December 2006
Resume Checks and Balances:
Fibs, Embellishments, and Outright Lies on Your Resume
By
President of Workforce Associates
and author of
NetWork: Maximizing Your Career Resources on the Internet
Available online and in print from Author House
It's just a little puffery, the job hunter thinks! Your prospective employer thinks otherwise:
It's so tempting when you're in the job searching mode to s-t-r-e-t-c-h the truth about your background or experience in your resume or during an interview. How in the world will ANYONE notice a little white lie or a slight exaggeration when hundreds of candidates are out there and 100 million Americans are in the workforce?
WRONG! In this day and age, it doesn't take much in the way of technology to double check your educational experience, expertise, and past work history. Here's how and why:
In a recent Society for Human Resource Professionals study, HR professionals were asked how often they checked information in an applicant's resume. You won't be pleased with the results if you're a fibber! More than 96% said that their companies always check references, credentials, or both.
And these recruiting specialists use all kinds of tools to help them make that 96% percentage so high. For example, it's a simple matter to Google someone's name to find out all kinds of information about them, from newspaper articles that their name was found in to minutes from meetings of all kinds to alumni lists. In the 21st century, our electronic fingerprints are on more documents than you can possibly imagine. Take the test! Google yourself and discover all kinds of material about your comings and goings.
Beyond the simple Google search, which I highly recommend that you do about yourself, there are many tools to help recruiters check the facts about your application. For example, KnowX gives public information about traffic violations, convictions, and other damning information.
There are also services such as Resume Doctor that help companies verify a job candidate's background and credentials. From your standpoint as a job searcher, there is excellent information about how to create customized electronic resumes to catch the eye of the HR office and solid tips about how to network to find a job or make a long overdue career change. In addition, there are irreverent comments in their weekly columns to help you not fall into common job hunting traps! Check them out and see what I mean.
And universities and colleges which want to preserve their good names and reputations are increasingly willing to help employers double-check grade point averages and graduation dates. This is because of recent headlines that reported that executives at RadioShack, Notre Dame, and Bausch & Lomb had been fired when reference checks caught them out with incomplete degrees or with degrees from fly-by-night institutions.
The craze about MySpace, Facebook, Xanga, and Friendster social networking websites continues and recruiters are taking full advantage of it. If you've indulged in too much verbiage about your sexual or drinking habits to friends online, thinking that you were cloaked in some relative privacy, think again! Companies that are looking for young talent often tap into these sites to find out how much you were studying or showing off.
Human resource professionals also can gain access to information on these supposedly private sites in several ways. For example, employees who are recent graduates themselves, often retain their college email addresses, which enables them to keep in contact with the alumni association. Sometimes, too, companies ask college students working as interns to perform online background checks for them. So it's a good idea to review your page on Facebook.com before you engage seriously in a job search. Pretend that you're giving your page to your grandmother to read! That should cure you of being too risque online -- Alternatively, apply settings on your site that can significantly limit access to your page by public eyes.
We all know about six degrees of separation between individuals. The fact is that in most cases, we're only separated by two or three of them. The reason that I mention this is that your fibs easily can be refuted by former colleagues, neighbors who know your work history, people who know you through professional associations, your church, and elsewhere. If you're applying to a company in an area where you've lived for awhile, think twice-three-four times before engaging in too much puffery! Someone nearby is more than willing to set the record straight about you and it won't be a pretty sight!
Liz Ryan, Business Week's career counselor, summed it up well in a recent article, entitled "The Elephant in Your Resume," referring to Marco, one of my favorite Dr. Seuss characters in "To Think that I saw it on Mulberry Street" who was known to embellish animals and situations to compliment his lively imagination. She includes valuable tips regarding how to write up your education, job history and skills with embellishment that are accurate. She also gives important advice about handling what could be the ultimate embarrassing question for an interviewee: "Why did you leave your last position?"
In the end, the only thing that you have is your reputation. Remember that the next time you're tempted to add Ph.D., GPA's of 5+, walking on water performance, and other hyperbole in your resume.
All the best for a safe and happy holiday season. I'll "talk" to you in 2007 about more career advice and websites to check out. I can be reached at jlommel@WorkforceAssociates.com
Jane M. Lommel, Ph.D.
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