The Unemployed Life
Resume Fictions: Be More Than You Can Be
So you’ve never operated a forklift before. How hard can it be?
If you’re like most jobseekers in today’s shrinking and increasingly competitive labor market, you can’t afford to limit your qualifications to, well, your qualifications.
According to a recent workplace survey, the few employers out there looking for new hires are reporting a sharp increase in trumped up or outright fraudulent resumes. That’s hardly surprising, perhaps, given the dwindling job opportunities now available. This month unemployment hit a 30-year high, while sites like Monster say job postings are down 30 percent in the past year.
For their part, HR managers and other workplace gatekeepers say they can spot fantastical resumes a mile off. Indeed, despite the swelling ranks of jobseekers sending in applications, employers seeking highly specialized workers — like geotechnical engineers or respiratory therapists – are having trouble filling long-vacant positions, the New York Times reported Wednesday.
Studies show as many as half the applications are now faked.
Still, every now and then employers get duped. Surepayroll, a Chicago-based small-business payroll services firm, estimates that for any given vacancy listed by its clients, as many as half the applications are now faked. That’s putting employers on defense. A bad hire can cost a business as much as $10,000 in lost wages, productivity and other wasted resources — a lot of cash, especially when sales and revenue are down.
To adapt, many employers are ramping up the vetting process with deeper background checks and follow-up calls to past employers, schools and personal references.
None of that, of course, will stop a desperate job hunter from trying to get a foot in the door with an impressive, made up work history.
What was your best trumped up qualification? Did it work? Let us know in the comments below.
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Speaking of “fantastical resumes”, FiredNetwork.com offers a number of valuable tips on how to improve your resume, along with interview tips and lots of other resources. It’s definitely worth checking out. Follow the link http://firednetwork.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=641
My greatest job fiction was one that was suggested to me by an employment agency.
I was just out of college, and back home looking for an office job after a stint as an intern in a summer theater company. The woman who interviewed me told me not to put my college education on my resume, since I would be viewed as “overqualified,” and not to put “that show business stuff” on there either, since I would be perceived as being “unstable.”
“But then what do I have?”
“You can tell people that you worked for my brother-in-law in New Jersey. I’ll call him now and ask him.”
I was full of questions. What did her brother-in-law’s business do? What should I tell people my job was? I’d be like George Costanza, years before “Seinfeld”: “Who do you work for?” “Uh, Art Vandelay.” “What business is he in?” “Uh, import/export.”
I had second thoughts on the subway going home, and then, with my mother in the background going “You’ll never get a job and you’ll be living here forever,” I called the agency lady back and told her I was going to look for work elsewhere.
And my mother’s dire predictions did not come to pass. Shortly afterward, I found a job where they apparently didn’t mind having someone overqualified and unstable, and then found the apartment I’ve had for over 20 years.