PressEthic

MSNBC and Forbes offer some shocking, insightful advice to job-hunters:

Don’t lie on your resume.

This may sound obvious; after reading The Cheating Culture, is anyone really surprised that falsified resumes are so common? According to the MSNBC/Forbes article:

People often lie on their résumé in the mistaken belief that puffery will improve their chances to take a giant step in their career or simply because they lack self-confidence. A few may have something to hide. Some say as many as 35 percent of job seekers have lied on their résumé.

I wish I knew who this “some” is that is being quoted, but that’s a pretty big number.

MSNBC and Forbes aren’t the only ones talking about this. Plenty of blogs related to finding jobs have been discussing resumes and lies.

In fact, Monster Blog cites the book Freakonomics and claims the percentage is actually as high as 50 percent. However, that might depend not only on what percentage of people admit to doing such a thing, but also on how “lying” is defined.

This may sound like Clintonian hair-splitting, but pmegan at the job_hunting community at LiveJournal notes:

Well, I think that everyone lies in that they exagerate... you know, instead of saying "I filed" you say "I developed and maintained company-wide records management system"...

Dean at Dean’s World has a different take on it:

To be honest, I think that instead of getting mad because some people fudged to get ahead, we ought to be getting mad at the enormous scam that these people have proven most college degree programs to be. The fact is that these people have torn the cheap facade away, and laid bare what is so pathetic about our entire system of higher education.

Dean cited an article at Slate about corporate executives being caught exaggerating their educational backgrounds – and getting fired for it.

Now, I don’t tend to think of high school, or even college, to be a true microcosm of the “real world,” but here’s a nice parallel:

It’s easier to cheat on a term paper, and easier to for professors to catch students who try (as our own professor Adam L. Penenberg points out).

It also seems to be getting more popular to lie on resumes, although there’s no real way to know for sure. Either way, it’s becoming more common for employers to follow up.

Trust is disappearing all over society. This is a sad conclusion to make, but really, we as a society are bringing it upon ourselves – and those of us who actually put “I filed” on our resumes are suffering for it. At least this way, we have a chance to compete.