I’d say it’s not okay to lie, but embellishment is encouraged.

For example, I hire programmers. If you put on your resume you know some language or framework, I’m probably going to test you on it. If you can’t code hello world, or something basic I’m going to bissed off.

Now, if your role was technically something like a jr java engineer but you put on there that you were a mid level, meh I’m not going to check. As long as your skills are roughly in line I’ll let you through to the next round.

Do not lie on your resume. Especially if you are a software engineer! When I give interviews, I typically don’t ask random technical questions. They are catered to what’s on your resume and if you can’t explain it, that’s a huge red flag

I don’t think it requires lying. I do think you can advance yourself faster by doing some lying, but you should stick to things that aren’t actually job related. Length of time working jobs, increasing your previous job titles by a level, making your roles sound more critical are all good ones. Saying you can do something that you cannot can definitely get you in to trouble if they decide to ask you about it, or worse, you get hired and then they need you to apply the skill you don’t actually have.

That being said, I have seen people straight up lie about their qualifications, get the job, flounder for a while and then become at least minimally capable and then hold the job long term. If you consider trying this, at least have a fall back plan for if you get fired.

It really doesnt. Youre welcome to submit your resume into a place even if you dont meet all the qualifications(in fact, I’d recommend it) but lying comes off bad pretty much anywhere. If you cant show that your resume even kind of reflects your skillset any potential employer is gonna write you off

Totally depends on the employer. Some are hardcore, many aren’t. I used to be in the IT field, one of the companies I worked for hired a guy who claimed he had 10 years of IT experience. He got fired after 3 days because apparently he couldn’t even install a printer on people’s computers.

If he was able to get past the interview, then anybody can lol. Better not to outright lie, but embellish for sure, just be ready to try to sound like you know the basics at least. Often, calling things fancy names is enough to get by, here’s some examples:

1. Set up a Minecraft server for you and you friends? Try <Experience with server setup & management>
2. Added RAM to your grandma’s 10 year old computer once? Try <Computer hardware upgrade and repair experience>

Seems stupid, but trust me, it works with HR all the time. And once you get into the interview, you can add details to flesh out your experience better. A lot of it is how you say something, not what you say.

Don’t say, “I set up a Minecraft server once for my friends to play.” Say something like, “I spun up a Minecraft server instance for my friends and I to utilize. I managed scheduled software updates and patches for the server, verified the disk health and hardware usage, and set up regular backups for the world files and resources.” Doesn’t matter that your hardware monitoring was just Windows Task Manager and your scheduled backups and updates were just Windows Restore point and Microsoft updates, most staff will just hear that description and move on, especially if you add a little banter, they will normally just go, “ah cool” and keep going down the list.

Obviously this varies based on the job experience level, but for entry level jobs to get your foot in the door, it works very well.

At some point, the question becomes: was the candidate too unqualified to understand what they were applying for?

I don’t mind training someone if they’re not 100% up to speed but they also need to be capable of learning and retaining things. A lot of that means that you need a foundation based on education and on the job learning. In other words, I’m not going to teach foundational shit that you should have picked up in high school.

One memorable example: we had one applicant who claimed a high degree of competence and related experience - and although I had some doubts during the interview I was realistic about the job market and our chances of finding someone who was a perfect match. She was personable, seemed smart, and had worked in the industry. How hard would it be to train her? If she could manage to pick up even the most basic parts of the workload it would be win to hire her.

A short list of what we learned

• no bachelor’s degree (our manager was livid when she found out about that one)
• no understanding of basic science (like, “temperature is not measured as a percentage” basic science)
• a week into the job, asked when she was going to “start doing X,” even though the job description was “you’re going to be doing Y and Z.” To be fair (?), the words describing X and Y were fairly similar and you might mistake one for the other if you had a poor grasp on either of them.

I’m going to gloss over a lot of irrelevant (but horrifying) detail here. We did have one memorable conversation where she said, “I’m so glad I applied for this job even though I wasn’t qualified. You never know where you can get by trying!”

Where she eventually got was fired, but that took some time and the damage she did is still legendary. Part of that legacy of raging incompetence is that we fact-check resumes in ways that we previously did not. But the great irony is that she probably had no idea of just how unqualified she actually was. Again, the question becomes: is the candidate too unqualified to understand what they were applying for?

I’ve only ever even had one job call anyone I had on my resume.

I know this, because every contact info other than my own on my resume for the last 15 years has been fake and will forward to my own phone so I can pretend to be my own reference if I need to.

I could probably lie about being able to actually do the job and having past experience in it, too; but that would be a little silly since I wouldn’t be able to actually do the job and they would find that out pretty quick.

Jesus, all the people here saying never to lie on your resume must live pretty privileged lives.

Yes, its okay to lie, if you can back it up.

For example, I know just about everything there is about computers/sysadmin there is under the sun (im a born computer geek) but I never had any official degrees for it. I lied and said I had most of the CompTIA certifications and not a single person ever asked to actually see it. I already know everything that’s in those books so it’s not like I didn’t have the knowledge, I just didn’t have the stupid piece of paper, that, again, no one ever asked for.

Most employers are going to be exploiting your labor anyways so if you can take advantage of them you should, because they certainly going to be taken advantage of you, and you shouldn’t feel bad for them.

As others have said, just keep it reasonable and don’t lie yourself into a corner. If you don’t know rocket science don’t say you do and obvious things like that.

Why is it you think that job seeking often requires lying on your resume?

The current system of job seeking often requires to lie on resume.

This has not been my experience at all, but maybe it depends on what kinds of jobs you’re seeking.

In my line of work, detecting lies on resumes is one of the reasons we spend time interviewing candidates. If you are caught out in a lie, you can kiss any chance of an offer goodbye. As an interviewer I have never knowingly given a “hire” vote to a lying candidate and if I did, I wouldn’t have my job much longer.

They know, that’s why there’s verification of stuff that’s critical to them. Most company don’t care if u know ur job

I’ve never been coached to lie on my resume.

I’ve never put anything false on my resume.

I’m glad to have not worked for a company where that’s cool, or knowingly worked with scumbags who lie about their qualifications.

Sure, my resume sucks, but it’s at least accurate.

Lying only paints you into a corner. It also means you’ll probably get saddled with work that doesn’t suit you.

Companies lie on their job ads so I think its perfectly fair. I wouldn’t go and say I can do a skill that I can’t but I don’t think it’s wrong to say I can do x even though i have no qualifications or professional experience in it.

Why do you think it requires you to lie? If you’re lying on your resume it’s (I can only assume) you are not actually qualified for the position you are applying for. I also assume that you are at more of an entry level in terms of your skills/qualifications. Is that accurate?

If you have success with that strategy good for you, but I’ll caution others - as you get further in your career, interviews get longer and more in depth. If you say you know how to do something, you are often asked technical questions on that thing, or in-depth questions on how you’d implement that thing/skill/strategy/into the position. As others have said lying and embellishing are not the same thing. You can oversell your skill to a degree, but be prepared to need to put in extra work (probably off the clock and in your own time) to get yourself to the skill level you said you had. You may not need to! But in some positions, you may be RELIED on for that skill you’re not as good at as you said you were.

Also - UPDATE your resume and keep it current. If you learned a new thing and can do it, put it on there before you forget you did it. Also, prioritize. Remove old things from your resume as you get further into your career and those skills/accomplishments are less impactful or Relevant. Replace with newer things. Keep track of what’s going on in your field and stay up to date with buzz words and topics and be able to speak to them even if it’s not your area of expertise.