Lieing on my CV.

miami365

Hi all, I've had enough of this overqualified and underselling yourself perception that employers seem to blackmark jobseekers with.

Given the current economic climate, surely its better to be employed even if that means applying for every role under the sun rather than waiting for that one elusive role that closely matches your experience and qualifications.

With that in mind, mainly borne out of frustration, I've just applied for a role with a CV where I've taken out all my financial services experience and made out that the roles I had in Tesco and Dunnes Stores (over ten years ago) were more recent.

Am I just being naive in taking so long to do this or is this something people have been doing all along?

What are people's thoughts on lieing on a CV, baring in mind I do have the experience just had to lie about my employment dates and made myself considerably younger to explain potential time gaps?

or do people think that for that level of employment it's just a white lie and ok provided I don't get found out?

tHE vAGGABOND

I lied on my CV to get into my first couple of jobs - totally made up a company in america and said I worked there for 2 years [even did a crap 1 page website with a 'coming soon' on it].

After a couple of years I did not have to as I had that all important couple of years work experience

The key thing is dont say you can code C++ and then start the job and be totally lost as you dont even know what it is - as you will be thrown out in less than a week.

If you want to lie do it, but ensure you can do the job your saying you can do.

Mairead1975

Hi

I think you shouldnt lie - will come out at references anyway....why waste your own time going through a whole interview process. Also you P45 will reflect your previous earnings. I can understand it's a nitemare and take the risk if you think that's best.

The worry employers have when they employ someone overqualified is that they'll end up jumping ship as soon as something better comes along. This makes the time they have spent on training, set-up etc a waste. They wouldnt have an issue with people being overqualified if they hadnt experienced this in the past. Im sure if you started in Tesco and a role came up for you in financial services, you'd be back in Banking in a heart beat.


Could you say you were travelling or something?

Mairead

miami365

Believe me I'd like to have my CV as truthful as possible and be hired for the customer service skills and experience that I have but once they see that I have 5+ years recent financial services experience, an employer looking for example to hire deli staff is not going to proceed any further.

Totally agree with why they wouldnt hire me but these are different times where it is not so easy to jump from job to job, also the role similar to my deli staff example would have a high turnover rate anyway and not many would view it as more than just paid labour.

I'd be hoping that given the type of employment references wouldnt be required or at least not followed up on.
I'm also back from 15 months working and travelling abroad which I have included on my CV.

Suppose only time will tell.

Wuggectumondo

I think you're better off being truthful...

Doing a job like Dunnes with your experience will be soul-destroying- AND you would prob have to be retrained anyway!

Think of the bigger picture... Waiting a bit longer to find a job or getting a crappy job you'll hate and leaving soon???

abouttobebanned

If you're going to lie, try and spell the lie properly.

Seriously though...nothing that you think they're going to ask about. Embellishment is the key word..

Monkey61

I personally wouldn't lie too much in a case like that.

You have made yourself considerably younger? Surely they will spot this as soon as you are hired and have to provide photo ID?

As others have said, your P45 will have previous employment details and they will check that.

Also it is naive to think that they won't check your references. I have never not had my references checked for any job, no matter how menial. As an employer I also wouldn't be too impressed to discover that you had dumbed down your CV as it might imply that you thought that the job was clearly beneath someone of your standing and only suitable for someone whose work experience rested entirely in supermarkets.

If you want to dumb down a bit, then perhaps you could under exaggerate your roles in your previous companies - no need to say that you were Head of Mergers and Acquisitions when you could just say that you worked in a particular sector and office.

miami365

All valid points and the reasons why I've been reluctant to do so until now.

However I think people are missing my main point in that, given the current economic climate, shouldnt I be doing whatever it takes to secure employment in any sector rather than sponge of the government?

Someone applying for a so called menial job nowadays shouldnt be blackmarked by employers, its not as if I'm batting away higher level jobs to work behind a deli counter.
I'd love to get an interview let alone a job offer.

r3nu4l

As someone who is currently hiring (in the UK) I've seen loads of CVs, some of whom are from people who have far too much experience for the role we are advertising.

What I have found is that of the 3 applicants with too much experience for this junior role, two of them have covered this in their all-important cover letter. As the guy interviewing these people my worry is that these guys will get bored and move on in 6 months but once again 2 of the 3 'overexperienced' guys that have applied have covered this.

Lying can catch you out in bizarre ways. I remember a guy in my school telling an interviewer he was actively involved as a scout leader in a scout troop in Leixlip. The interviewer then said, 'Oh, so you must know my brother, he's a leader in that troop too' He didn't get the job...a simple lie that would look like it should easily slip past but didn't.

My advice would be to outline your experience honestly and write a damn good cover letter stating why a guy like you wants that position...you may need to 'dress it up' rather than just say, 'I'm unemployed, I'll take anything' though

Mrs OBumble

Don't lie.

But there are way of telling the truth. For example, one version of my CV talks about my experience establishing the functional and non-functional requirements for the archiving strategy of a document storage system. The over version just says that I worked for the same company doing "changes to computer systems".