
Ask HN: Are new grads expected to exaggerate their skills on resume? - ayberk
I&#x27;m a masters student graduating next May, so I have been looking for full-time jobs for a time now. I consider myself a above-average programmer, however I&#x27;ve had a very low return rate, especially compared to my friends who have similar (or maybe even worse) technical aptitude as me.<p>I observed a pattern about companies that called me back:
1) Small companies where my resume was screened by CTO&#x2F;Software Development Manager
2) Huge companies that can afford to interview a lot of candidates<p>Naturally, My conclusion was my resume (or linkedin profile?) wasn&#x27;t attractive to HR. I compared my resume with my friends to see how I could make myself more attractive to HR who did the initial screening. Unfortunately, what I&#x27;ve seen was incredibly troubling, as I realized I was being &#x27;too&#x27; honest (if that&#x27;s even possible).<p>Wording the project descriptions to hide it was a group project, taking credit for things they didn&#x27;t do, exaggerating their responsibilities for previous work, writing down technologies they just read about are just a few that comes to my mind.<p>Funny thing is, during the interviews they are mostly asked about regular algorithms&#x2F;data structure questions, so they actually can get away with it.<p>I wanted to ask if this is the norm in the industry? Are we expected to &#x27;lie&#x27; on our resume to level the playing field?
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theWold
So, I graduated last December (2014) from a small accredited University in
Texas with a BS in CS. I applied to 137 companies before I accepted at Capital
One. I had many friends of friends who were HR and recruiting at other
companies and during my arduous process I picked up many things that I felt
helped me (and hopefully they'll help you). I ended up getting 43 offers, and
at least a ~80% return on contact back (I forgot the actual statistic).

If you choose the shotgun approach, as I did, Keep a spreadsheet, or
something, to help organize all the information.

Always Customize your resume by using the words that they put on their job
hire post. (This will get you past electronic screenings and non-technical HR
people who just look for keywords). This is really annoying (writing your
resume each time) but I felt it helped me.

I always researched the company the night before resumes and try to find a
technical blog that a company may produce, or some niche thing that the
company does. (Capital One and it's AutoNavigator is what I focused on when I
was interviewing).

Lastly, I did embellish the truth a little in any of my stories. Not to the
point of a lie (... sort of ...) but I made my past technical experience an
enjoyable story to listen to. There was a quote I read in 'Iterating Grace',
paraphrasing it: Great Stories are better than Great Facts. Don't lie in the
facts, but like statistics, you can bend the truth and still let it be truth.

Another piece of advice is make sure you are confident when you walk in. Even
for technical roles, confidence is key. Being able to talk and have the
interviewer like the interviewee is one of the many keys I found to being
successful.

If you don't mind lying, most companies will never check your GPA past the
transcript you hand over (if you do that at all). So you want to embellish
that 3.2 GPA to be a 3.5+ go ahead. Most companies never check. (Come to find
out I didn't have the correct GPA on my resume when I changed semesters even
though I had an updated Transcript I was sending out. No one ever bothered me
about it). I did _not_ ask the HR at my company this question as well and they
did _not_ confirm this fact.

I hope that helps you some :D

~~~
DanBC
> If you don't mind lying, most companies will never check your GPA past the
> transcript you hand over (if you do that at all). So you want to embellish
> that 3.2 GPA to be a 3.5+ go ahead.

That's potentially a criminal offence in the UK, and probably the US.

(Fraud act 2006 in UK)

[http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3bbd58ec-6df3-11e1-b98d-00144feab4...](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3bbd58ec-6df3-11e1-b98d-00144feab49a.html#axzz3u35vVK7r)

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/10941476/...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/10941476/Students-
threatened-with-jail-for-telling-white-lies-on-CVs.html)

~~~
hacknat
From the US, and am a hiring manager, can confirm. I'd suggest people just
leave their GPA off their resume/CV. It won't hurt you to do so, and if the
company wants it you can give it later (or not and run away from that
company).

Such outsized importance is placed on projects these days, and the state of
most CS programs is so bad, that I would only care about GPA if you graduated
from a very good school or I was an academic admissions person.

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pc86
As someone who sits in or runs technical interviews fairly often, we will try
to determine if someone is lying on their resume. If a skill is on your
resume, you are expected to be able to utilize it in a professional context.
For entry level folks that bar is pretty much "did you touch the language in a
class" or "have you committed code to a FOSS library" (to use two example).

That being said, if the extent of the lie is that a group project is sold as
an individual project, as long as the person can talk intelligently about all
aspects of the project it's nearly impossible to find something like that out.
New graduates are expected to have few skills and produce largely academic
(read: bad) code.

But you are correct that technical aptitude by itself has very little to do
with getting an interview. You said you are getting your Master's, have you
had a programming job in the past? What is your field? We take a pretty
skeptical stance with candidates who have advanced degrees and no experience,
because nothing we work with requires that sort of knowledge. That may be part
of your problem.

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collyw
When I was reviewing CV's recently (not specifically for new grads) I notice
that some people list about more than ten languages and frameworks. For me
that was slightly offputting as it shows shallow knowledge on lots of them,
rtaher than deep knowledge in any of them.

~~~
swalsh
That's why when I list languages I have experience with, i try to put a self
assessment in proficiency as well. so instead of just saying "C#, C++, Ruby,
PHP" i'll put "Expert proficiency of C#, advanced proficiency of Ruby, and
PHP, and working knowledge of python, and TCL"

so if someone is doing a keyword search, i'll still show up, but when someone
is actually reading the resume they can say "oh he's a C# and Ruby guy" I'll
also mention the language once in the experience section to demonstrate how i
used it.

Generally speaking though, as i've searched for more senior positions I've
toned down the specifics of the technology, and concentrated more on the
results I've achieved.

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dyeje
You probably just have a weak resume / cover letter. Post a link to your
LinkedIn, I'd be happy to give some constructive criticism. I'm sure your
school also has a career center which can help you polish them up.

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ThrustVectoring
What are the actual numbers? Like, how many resumes have you sent out, and how
many return calls have you gotten? And that of your friends?

A big fact about the field is that a large number of companies aren't in a
place where they can hire new graduates or junior programmers. I have a
suspicion that most of the difference in number of responses is that your
friends are simply hustling harder and sending out more applications than you
are.

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eecks
Don't hide that a project was a group project - that's a good thing. Use it to
your advantage. You worked well with people, you took ownership, you
distributed tasks and managed the workflow.

Don't put down technologies you don't know but lets say you can write
something in javascript.. like an anagram generator. In that case you can put
javascript even if you don't know node, angular, react, etc.

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lacker
If you're a new grad, getting a callback is probably more defined by where
you're going to school and whether you have internships in the past than any
of the fuzzy stuff like "skills list" on the resume. Where did you go to
school, and do you have any internships?

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jackgolding
I wouldn't lie, but I would exaggerate my skills. I know plenty of very
talented people who don't know how to sell themselves. The quicker you learn
how to balance selling yourself without being unethical, the better your
career will be.

~~~
pc86
Selling yourself <> exaggerating your skills (AKA lying).

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jackgolding
I wouldn't lie, but I would exaggerate my skills. I know plenty of very
talented people who don't know how to sell themselves. The quicker you learn
how to balance selling yourself without being unethical, the better your
career will me.

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jackcosgrove
No, I think it's dishonest. However it is an honest mistake to underestimate
the skill of people with a decade or more of experience and oversell yourself
simply because you don't know how good good can be.

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namelezz
Yes. You know the game whether or not you play our cards that's up to you.

