The pressure to stand out in a sea of applicants may tempt job seekers to be less than honest on their resumé.
A survey by CareerBuilder finds that 58% of American hiring managers have caught a lie on a resumé.
There are certain fabrications job seekers may try to slip past employers more frequently than others. According to employers, the most common lies they catch on resumés relate to an embellished skill set (57%), embellished responsibilities (55%), dates of employment (42%), job title (34%), academic degree (33%), companies worked for (26%) and accolades/awards (18%).
When asked about the most unusual lie they’ve ever caught on a resumé, employers recalled the following:
- applicant included job experience that was actually his father’s; both father and son had the same name (one was Sr., one was Jr.);
- applicant claimed to be the assistant to the prime minister of a foreign country that doesn’t have a prime minister;
- applicant claimed to have been a high school basketball free-throw champion; he admitted it was a lie in the interview;
- applicant claimed to have been an Olympic medallist;
- applicant claimed to have been a construction supervisor; the interviewer learned the bulk of his experience was in the completion of a doghouse some years prior;
- applicant claimed to have 25 years of experience at age 32;
- applicant claimed to have worked for 20 years as the babysitter of known celebrities such as Tom Cruise, Madonna, etc.;
- applicant listed three jobs over the past several years; upon contacting the employers, the interviewer learned that the applicant had worked at one for two days, another for one day and not at all for the third;
- applicant applied to a position with a company that had just terminated him; he listed the company under previous employment and indicated on his resumé that he had quit; and
- applicant applied twice for the same position and provided different work history on each application.
Fifty-one percent of employers would automatically dismiss a candidate if they caught a lie on his or her resumé, while 40% say it would depend on what the candidate lied about. Seven percent would be willing to overlook a lie if they liked the candidate.
The survey included a representative sample of 2,188 hiring managers and HR professionals across various industries and company sizes.
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