Lying on your Resume

I think that it is very sad that it is becoming common to find people lying on their resumes, but it also does not shock me. Since I have not started applying for jobs and I do not have a lot of experience in the working field, I do not personally know people who have lied on their resumes. While I was reading this article, it made me think back to when I was applying to colleges. I knew a lot of people who embellished their college applications to make themselves appear more qualified than they really were. In most cases, people exaggerated the truth, which is still lying. For instance, people would join a club and never once do anything with it, but they would say that they actively participated in the club. It frustrated me to listen to the ways people would try to make themselves seem like a better applicant than they really were. I knew it was not uncommon for entering college students to lie on applications, but I would have hoped that people would be mature enough to report the truth by the time they are applying for jobs after college. After reading this article, I know that is obviously not the case.

I think the problem is growing because more and more people resort to lying about their qualifications. Honest and qualified job applicants feel like they have to make themselves look better because everyone else is lying to look good. The trend continues to grow because as more people lie about their qualifications, more people have to lie to keep up with the competition of the liars. While it is easy to see why this trend is growing, it is not right. Just because other people are lying to get jobs does not make it right for you to lie. Eventually it is going to catch up with you, and most likely, the consequences are going to be far more detrimental to a person's career than if she had simply told the truth in the first place.

I personally would not be satisfied knowing that I got a job using false information, no matter how qualified I felt I was for the job. I think it is wrong to lie about qualifications, and it is wrong to give employers a false impression of who you are. While lying could help someone earn a job, it is going to catch up with them eventually. I think it is sad that our world is full of so many dishonest people. It is sad that employers should even have to question the legitimacy of someone's resume, but changes in technology will help catch future lies. As technology continues to expand, it is going to become much easier for employers to check the validity of resumes. Integrated technology makes it easy for companies to receive access to all sorts of information, and people need to be aware of the risks they face by lying on resumes.

The site offered many tips to help people design an impressive resume. Many people may lie because they do not want an employer to see a large gap in their employment history, and the site gives advice on how to present the truth without emphasizing the gap. Their advice focuses on ways of presenting the truth in a way that highlights all of the good qualities, as opposed to the things that people try to cover up. Many times people do not need to lie about the things they lie about on their resume; instead, they need to change their resume design to draw employers to the qualities they want to highlight. I'm sure there are a lot of helpful resume sites that present the same advice. I hope more and more people are able to learn how to present the truth in a desirable way, and I hope the trend of lying does not continue. It's scary to think of a world full of dishonest people.