Resume Fraud 101

Many of us have made changes to our resumes to package ourselves for the job.  Somtimes this is a simple re-wording of job duties or a formatting change to hide the fact that we were not in a job for very long.  In many cases it is something like 11/2005-1/2006 being transposed into 2005-2006.  The hiring team on the receiving end may not even think to ask, how long were you in that job because it was a few years back.  Sometimes it is removing short term jobs altogether.  But every now and then someone will do something more significant.  A frequent fraud that we see in resumes involves skill exaggeration.  For example: a job description “requires” experience programming with Ruby on Rails for at least 3 years so the job seeker adds Ruby into a job they did 2.5 years ago that didn’t involve Ruby on Rails at all.  Since the job was at a startup that went under or happened to be out of state it is doubtful that anyone will ever know, right?  Wrong.  A well trained and seasoned recruiter or hiring team will often see your resume more than once over the course of a few years.  When they do, they often save the old resume.  And then there is the web.  If you put it out there it has a shelf life longer than your job search.  But then you also have to take into account the possibility that the hiring team might know someone who worked for that startup too.  When this happens you are not only setting yourself up for rejection by the company, but you are also potentially setting yourself up for rejection by a lot of other companies.  Hiring team members move around and so do recruiters.  Resume fraud is not something that people forget about after easily.  Be a good shephard of brand you and don’t juice your resume for the short term win.