Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter tells a story from his own experience about exposing a job hunter in a resume lie and why you should do the same thing.
[spp-transcript]
I want to talk with you today about a new way that employers are finding resume inconsistencies. No, I’m not talking about them going to the LinkedIn profile. I’m not talking about them looking at Facebook. This is a point-blank way that people are getting exposed. Let me tell you story from my own experience.
I received the resume from someone recently and, as is my practice, I went to my database, my applicant tracking system to see if I already have contact with them.. I found their resume in my system, I looked at it and the one that I received from the person. Right before I parsed it, I noticed that there was something a little different about the dates. A few months have been added on here and a few months of been taken off there for a few jobs.
Normally, I would delete this person’s resume but I decide to call the and give them a chance. After all, people sometimes make mistakes. They don’t keep the world resume and they work from memory.
As I was qualifying him, I asked him about. There was a brief denial that he changed dates. I confronted him one more time and asked him, “how do you think these other dates got into my system? Do you think were manually typing things or are we parsing information from your own resume? I can assure you, were not typing resumes”
There was silence for a few moments and then he fessed up.
Employers are not going to give you that chance. If they hire you and find those inconsistent dates, they are just going to fire you. If they look at your resume and then find it in their applicant tracking system with something different, they are just going to delete the new resume.
Just be aware that you can’t lie like you used to. I’m not talking about reference checks. Reference checks can be faked. But if your resume doesn’t match up with what was in their applicant tracking system they are just going to leave the new resume and never tell you why.
If your own efforts or the efforts of other recruiters are going to land the resume in an applicant tracking system and an employer or a recruiters office, the lie can be exposed some years in the future. Don’t change your resume to cover up gaps. They are just going to be found out.
[/spp-transcript]
Do you think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.
The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.
JobSearchCoachingHQ.com is there to change that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.
Connect with me on LinkedIn