fibs About Your Skills, Background Could Cost You The Job

Is your résumé more fiction than fact? Is it even a little bit fictitious? If so, you might want to fix it. According to a survey by CareerBuilder.com, lying on your résumé could cause you to be summarily disqualified from consideration when applying for a job.

Although only 8 percent of workers admitted to stretching the truth on their résumés, nearly 49 percent of hiring managers reported they have caught a candidate lying on one. Of these employers, 57 percent said they automatically dismissed the applicant.

Thirty-six percent of employers who received falsified applications said they still considered the candidate, but did not hire him/her. Only 6 percent ended up hiring the applicant.

The most common lies discovered on a resume, according to the survey, include:

Embellished responsibilities: 38 percent.
Falsified skill set: 18 percent.
Provided inaccurate dates of employment: 12 percent.
Claimed an academic degree not earned: 10 percent.
Made false claims about companies worked for: 7 percent.
Falsified job titles: 5 percent.

Industries experiencing higher incidences of résumé fabrications included hospitality, transportation/utilities and information technology. Sixty-percent of employers in hospitality, 59 percent in transportation/utilities and 57 percent in IT reported they found lies on resumes. Government had the lowest incident at 45 percent.

CareerBuilder.com asked hiring managers to share the most memorable or outrageous lies they came across on résumé s. Examples include:

Claimed to be a member of the Kennedy family.
Invented a school that did not exist.
Submitted a resume with someone else’s photo inserted into the document.
Claimed to be a member of Mensa.
Claimed to have worked for the hiring manager before, but never had.
Claimed to be the CEO of a company when the candidate was an hourly employee.
Listed military experience dating back to before he was born.
Included samples of work, which the interviewer actually did.
Claimed to be Hispanic when he was 100 percent Caucasian.
Claimed to have been a professional baseball player.

Rosemary Haefner, vice president of human resources at CareerBuilder.com recommends the following tips to make your résumé memorable for the right reasons:

Apply early: Nearly one-in-ten employers receive more than 50 applications for open positions on average and 20 percent said they are receiving more résumé than last year. Get your foot in the door before other candidates by signing up for job alerts that automatically email job listings to you as they become available.

Stand out from the crowd: Forty-three percent of hiring managers said they spend one minute or less looking at a résumé when first reviewing applications; 14 percent spend less than 30 seconds. Make sure you are highlighting specific accomplishments, quantifying results whenever possible, to showcase how you put your skills into action and benefited previous employers.

Use keywords: Hiring managers often use electronic scanners to rank candidates based on a keyword search of applications, so make sure to pepper keywords from the job posting into your resume as they apply to your experience. The terms employers search for most often are:

Problem-solving and decision-making skills (50 percent).
Oral and written communications (44 percent).
Customer service or retention (34 percent).
Performance and productivity improvement (32 percent).
Leadership (30 percent).
Technology (27 percent).
Team-building (26 percent).
Project management (20 percent).
Bilingual (14 percent).

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