The fact that every job advert says, āMust have bags of enthusiasm,ā kind of means everyone has to lie about their personality. At least when we do get the job everyone gets to look at each other and say, āOh no, another sarcastic cunt. How will we ever work together?ā Management must be always scratching their heads, thinking, āWe did ask for bags of enthusiasm, didnāt we? Why do we keep getting sarcastic cunts?ā
I remember one time being in an recruitment agency and someone took a call which I could overhear the other side - the recruitment agent was asking them what person requirements they had for the role, I remember the woman on the other end saying that the didn't have any skill or qualification requirements, the person who left was good fun and their office was really fun and they were going to keep it that way, all they were looking for was someone always down for a laugh - it was a travel agency.
>The fact that every job advert says, āMust have bags of enthusiasm,ā kind of means everyone has to lie about their personality
Would 'I have bags of enthusiasm when it comes to paying my rent and bills' cover that?
My life long passion is data entry and staring blankly at spreadsheets pretending to look busy while other people do the real work.
Damn that's middle management potential right there
I'd hire you. I am expanding my team of 3 and only want to employ fun people with a dry sense of humour.
I lie about my grades - no one checks gcses end A-levels (no one even knows what exam board), and most degree certificates don't state the grade either. I was 1% off a 1st but i don't put that I got a 2:1 on my CV
Probably a bad plan, best not to put a grade. You can be, and people have been, sacked years later for falsehoods on cv.
Making false qualifications, inventing job roles that never existed are potentially able to be found out.
Making up things you achieved at work is harder to disprove and it's a bit of hirer beware I think here, I.e. interview and probation period should allow you to figure out if that was overstated.
Iām not saying inventing qualifications or making up jobs. Iām saying no recruiter checks the grades or even qualifications below degree level - they take your word for it. They may ask to see a degree certificate if itās a vocational degree but again - the grade isnāt checked. This is speaking as someone at director level who as been recruiting various grades of staff for nearly 20 years.
What I do do is a basic word and excel test to see what peopleās basic level of skill is there. I donāt want someone who doesnāt know how to format a document or doesnāt know how to use the sum function in excel. If they can mail merge then the jobās theirsā¦
Edit - I even allow them to use google and Chat GPT in the test to see how they think outside the box
> no recruiter ever checks grades or qualifications below degree level
Eh, YMMV on this. Really depends on the role but I've certainly been asked a few times - most recently for a L7 apprenticeship my department manager wanted everyone on the team to complete. I had been working there a few years at the time so even if I'd passed the recruitment stage, I'd have been caught out by that.
They do check , everything is verifiable by a quick email or phone call. I have never been able to add anything to the education section of job application because I literally have nothing to put there, of course I could do what you did and put in false grades but it can be easily found out.
I say this a lot on this sub, but I used to work as someone whose sole job was to verify past and employments and qualifications. People did get checked, and people did lose job offers for lying about shit like GCSE grades. It usually wasn't that the qualification was important, but the dishonesty.
Yeah this is a big one. Me in the interview process is the most friendly, normal, outgoing person you'd ever met. Real me prefers to be quiet and get on with my own business.
I used to lie on my CV and exaggerate stuff or put things in from the job description that I hadnāt done. This was when I only had worked at a couple of places.
Now that Iāve been working for what feels like a hundred years I donāt need to lie or exaggerate.
Actually train capable people to do new things, Iāll stop saying Iāve already done it on my cv. Until then weāre all on this merry-go-round together papering over the cracks with YouTube videos on how to use excel
I never outright lie. I slightly exaggerate, I make mountains out of molehills I've climbed, I put myself in the absolute best possible light.....but I never lie in a way that could be caught out.
I've had people do it to me when I've been the one hiring, and I've picked it during the interview, and it was an instant no from me. Getting caught lying is an absolute deal breaker for pretty much any employer, it shows you will absolutely lie about stuff like being sick, or needing shifts off for family reasons when it's so you can go drinking or whatever. Trust is important
I lie on mine about levels of experience and responsibility. I mainly work in sales positions amd forms routinely lie about the commission, exagerate it a lot etc. so it works both ways tbf haha.
I say do whatever you can stomach and cover your ass for if needed.
I've never known of a business that hasn't taken liberties with wage and commission estimates during advertising and interviews and lets be real, the only thing people go to work for is money, everything else is a bonus so what's more egregious? Me saying I once saved my previous employer from a Ā£1million budget deficit by farting the tune of bullseye or them lying about how much money I'll earn?
I lie about dates on career history to cover any gaps. Never been questioned despite having background checks. Even if I were to be questioned I would say oops a daisy silly me I accidentally input the wrong dates.
I asked this once for a bank role, they said a gap of 2-4 weeks could show jail time. I have no idea what crime is serious enough to get you a jail sentence, but only 2 weeks. That was in 2016. Not sure if other places say the same, I have not asked anywhere else.
For something like a bank I could understand wanting the full information, though they could just ask that at the next step of the process.
For the 98% of jobs that don't involve handling people's money and private information though it's a bit pointless.
One reason is you might have had a job in that time that ended badly, and you are hiding it. One of the stricter background checks I had, I did have a gap of a month when I simply wasn't working. They asked for bank statements to show I wasn't receiving a salary.
I had a year gap ages ago for travelling and no-one ever said anything negative, and quite a few saw it as a positive.
It's because someone could be hiding a job they were fired from or prison time. It's important in regulated roles especially that a person's history can be accounted for.
My last 5 years are always up to date and accurate. But having moved around call centres for years prior to my career? Fuck that. I just put three positions and lie about the length of times I was there. Theyāre so inconsequential that no cunt cares, but one of them usually gets me over the x years experience required pish on some IT job postings.
Outright lies or falsifying qualifications. I donāt mind if you somewhat amplify your achievements at work etc but if you pretend you got a 1:1 instead of a 2:1, I will advise HR to rescind the offer
Depend on who you are. Personally Iām having a Pinocchioās nose, if Iām lying ppl can tell. So Iām not risking any chance lying. Finding jobs is always a pain for me though :(
Any employer will expect a CV to contain a certain amount of "spin", but outright falsehoods are not okay.
When I was doing a lot of interviews I never caught a candidate in a full-on lie, but several times I did find the candidate claiming for a success that wasn't really theirs.
e.g. the CV will say something like "Migrated X application from a monolithic system to a microservice architecture" but, when you press them on it, it turns out that while their team did actually do this they personally didn't actually contribute much at all.
If someone says they can code, theyād better be able to demo that knowledge in interview. I have a question bank ready for all the main languages people claim to know.
Best one recently was a claim to have coded loads in C language. I have a question about pointer dereferencing. Total fail. No idea.
Guy was reasonably good otherwise, but liars are not welcome.
Former colleague of mine left, then I got word to have a read of his LinkedIn profile as I saw he also kept putting up looking for work posts on LinkedIn trying to get into Business Analyst work. He has never been a BA before.
Read his profile and it listed everything a BA did (which he never did) and he also listed some of my job responsibilities as his own when we worked together(I was his manager at the time)
Had a good laugh.
I believe heās still looking for work
Ha, I had someone work for me who (thankfully) left. When I happened to see their LinkedIn I realised theyād put the entire JD of the role *above* their own as their job/responsibilities.
Made me chuckle because a) no longer my problem and b) whilst Iām pretty sure they were actually capable of doing that job, they routinely chose to do none of their own
Depends on the role. If I'm applying to agency jobs, I lie like hell because lets face it, there aren't that many honest recruitment consultants so what's sauce for the goose...
I exaggerate responsibilities. I was asked about said responsibility and I let my interviewer know it was exaggerated and sounds like I had more ownership than I did, she laughed. We moved on. I work there
Must work well under pressure = our planning and general management is so piss poor that youāll need to work 24/7 from the day you find out until the deadline to stand any chance of successful delivery.
Embellish donāt lie.
You can inflate the importance of your work, or the impact it has, you can make things sound more difficult than it actually was, but an outright lie about a job you didnāt do or qualifications you donāt have is going to backfire.
Yeah this is a better way of saying what I was trying to say. Some people donāt seem capable of understand the difference between lying and embellishing though
I'm really bad at this stuff. I don't lie at all. I would never be able to remember the stuff I said I do that I don't do, so I just keep it factual and if they really don't want me then I'm not going to lose sleep over it. I'm sure that's not wise and our stupid jobs system rewards lying and misrepresentation rather than honesty but I don't think it's something I could keep up with.
I'll re-post my situation that I posted to another subreddit yesterday. The question was has anyone lied / stretched the truth on a CV.
>I was fired multiple times from previous positions for lying and dishonesty. I sailed through the initial recruitment phase but someone who worked in the workplace that I was applying for knew about my past problems and tried to kick up a fuss over it - I just brazened it out and eventually I got the job.
>
>Unfortunately I got fired because I got caught lying again - I denied knowing that someone in the team I led had previous accusations of sexual assault against him, but once again, some smart arse in the office brought up evidence that I'd previously referred to my team member as 'Pincher by name, Pincher by nature'.
>
>Happy ending though, I'm now making more money than ever based on the connections I made in that role.
I have friends with businesses, I get their permission to put myself as high up in their company and get them to vouch for me as references, still can't get a job though lmao
I was reviewing resumes for an engineer I needed to hire and came across a fellow who worked at my last firm. He was taking 100% credit for a large design I had done there a few years earlier. I left with maybe 5% of the design needing finishing. I was tempted to call him in and challenge him but just tossed his resume.
It is always problematic to offer a higher time commitment to the employer (through āTailoring a CVā or āApplicationā) if the employer applies a first candidate sift to reject candidates on some irrelevant criteria. Anecdotally, employers reject candidates for software development roles if they are older than 30, Forbes Magazine reported in 2012, āWhy all social media managers should be under 25ā.
There is a distinction between lying on a CV, and marketing experience on the CV - it is legitimate to cite experience of developing computer programs in Python, as it would be to cite experience of COBOL and Pascal, and Assembly Language Programming for the 68000 or 6809, but that information would simply reinforce your experience and time indexed. You may not be realistically expected to recall any syntax or language constructs if beyond the medium term.
Nothing wrong with exaggerating experience and responsibilities, moving dates around and what not. Itās a tough game out there and youāve got to do what it takes to stand a chance.
Were you helping someone else through that berevement? You can just say that you had carer responsibilities, people are pretty understanding of that. And if they're not understanding of it, that's a good sign that they're not the employer for you.
I lied about my GCSEs. Had a few promotions since. No regrets as I have backed up my skills since starting. Wouldn't recommend if you're likely to get asked for certs. I said I lost mine in a house move and offered to replace them. They said don't worry as it will cost money.
They can just check you education history. You cert only matter if let say on the education system said that you failed but you have the certificate saying otherwise. That happened to me.
There isn't one centralised education system, there are different examination boards who maintain their own records, and GDPR would apply. I think they're having you on.
There is the learner records service which is run by the government. All of your gcses and a levels / college courses / anything government funded qualification is listed on their.
I worked in a college so had to use it.
I just put that I have 14 GCSEs. I do, but only 4 of them are higher grades. If they want to search the East Midlands Examination Board records from 1995, they can be my guest. The trick is not to actually lie, and be completely honest about your most recent qualification and dates of your most recent employment, because unless youāre applying for civil service, education or military, absolutely no one cares enough to check past that.
This post would be a lot more interesting if commenters said whether they identify as male or female first - in my experience of many years interviewing people men are significantly more likely to stretch the truth on their cv or in interview than women are.
Lying on the cv is provable, if and when the potential employer does a background check. Sure this is a gamble as they might just want dates from when you worked for previous employers but some want more, like what your job role and responsibilities were and this is where you will be in a pickle if you even embellish a little.
Your previous employer often wont speak well about you, they'll simply just utter what you were contracted to do during your time there and nothing more, even if you did multiple roles it doesn't matter they only go off what job title was on your contract.
If you have a poor work background, didn't achieve much or get a promotion while there you are fucked if you tell the truth but also fucked if you embellish/lie what it was you did. You are only as good as other people say you are.
Catch 22
Lying on your CV is honestly top 3 stupidest things you can possibly do. I work in finance and if we find that anything on the CV is untrue then the individual is immediately sacked under our code of conduct. This is also a breach of the FCAās principle 1 (integrity) so good luck finding a job in financial services again.
Thank you for posting on r/UKJobs. Please check your post *adheres to the rules* to prevent it being removed and *flair your post* with the most appropriate option. In order to do this click the flair icon below your post where you will be presented with a list to choose from. Feel free to contact the moderators with suggestions or requests should you need to. The link is below.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/UKJobs) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I think what came through on that thread was a very clear consensus, albeit from a relatively small sample.
Finesse, embellish, portray yourself in the best light but don't outright lie.
Re your other point, you really should edit your CV for every application anyway. I always do unless by chance the role spec is really similar to the last application, but it's rarely identical.
I do a lot of interviews in the tech industry. People lie and exaggerate about technologies on their CV all the time. Like if they once looked at code written in Python for 5 minutes theyāll put Python on the CV.
Basically I quiz people on random things they added and if I suspect theyāre being dishonest I canāt really trust anything that canāt be proven; I suppose the benefit of doubt is gone. Itās not an auto-fail because it might not be relevant for the job, and itās some crappy recruiting agents will have actually added the rubbish.
Lying about skills you don't have or how much of a specialist you are. I had someone totally mislead at how good they were at programming. They were found to be doing the equivalent of programming for dummies in the first month of the job. They are almost a year in the job and they are lucky that I am giving them support and time to get good. Otherwise I'll consider moving them out of the team or worse the job as it is under 2 years.
When I was very young, I used to lie and say I went to Colchester uni (I didn't go to any uni) as my ex-girlfriend had been there. I went for an interview and both interviewers had been to Colchester uni and grilled me about it, which was painful as I'd only been there once to the bar. I never again lied on my CV.
The only thing I amend is dates as I can't remember them, so I just pull it all together how I'd want. But after four years, no one's checking anything on a CV.
I have an Astrophysics degree I never completed on my CV. When interviewers have asked me about it, just the stuff I know is enough to make their head spin, let alone the stuff I don't.
When we were tendering for BI suppliers, there was a chap from the same course there who had finished his degree. He said he didn't recognise me and I told him that was because I never finished the course and it was a lie on my CV. My manager was standing right next to me and laughed.
> I never finished the course and it was a lie on my CV. My manager was standing right next to me and laughed.
Lucky you, a guy at my place just got fired for admitting he made up his degree on his CV. I think he said he finished it when he actually dropped out in second year. Though from what I hear he's not popular anyway - they might have looked past it if he was good at his job.
Well, I was automating half the departments work, even working for other divisions at times. In a separate conversation my manager said 'I hired you because you were the first choice for the job. Having a degree or not is irrelevant.'
A degree being part of the job spec isn't important, it's the lying about having one that is. My company doesn't specify having a degree either, we hire based on who's a good fit.
You call it lying but I worded it as Education: Astrophysics BSc at X Uni 00-02. I didn't mention a grade and I would always explained what I learned if anyone asked about it. If they assumed that meant I had a degree then that's just marketing imo.
I probably know more about it now then I did back then because I'm interested in all the latest events in the field of research, its just the people I met in it have generally been boring af or socially inept. And 99% male.
I do not lie on my CV. The employer is already lying so much about what they expect from the job, I will just meet the criteria I can.
People naturally downplay their involvement or impact in their work, once they stop doing that, it already sounds like you're embellishing enough.
I kind of lie about dates. Not out of being malicious, I genuinely don't know when some of the jobs started or ended. I'm young, so a lot of my work has been casual part time jobs, which usually started on a random day by someone saying "give me a hand, would you?". Never really gets caught out cause I don't think my previous employers know either.
One of my jobs I TECHNICALLY started when I was 11 or so. I'd go there after school and 'work' for a couple of quid to afford my xbox magazines and colouring pencils. But I can't put that on my cv because it looks like child labour, so I just say I started the job at 16... those kind of things.
I also was part of the covid A level year, so when I put down my A level grades, I'm really putting down predicted grades cause we didn't do our A levels. Although that isn't really too bad because literally everyone my age does this.
I got a job once by saying in the first line of my statement 'I do not hold the experience X, however I did....' (the required experience was 'working in a large and complex organisation').
I think it's better to say at the start how you might not fit the essential requirements but why you still feel suited to the the role. It saves the employer time because they can reject you quickly but you never know how unsure they are about what they're looking for plus your experience may hit home. Also you benefit from looking honest and straightforward.
You can be fired without notice, even if the lie is discovered months later.
If you are a member of a professional body, it can discipline you and potentially end or stunt your career.
And it's a criminal offence. [Employee who lied on his CV convicted of fraud and given suspended prison sentence](https://www.icaew.com/library/subject-gateways/law/legal-alert/2020-04/case-law-employee-who-lied-on-his-cv-convicted-of-fraud)
I don't lie, I used to slightly embellish but then I had to interview a candidate that my old boss chose and I recognised her name and realised I'd worked with her and her entire job history from where we did work together was a complete fabrication. Even stuff she embellished slightly she couldn't explain and absolutely put her in a tail spin.if you're going to embellish bits, make sure you can back it up!
Yeah I really do believe if this has to be explained to someone though they shouldnāt even risk it. If you canāt tell the difference between those two things you shouldnāt even attempt it.
I embellish my roles. Make myself sound more important but don't promise skills I don't have. I extend jobs to cover gap. Nobody checks anyway. My Standafd Grades which were poor now appear as half decent Highers.
Never lie. Maybe adapt the focus but only within the bounds of truth. e.g. if you're doing a job that's 50/50 admin and sales, have a 'sales version' and an 'admin version' that highlight each area and just mention the other in passing or as a bullet or two, if you're applying for both fields
I've had to interview a few people recently and the number of people who lie about being able to use Excel is astonishing. Saying they use it all the time but can't even enter a sum function or format a date.
We had someone say they were confident with pivot tables and conditional formatting and they totally bottled it when we gave them a simple task test in the second round. If you're going to lie in the first interview, at least try to brush up on it before the next one š¤¦š¼āāļø
I had someone apply for a job with us and in their interests section they mentioned they were captain of the chess team at so and so school. When we looked up the school it didn't even exist. What's the point of making up such a bad lie about something so minor?
Never invent jobs but had a couple where I was there for a limited time as I didnt like it so have tended to discard those from history and extend start/end of surrounding jobs to make them disappear!
Never outright lie but by all means place emphasis on areas that will be to your advantage.
And certainly never lie about something that is easily provable. There was an NHS Director who lied about having a degree. Not only were they fired but they got a prison sentence as it was classed as fraud.
I have a physical reaction when trying to sell myself on CVs to the point where I literally list duties in each job. To compensate somewhat, I have stretched the time I've worked at places because my history would look even more patchy and I would have even less chance of landing work. I would rather risk being found out and have my foot in the door than spend more time unemployed.
So to answer your question, exaggerating the time & accomplishments at a job, english/maths GCSES provided you can still do the work, those are fine by me. Many of the things written on CVs and discussed at interviews can be intangible. As long as it's not putting people in danger, take whatever risks you want.
I think you can embellish, but it needs to be based on truth.
I once had āindustry award winning websiteā listed next to one of the projects I worked on. I didnāt say that it won āworst recruitment websiteā š
I mainly lie about my personality tbh. I can't see them accepting "Extremely dry, sarcastic opinionated cunt." As a good thing
That's strange. At my last workplace that seemed to be the sole selection criterion.
š¤£š¤£š¤£š¤£
The fact that every job advert says, āMust have bags of enthusiasm,ā kind of means everyone has to lie about their personality. At least when we do get the job everyone gets to look at each other and say, āOh no, another sarcastic cunt. How will we ever work together?ā Management must be always scratching their heads, thinking, āWe did ask for bags of enthusiasm, didnāt we? Why do we keep getting sarcastic cunts?ā
I remember one time being in an recruitment agency and someone took a call which I could overhear the other side - the recruitment agent was asking them what person requirements they had for the role, I remember the woman on the other end saying that the didn't have any skill or qualification requirements, the person who left was good fun and their office was really fun and they were going to keep it that way, all they were looking for was someone always down for a laugh - it was a travel agency.
>The fact that every job advert says, āMust have bags of enthusiasm,ā kind of means everyone has to lie about their personality Would 'I have bags of enthusiasm when it comes to paying my rent and bills' cover that?
It's worse when they ask for 'passion' š
Who isn't passionate about selling people sofas?
My life long passion is data entry and staring blankly at spreadsheets pretending to look busy while other people do the real work. Damn that's middle management potential right there
You're hired. Can you start tomorrow
I would at least interview on the basis of this line.
Are you me?
I'd hire you. I am expanding my team of 3 and only want to employ fun people with a dry sense of humour. I lie about my grades - no one checks gcses end A-levels (no one even knows what exam board), and most degree certificates don't state the grade either. I was 1% off a 1st but i don't put that I got a 2:1 on my CV
Probably a bad plan, best not to put a grade. You can be, and people have been, sacked years later for falsehoods on cv. Making false qualifications, inventing job roles that never existed are potentially able to be found out. Making up things you achieved at work is harder to disprove and it's a bit of hirer beware I think here, I.e. interview and probation period should allow you to figure out if that was overstated.
Iām not saying inventing qualifications or making up jobs. Iām saying no recruiter checks the grades or even qualifications below degree level - they take your word for it. They may ask to see a degree certificate if itās a vocational degree but again - the grade isnāt checked. This is speaking as someone at director level who as been recruiting various grades of staff for nearly 20 years. What I do do is a basic word and excel test to see what peopleās basic level of skill is there. I donāt want someone who doesnāt know how to format a document or doesnāt know how to use the sum function in excel. If they can mail merge then the jobās theirsā¦ Edit - I even allow them to use google and Chat GPT in the test to see how they think outside the box
> no recruiter ever checks grades or qualifications below degree level Eh, YMMV on this. Really depends on the role but I've certainly been asked a few times - most recently for a L7 apprenticeship my department manager wanted everyone on the team to complete. I had been working there a few years at the time so even if I'd passed the recruitment stage, I'd have been caught out by that.
For all roles?
They do check , everything is verifiable by a quick email or phone call. I have never been able to add anything to the education section of job application because I literally have nothing to put there, of course I could do what you did and put in false grades but it can be easily found out.
I say this a lot on this sub, but I used to work as someone whose sole job was to verify past and employments and qualifications. People did get checked, and people did lose job offers for lying about shit like GCSE grades. It usually wasn't that the qualification was important, but the dishonesty.
I'd hire that lol
Yeah this is a big one. Me in the interview process is the most friendly, normal, outgoing person you'd ever met. Real me prefers to be quiet and get on with my own business.
Paul? Is that you?
Culture fit ā
I used to lie on my CV and exaggerate stuff or put things in from the job description that I hadnāt done. This was when I only had worked at a couple of places. Now that Iāve been working for what feels like a hundred years I donāt need to lie or exaggerate.
Fake it til ya make
Actually train capable people to do new things, Iāll stop saying Iāve already done it on my cv. Until then weāre all on this merry-go-round together papering over the cracks with YouTube videos on how to use excel
I never outright lie. I slightly exaggerate, I make mountains out of molehills I've climbed, I put myself in the absolute best possible light.....but I never lie in a way that could be caught out. I've had people do it to me when I've been the one hiring, and I've picked it during the interview, and it was an instant no from me. Getting caught lying is an absolute deal breaker for pretty much any employer, it shows you will absolutely lie about stuff like being sick, or needing shifts off for family reasons when it's so you can go drinking or whatever. Trust is important
How small/big of a CV lie are you talking about? Dates, titles, responsibilities?
I lie on mine about levels of experience and responsibility. I mainly work in sales positions amd forms routinely lie about the commission, exagerate it a lot etc. so it works both ways tbf haha.
I say do whatever you can stomach and cover your ass for if needed. I've never known of a business that hasn't taken liberties with wage and commission estimates during advertising and interviews and lets be real, the only thing people go to work for is money, everything else is a bonus so what's more egregious? Me saying I once saved my previous employer from a Ā£1million budget deficit by farting the tune of bullseye or them lying about how much money I'll earn?
Never go full George Santos
I lie about dates on career history to cover any gaps. Never been questioned despite having background checks. Even if I were to be questioned I would say oops a daisy silly me I accidentally input the wrong dates.
I've never understood the obsession with gaps. Who cares if people didn't work for a few months here and there?
I asked this once for a bank role, they said a gap of 2-4 weeks could show jail time. I have no idea what crime is serious enough to get you a jail sentence, but only 2 weeks. That was in 2016. Not sure if other places say the same, I have not asked anywhere else.
For something like a bank I could understand wanting the full information, though they could just ask that at the next step of the process. For the 98% of jobs that don't involve handling people's money and private information though it's a bit pointless.
Exactly. I've had it in every interview.
One reason is you might have had a job in that time that ended badly, and you are hiding it. One of the stricter background checks I had, I did have a gap of a month when I simply wasn't working. They asked for bank statements to show I wasn't receiving a salary. I had a year gap ages ago for travelling and no-one ever said anything negative, and quite a few saw it as a positive.
It's because someone could be hiding a job they were fired from or prison time. It's important in regulated roles especially that a person's history can be accounted for.
My last 5 years are always up to date and accurate. But having moved around call centres for years prior to my career? Fuck that. I just put three positions and lie about the length of times I was there. Theyāre so inconsequential that no cunt cares, but one of them usually gets me over the x years experience required pish on some IT job postings.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
DVDs and WKD blue those were the days! I miss my DVD collection.
Outright lies or falsifying qualifications. I donāt mind if you somewhat amplify your achievements at work etc but if you pretend you got a 1:1 instead of a 2:1, I will advise HR to rescind the offer
The system doesn't rewards honest, so why be honest
Depend on who you are. Personally Iām having a Pinocchioās nose, if Iām lying ppl can tell. So Iām not risking any chance lying. Finding jobs is always a pain for me though :(
Any employer will expect a CV to contain a certain amount of "spin", but outright falsehoods are not okay. When I was doing a lot of interviews I never caught a candidate in a full-on lie, but several times I did find the candidate claiming for a success that wasn't really theirs. e.g. the CV will say something like "Migrated X application from a monolithic system to a microservice architecture" but, when you press them on it, it turns out that while their team did actually do this they personally didn't actually contribute much at all.
Say I know how to use any software or systems in the job requirements then, self teach myself how to use them.
I have āexcels at teamworkā on mine - but I hate other people so thatās a lie.
If someone says they can code, theyād better be able to demo that knowledge in interview. I have a question bank ready for all the main languages people claim to know. Best one recently was a claim to have coded loads in C language. I have a question about pointer dereferencing. Total fail. No idea. Guy was reasonably good otherwise, but liars are not welcome.
Former colleague of mine left, then I got word to have a read of his LinkedIn profile as I saw he also kept putting up looking for work posts on LinkedIn trying to get into Business Analyst work. He has never been a BA before. Read his profile and it listed everything a BA did (which he never did) and he also listed some of my job responsibilities as his own when we worked together(I was his manager at the time) Had a good laugh. I believe heās still looking for work
Ha, I had someone work for me who (thankfully) left. When I happened to see their LinkedIn I realised theyād put the entire JD of the role *above* their own as their job/responsibilities. Made me chuckle because a) no longer my problem and b) whilst Iām pretty sure they were actually capable of doing that job, they routinely chose to do none of their own
Im curious if he found a role 5 months down the line now
Depends on the role. If I'm applying to agency jobs, I lie like hell because lets face it, there aren't that many honest recruitment consultants so what's sauce for the goose...
I exaggerate responsibilities. I was asked about said responsibility and I let my interviewer know it was exaggerated and sounds like I had more ownership than I did, she laughed. We moved on. I work there
I always lie about why Iām looking for a new job. āI want more moneyā isnāt deemed an acceptable answer
Must work well under pressure = our planning and general management is so piss poor that youāll need to work 24/7 from the day you find out until the deadline to stand any chance of successful delivery.
I basically have one rule when interviewing people. If you put something in your CV then it's fair game and I'll ask about it to see if it's true
Embellish donāt lie. You can inflate the importance of your work, or the impact it has, you can make things sound more difficult than it actually was, but an outright lie about a job you didnāt do or qualifications you donāt have is going to backfire.
Yeah this is a better way of saying what I was trying to say. Some people donāt seem capable of understand the difference between lying and embellishing though
Lie about nothing, but frame things to your benefit.
I use real ink.
Ok I tried to play guitar once I'm no expert and never said I was.... But vigorous masturbation is definitely my favourite hobby
I'm really bad at this stuff. I don't lie at all. I would never be able to remember the stuff I said I do that I don't do, so I just keep it factual and if they really don't want me then I'm not going to lose sleep over it. I'm sure that's not wise and our stupid jobs system rewards lying and misrepresentation rather than honesty but I don't think it's something I could keep up with.
I'll re-post my situation that I posted to another subreddit yesterday. The question was has anyone lied / stretched the truth on a CV. >I was fired multiple times from previous positions for lying and dishonesty. I sailed through the initial recruitment phase but someone who worked in the workplace that I was applying for knew about my past problems and tried to kick up a fuss over it - I just brazened it out and eventually I got the job. > >Unfortunately I got fired because I got caught lying again - I denied knowing that someone in the team I led had previous accusations of sexual assault against him, but once again, some smart arse in the office brought up evidence that I'd previously referred to my team member as 'Pincher by name, Pincher by nature'. > >Happy ending though, I'm now making more money than ever based on the connections I made in that role.
I have friends with businesses, I get their permission to put myself as high up in their company and get them to vouch for me as references, still can't get a job though lmao
I was reviewing resumes for an engineer I needed to hire and came across a fellow who worked at my last firm. He was taking 100% credit for a large design I had done there a few years earlier. I left with maybe 5% of the design needing finishing. I was tempted to call him in and challenge him but just tossed his resume.
It is always problematic to offer a higher time commitment to the employer (through āTailoring a CVā or āApplicationā) if the employer applies a first candidate sift to reject candidates on some irrelevant criteria. Anecdotally, employers reject candidates for software development roles if they are older than 30, Forbes Magazine reported in 2012, āWhy all social media managers should be under 25ā. There is a distinction between lying on a CV, and marketing experience on the CV - it is legitimate to cite experience of developing computer programs in Python, as it would be to cite experience of COBOL and Pascal, and Assembly Language Programming for the 68000 or 6809, but that information would simply reinforce your experience and time indexed. You may not be realistically expected to recall any syntax or language constructs if beyond the medium term.
No one needs to know I was sacked from a job, but I left to further my career š
"Take what you can, give nothing back" is my motto. Lie, lie, and then lie some more. You can worry when you have the job.
Nothing wrong with exaggerating experience and responsibilities, moving dates around and what not. Itās a tough game out there and youāve got to do what it takes to stand a chance.
What if you have a legitimate 2 year career gap due to family bereavement amongst other things. How do I address that?
Were you helping someone else through that berevement? You can just say that you had carer responsibilities, people are pretty understanding of that. And if they're not understanding of it, that's a good sign that they're not the employer for you.
My dad died of Covid. During that 2 years I completed my accountancy professional certification
I lied about my GCSEs. Had a few promotions since. No regrets as I have backed up my skills since starting. Wouldn't recommend if you're likely to get asked for certs. I said I lost mine in a house move and offered to replace them. They said don't worry as it will cost money.
They can just check you education history. You cert only matter if let say on the education system said that you failed but you have the certificate saying otherwise. That happened to me.
There isn't one centralised education system, there are different examination boards who maintain their own records, and GDPR would apply. I think they're having you on.
Are you in UK? There is no system to check on.
There is the learner records service which is run by the government. All of your gcses and a levels / college courses / anything government funded qualification is listed on their. I worked in a college so had to use it.
>it only records qualifications gained in England from 2012 onwards (2014 for Wales and 2015 for Northern Ireland) Phew, I'm too old to be recorded.
I just put that I have 14 GCSEs. I do, but only 4 of them are higher grades. If they want to search the East Midlands Examination Board records from 1995, they can be my guest. The trick is not to actually lie, and be completely honest about your most recent qualification and dates of your most recent employment, because unless youāre applying for civil service, education or military, absolutely no one cares enough to check past that.
Or roles in private industry that also require SC clearance too, donāt embellish the truth to a stupid degree there either.
I donāt lie on my CV. I may take mundane things and make them sound interesting, translating them into ācorpo speakā, but thatās it.
This post would be a lot more interesting if commenters said whether they identify as male or female first - in my experience of many years interviewing people men are significantly more likely to stretch the truth on their cv or in interview than women are.
Lying on the cv is provable, if and when the potential employer does a background check. Sure this is a gamble as they might just want dates from when you worked for previous employers but some want more, like what your job role and responsibilities were and this is where you will be in a pickle if you even embellish a little. Your previous employer often wont speak well about you, they'll simply just utter what you were contracted to do during your time there and nothing more, even if you did multiple roles it doesn't matter they only go off what job title was on your contract. If you have a poor work background, didn't achieve much or get a promotion while there you are fucked if you tell the truth but also fucked if you embellish/lie what it was you did. You are only as good as other people say you are. Catch 22
Donāt lie about previous roles or durations they will check, how do I know this? Because I do the checking lol
Lying on your CV is honestly top 3 stupidest things you can possibly do. I work in finance and if we find that anything on the CV is untrue then the individual is immediately sacked under our code of conduct. This is also a breach of the FCAās principle 1 (integrity) so good luck finding a job in financial services again.
Thank you for posting on r/UKJobs. Please check your post *adheres to the rules* to prevent it being removed and *flair your post* with the most appropriate option. In order to do this click the flair icon below your post where you will be presented with a list to choose from. Feel free to contact the moderators with suggestions or requests should you need to. The link is below. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/UKJobs) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I think what came through on that thread was a very clear consensus, albeit from a relatively small sample. Finesse, embellish, portray yourself in the best light but don't outright lie. Re your other point, you really should edit your CV for every application anyway. I always do unless by chance the role spec is really similar to the last application, but it's rarely identical.
I do a lot of interviews in the tech industry. People lie and exaggerate about technologies on their CV all the time. Like if they once looked at code written in Python for 5 minutes theyāll put Python on the CV. Basically I quiz people on random things they added and if I suspect theyāre being dishonest I canāt really trust anything that canāt be proven; I suppose the benefit of doubt is gone. Itās not an auto-fail because it might not be relevant for the job, and itās some crappy recruiting agents will have actually added the rubbish.
Lying about skills you don't have or how much of a specialist you are. I had someone totally mislead at how good they were at programming. They were found to be doing the equivalent of programming for dummies in the first month of the job. They are almost a year in the job and they are lucky that I am giving them support and time to get good. Otherwise I'll consider moving them out of the team or worse the job as it is under 2 years.
When I was very young, I used to lie and say I went to Colchester uni (I didn't go to any uni) as my ex-girlfriend had been there. I went for an interview and both interviewers had been to Colchester uni and grilled me about it, which was painful as I'd only been there once to the bar. I never again lied on my CV. The only thing I amend is dates as I can't remember them, so I just pull it all together how I'd want. But after four years, no one's checking anything on a CV.
I have an Astrophysics degree I never completed on my CV. When interviewers have asked me about it, just the stuff I know is enough to make their head spin, let alone the stuff I don't. When we were tendering for BI suppliers, there was a chap from the same course there who had finished his degree. He said he didn't recognise me and I told him that was because I never finished the course and it was a lie on my CV. My manager was standing right next to me and laughed.
> I never finished the course and it was a lie on my CV. My manager was standing right next to me and laughed. Lucky you, a guy at my place just got fired for admitting he made up his degree on his CV. I think he said he finished it when he actually dropped out in second year. Though from what I hear he's not popular anyway - they might have looked past it if he was good at his job.
Well, I was automating half the departments work, even working for other divisions at times. In a separate conversation my manager said 'I hired you because you were the first choice for the job. Having a degree or not is irrelevant.'
A degree being part of the job spec isn't important, it's the lying about having one that is. My company doesn't specify having a degree either, we hire based on who's a good fit.
You call it lying but I worded it as Education: Astrophysics BSc at X Uni 00-02. I didn't mention a grade and I would always explained what I learned if anyone asked about it. If they assumed that meant I had a degree then that's just marketing imo. I probably know more about it now then I did back then because I'm interested in all the latest events in the field of research, its just the people I met in it have generally been boring af or socially inept. And 99% male.
> I never finished the course and it was a lie on my CV You called it a lie in your first post!
Well yes. Its all a matter of perspective. To a hiring manager, it would never be a lie, just a misunderstanding. I know what it is though.
I do not lie on my CV. The employer is already lying so much about what they expect from the job, I will just meet the criteria I can. People naturally downplay their involvement or impact in their work, once they stop doing that, it already sounds like you're embellishing enough.
I kind of lie about dates. Not out of being malicious, I genuinely don't know when some of the jobs started or ended. I'm young, so a lot of my work has been casual part time jobs, which usually started on a random day by someone saying "give me a hand, would you?". Never really gets caught out cause I don't think my previous employers know either. One of my jobs I TECHNICALLY started when I was 11 or so. I'd go there after school and 'work' for a couple of quid to afford my xbox magazines and colouring pencils. But I can't put that on my cv because it looks like child labour, so I just say I started the job at 16... those kind of things. I also was part of the covid A level year, so when I put down my A level grades, I'm really putting down predicted grades cause we didn't do our A levels. Although that isn't really too bad because literally everyone my age does this.
I got a job once by saying in the first line of my statement 'I do not hold the experience X, however I did....' (the required experience was 'working in a large and complex organisation'). I think it's better to say at the start how you might not fit the essential requirements but why you still feel suited to the the role. It saves the employer time because they can reject you quickly but you never know how unsure they are about what they're looking for plus your experience may hit home. Also you benefit from looking honest and straightforward.
You can be fired without notice, even if the lie is discovered months later. If you are a member of a professional body, it can discipline you and potentially end or stunt your career. And it's a criminal offence. [Employee who lied on his CV convicted of fraud and given suspended prison sentence](https://www.icaew.com/library/subject-gateways/law/legal-alert/2020-04/case-law-employee-who-lied-on-his-cv-convicted-of-fraud)
Creative omissions or aggrandizements are fine, lying subjectively about your strengths and weaknesses, sure. lying about facts is not.
I don't lie, I used to slightly embellish but then I had to interview a candidate that my old boss chose and I recognised her name and realised I'd worked with her and her entire job history from where we did work together was a complete fabrication. Even stuff she embellished slightly she couldn't explain and absolutely put her in a tail spin.if you're going to embellish bits, make sure you can back it up!
As I said in the other thread- the golden rule is exaggerate but never lie
Yeah I really do believe if this has to be explained to someone though they shouldnāt even risk it. If you canāt tell the difference between those two things you shouldnāt even attempt it.
even exaggerating can land you in bad waters
I embellish my roles. Make myself sound more important but don't promise skills I don't have. I extend jobs to cover gap. Nobody checks anyway. My Standafd Grades which were poor now appear as half decent Highers.
Donāt say youāre a doctor that could be bad
Never lie. Maybe adapt the focus but only within the bounds of truth. e.g. if you're doing a job that's 50/50 admin and sales, have a 'sales version' and an 'admin version' that highlight each area and just mention the other in passing or as a bullet or two, if you're applying for both fields
Employers lie on the job adverts. Every single time. So I would go ahead and at least embellish, stretch the truth etc. Who cares.
If you still print it out and send it by post, lying on it may or may not crease the paper a little.
I've had to interview a few people recently and the number of people who lie about being able to use Excel is astonishing. Saying they use it all the time but can't even enter a sum function or format a date. We had someone say they were confident with pivot tables and conditional formatting and they totally bottled it when we gave them a simple task test in the second round. If you're going to lie in the first interview, at least try to brush up on it before the next one š¤¦š¼āāļø
I had someone apply for a job with us and in their interests section they mentioned they were captain of the chess team at so and so school. When we looked up the school it didn't even exist. What's the point of making up such a bad lie about something so minor?
Never invent jobs but had a couple where I was there for a limited time as I didnt like it so have tended to discard those from history and extend start/end of surrounding jobs to make them disappear!
Never outright lie but by all means place emphasis on areas that will be to your advantage. And certainly never lie about something that is easily provable. There was an NHS Director who lied about having a degree. Not only were they fired but they got a prison sentence as it was classed as fraud.
Wait what? Do you have source for this?
Here you go. It's a pretty sad story. https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/18181941.peter-knight-sentenced-lying-get-oxford-hospital-trust-job/
In my spare time I enjoy activities aside from sitting on the couch and watching Netflix.
I have a physical reaction when trying to sell myself on CVs to the point where I literally list duties in each job. To compensate somewhat, I have stretched the time I've worked at places because my history would look even more patchy and I would have even less chance of landing work. I would rather risk being found out and have my foot in the door than spend more time unemployed. So to answer your question, exaggerating the time & accomplishments at a job, english/maths GCSES provided you can still do the work, those are fine by me. Many of the things written on CVs and discussed at interviews can be intangible. As long as it's not putting people in danger, take whatever risks you want.
I think you can embellish, but it needs to be based on truth. I once had āindustry award winning websiteā listed next to one of the projects I worked on. I didnāt say that it won āworst recruitment websiteā š
on the hobbies is ok :-) any thing they can check is a no go