
Lie on your résumé? One job-seeker's moment of truth - joeyespo
http://msn.careerbuilder.com/Article/MSN-3095-Cover-Letters-Resumes-Why-lying-on-your-r%C3%A9sum%C3%A9-wont-pay-off/?SiteId=cbmsnhp43095&sc_extcmp=JS_3095_home1
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pnachbaur
Great comments from 52 days ago <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4312097>

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toyg
Yeah, I remember reading this possibly even earlier than that -- I am in the
same position (sort of) so obviously it resonated with me. I can't understand
why people would lie on their resume; but then again, I usually don't
understand lying at all.

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klibertp
Lying is __good __.

You cannot live without lying. We all lie, everytime we open our mouths to say
something. Whatever we say it's always biased, subjective, emotional (to
varying degrees, ofc) - we, as humans, are simply __incapable __of
comunicating the "truth", at least beyond very formal systems.

The only thing for us to decide is __how much __to lie on any given topic. Or
what story to tell - it's really the same thing worded differently.

We do not value the truth. We value narrative, stories. Don't do yourself a
disservice and don't make __your __story sound pathetic and uninteresting for
the sake of the "truth".

In my country not too long ago there was a public debate about some very
famous journalist (after his death) who used to (as his biographer insisted)
put factually incorrect sentences and paragraphs in his reportages. He lied!
There is evidence of this, and much of it. But there's a catch here: fragments
of his works were lies, yet read as a whole they conveyed the truth in a
stunning, poetic way which many hoped to copy but failed. The debate I
mentioned was something along the lines: do those lies invalidate the truth he
told? I'm very, very strongly convinced that that's not the case. Through his
lies he almost touched the truth.

I'm talking about Ryszard Kapuścinski biography, if anyone is interested, BTW.

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andyjohnson0
Sam Harris wrote an interesting essay [1] putting the case for the opposite
position - that you should just never, ever lie. I don't necessarily agree
with him, but its an interesting and thought-provoking read. Its about $3 for
the PDF or kindle ebook.

[1] <http://www.samharris.org/lying>

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Someone
That is called "radical honesty" (<http://www.esquire.com/print-
this/honesty0707?page=all>)

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gordonguthrie
I got hit backwards. My CV had PhD (failed) on it. I had had a chunk of good
jobs, tried to start a bank, got nowhere, went back contracting in a dept with
a lot of academic firepower.

After I had been there 8 weeks someone made a crack about 'all you doctors'
including me in - and I said 'I'm not a doctor'.

'Your CV said you had a PhD' came the response.

Luckily I had my laptop at work with the original copy of my CV on it. I went
ballistic, phoned up the recruitment agency, and finally got them to send a
formal letter to the people who had interviewed me. I never did find out who
'tidied up' my CV - but a dodgy CV is just a burning fuse on a bomb that could
go off anytime.

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Evbn
If you called your resume a CV, you are have way to lying abounding an
academic already.

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gordonguthrie
In the UK we have Curriculum Vitae. The term resumé is not used.

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kghose
Was he actually a member of Mensa?

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phaus
I would guess that he is. Being a member of Mensa isn't really a big deal.

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pc86
What about having an IQ in the top 2% isn't a big deal?

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phaus
Intelligence alone doesn't make you special. I myself have a pretty high IQ,
but for the first 20 years of my life, I squandered the time and resources
that were at my disposal and now I'm 30 years old, still in college, and in a
position that is way below my potential.

There are people of average intelligence who have created billion dollar
companies because they worked hard, and there are geniuses who never
contribute anything to the world. Hard working, intelligent people should be
celebrated, not intelligence alone.

EDIT: Just to make sure I'm not being misunderstood. Being a member of Mensa
isn't a bad thing, it's just not that big of a deal.

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B-Con
> Being a member of Mensa isn't a bad thing, it's just not that big of a deal.

I argue that it kind of is, in that only 2% of the population qualifies for
it. And the idea is that it's not something just anyone can change about
themselves and achieve.

I agree that success is very dependent on many factors, and intelligence is
not a required one. But it is correlated with success in many areas (such as
intellectually or mentally-oriented fields) and it gives a good base line of
_potential_. Like in your case, you say you are currently working short of
your potential. I wonder if your clone, minus, say, 30 IQ points, would be
able to say that.

It's kind of like being a fast runner (not a perfect analogy, but I don't need
it to be perfect here). That will help a lot in some sports, it will help a
little in some, and it won't in others. But if you can run the 100-meter dash
in a top 2% time, that's a useful bit of information, especially for a
prospective coach.

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Evbn
More than 2% of population qualify. This is a great interview question for any
data analysis related job: Explain why Mensa's brand claims are false, then
explain why you thought joining Mensa would impress me.

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michaelochurch
What I find amazing is how many just plain _stupid_ resume lies people make.
What does a 50-year old executive gain by listing a fake college degree?
Nothing. (And it's not hard to unwind a lie, which you should do as time
passes and the benefit of the lie approaches zero while the cost remains
constant.)

I think what happens is that we hear about the sensational and embarrassing
lies. This stuff gets dug up when the decision to fire an executive is already
made, in order to reduce severance. If the lie is small and reasonable (slight
title inflation) it doesn't much matter because that's so common, but if it's
something immensely embarrassing like faking a college degree when he actually
flunked out, it gets broadcast. Most of those public humiliation stories are
cases of failed severance negotiations in which the company decides to be a
dick and play the nuclear option against his reputation to get out of a
contractual severance agreement (e.g. extortion against the fired employee.)

This is not to condone lying on a resume. I don't, but I think the public
shaming that accompanies these digging expeditions is a bit much. When someone
is shamed over an irrelevant resume lie, he's usually being shamed because
someone (often the ex-employer) wants it that way.

