- October 18, 2024
- Latest News
The most common CV lies
Job applicants are often tempted to lie or exaggerate various facts in their resumes. The false information they present can include skills and competencies, education, experience, professional roles, reasons for leaving previous jobs, and more. The main reason they do this is usually the same: insecurity about standing out among the other candidates and getting the job. Another reason is that their experience and skills may not fully match the employer’s requirements for a given position, and they adjust their resumes to fit these requirements.
The most common areas where candidates tend to lie or exaggerate are:
– Professional experience
Applicants often claim they held a position higher than the one they actually held. This is done to exaggerate their job responsibilities and to appear more experienced and qualified than they really are. There are also many cases where candidates give misleading reasons for leaving their previous job in order to hide poor performance or early job contract termination.
– Education
False information in this area comes from people who didn’t complete their education, such that has attended university for a while but didn’t graduate, or even claimed degrees or qualifications they never had. It’s also common to add information about completed courses for which they have no certificates.
– Skills
The skills candidates often exaggerate in their resumes can be divided into several categories:
- Technical Skills – Proficiency in software, programming languages or other tools with which they aren’t actually familiar. Sometimes, they may be self-taught or have used a program just once or twice, which doesn’t make them experts.
- Language Skills – Candidates frequently exaggerate their proficiency in foreign languages. In some cases, the language was studied in school, but never used professionally.
- Soft Skills – Candidates often list a variety of personal qualities like leadership, teamwork, communication skills, etc., but struggle to provide concrete examples from their experience when asked to do that.
– Professional Achievements
In this area, candidates often exaggerate the impact they had in previous positions, such as increased sales percentages for example, outstanding success in completing projects, or claiming never existing promotions and recognitions in their previous work place.
– Covering gaps in employment history
To cover gaps in employment during various periods, the most common practice is to extend the dates of several jobs or to include fake freelance work, personal projects, or time spent studying.
– Freelance work or participation in volunteer initiatives
Freelance projects or volunteer work is often linked to the previous point, used to cover up gaps in employment history.
Lying or exaggerating to make the best possible impression on HR professionals is certainly not a good idea. Some small details might go unnoticed, but core skills can easily be tested through assessments, tasks, or appropriate questions. To build trust with HR professionals and, more importantly, to avoid embarrassing situations, always include such skills in your CV you are confident in and can demonstrate with ease.
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