Friday, April 24, 2009

So busy - not time to blog. I wanted to end this week with a cautionary tale (that reminds me of the Disney movie Hercules). This time in the market is not a time to falsely enhance your resume, experience or background.

It is more important than ever to be completely honest and be on board with full disclosure.

I once interviewed someone that said he went to University of Baylor - and while that was a red flag, I didn't say anything. Later we found out he didn't have a degree, and he said he did only because one of his mentors told him nobody checks that stuff out. THAT'S WRONG. Everybody checks everything. Education, employment dates, criminal background, credit (sometimes), everything.

And it goes without saying that there is zero tolerance for fibbing. Or stretching the truth.

We worked with a really nice guy some time back and he didn't have a degree, but he had dates of education to show that he attended school. And we had a client that was willing to 'hear the story' but as I dug for the story, it wasn't one to pass along to the client. So my advice was, delete the education. Not having the degree was fine, having a lame story was hurting him.

Bottom line - full disclosure. And KNOW the client will be checking everything out.

1 comment:

  1. This is not completely accurate. To say that your education or any other claim on your resume will always be verified is an extreme claim to make. Granted, it is obviously foolish to squander and risk your reputation by lying on your resume. In the 6 jobs I've had, only the first verified my education. Also what about all these Indians who come here to work who graduated from obscure foriegn schools, how often do you think their claims are verified? I contend very few. Whether or not your resume is verified thouroughly largly depends on several factors such as the position you're applying for, the companies HR policies, and if your working perm or contact. It is also sad that there are still consulting companies (mostly run by Indians) that falsify resumes wholesale and still manage to stay in business

    ReplyDelete