Is it illegal to lie on your resume?

[smilesnd]

I am not talking about stretching the truth or padding your time spent at a company. I am talking about stating you work at places you never worked at. I know people have been fired and had legal actions taken against them for stating they had a PHD from some where. Could someone do jail time if they put they worked at google for 3 years when they were never employed there?

[techjuice]

If you apply for a job and lie about what you put there, the business can sue you for civil and criminal reasons. It is called resume or application fraud. So padding and stretching the truth of what you have actually done can get you twisted up legally if the company feels like pressing charges. The business can also sue you for all the time the different employees put into interviewing and training you, back pay (you pay them back what they paid you) their side of the taxes and benefits they paid on your behalf and many more things).

Also note, if you put a university on your resume that you never attended or graduated from that university could sue you for fraud if or when they found out about it.

It would be even more severe if this was for a government contractor or agency, as you sign legal documents saying everything listed is truthful. Depending on the job they will actually send an investigator out to everyone and every job you listed and you could get caught up legally before you even start your first day of work.

There is no reason to lie on your resume, would you like for your employer to lie to you in the job application? My advice is to always be truthful on your resume as once you start lying you may find yourself in a job where the lying can only get you so far and you end up in a position above your capabilities and your friends, family and coworkers will find out about it and you would eventually be publicly reprimanded or even blacklisted from your industry.

[trcollinson → techjuice]

First, I am not a lawyer and what I am about to state is in no way legal advice. Second, I generally agree with your statements.

With that being said, a few comments. In the United States the legalities of this would fall under fraud. The legal basis for the criminality of fraud differs from state to state and depends on how you commit the fraud. It isn't safe to give a blanket statement that lying on a resume is illegal or fraudulent. Additionally, the penalties are based on a number of factors. My opinion, and only my opinion, is that at best an employer would only be able to civilly sue you for the damages of your fraudulent behavior. Additionally, legally, they have a burden to complete due diligence on applicants just as they do with many other things.

This is mostly theoretical as a quick search of Lexus Nexus does not bring up many employment related fraud cases at all. The exception seems to be when credentials are fraudulently represented (for example, a PHD that does not exist). However, I could not find one case that went criminal even in the instance of fraudulent credentials, nor could I find a case that wasn't settled before a trial.

[JSeymourATL]

From FindLaw Blog -

All states have criminal statutes against fraud, and some states, like Washington, have statutes that make using a fake degree a felony. And if you're faking documents as part of your resume lies, you could also be charged with forgery. - > http://blogs.findlaw.com/law_and_life/2015/10/can-you-get-ar...

[alltakendamned]

Depending on location, but it'll probably get you fired everywhere. Also, you'd be surprised how small the world can be once you're "tainted".

[skylark → alltakendamned]

+1 on the industry being small.

I knew one of my ex coworkers padded his resume with 5 years of experience he didn't have. Two years later I'm working at Google and I'd blackball him without hesitation.

You might not get thrown in jail, but honest people never forget scummy behavior.

[colund]

I just don't understand why people would want to get a job they pretend to be qualified for in the resume just to get a hell trying to compensate for the lacks of skil/knowledge. Money is not worth it. Having a stable life is much better than trying to live based on a lie.

[bjourne]

You need to state what jurisdiction you are asking about for your question to be meaningful.

[rbsk]

Varies state to state for criminal charges: http://www.shakelaw.com/blog/lying-on-your-resume/

[smilesnd → rbsk]

Thanks for the link, but all it told me was lying about education can lead to legal action. Lying about anything else would give them just cause to fire me on the spot or take away my ability to take them to court for mistreatment.

[gozur88]

The right way to do the PhD thing is to get a PhD from one of those mail order places and hope your boss doesn't realize that's what it is.

[smilesnd → gozur88]

Yeah I have heard Harvard of Jamaica University has a impressive CS program

[Mz → smilesnd]

From the link someone else posted above:

Under the Texas Penal Code, for example, it is illegal to use, or even to just claim to hold, a postsecondary degree you know to be fraudulent, substandard, or fictitious in order to obtain employment. This makes it illegal to either falsely claim you received a degree from an actual, accredited university, or to list a degree from a “diploma mill” (an unaccredited institution that offers “degrees” for a flat fee in a short amount of time with little to no coursework).

[trcollinson → Mz]

IANAL but I do love studying law. I love laws like this! Because they are up for so much interpretation. The law itself states just "substandard" degrees. The legal question then becomes what is "substandard"? The link that talks about this law attempts to interpret substandard for us but as far as I can find, no case law has actually defined substandard because no one has ever allowed a judge to make a ruling on a case based on a supposedly substandard degree. These, we don't actually know whether getting a degree from somewhere like Harvard Of Jamaica University would be fraudulent.

Of course, you'd still be fired most likely.

[Mz → trcollinson]

Law is interesting. I have had a couple of (environmental) law classes. The thing is that I don't personally want to be the test case for something like this. I mean, we all need a hobby and all that, but being dragged into court doesn't sound like a ton of fun to me.

[smilesnd → Mz]

True dat, but sadly that just tells me there is a state where it will not lead to legal actions against me. Need to read up state law before handing in my resume.