The pressure to stand out in a sea of applicants may tempt job seekers to be less than honest on their resumes, but is it worth the risk?
Fifty-eight percent of hiring managers said they’ve caught a lie on a resume; one-third (33 percent) of these employers have seen an increase in resume embellishments post-recession.
Half of employers (51 percent) said that they would automatically dismiss a candidate if they caught a lie on his/her resume, while 40 percent said that it would depend on what the candidate lied about. Seven percent said they’d be willing to overlook a lie if they liked the candidate.
The nationwide survey, which was conducted online by Harris Poll on behalf of CareerBuilder from May 13 to June 6, 2014, included a representative sample of 2,188 hiring managers and human resource professionals across industries and company sizes.
“Trust is very important in professional relationships, and by lying on your resume, you breach that trust from the very outset,” said Rosemary Haefner, vice president of human resources at CareerBuilder. “If you want to enhance your resume, it’s better to focus on playing up tangible examples from your actual experience. Your resume doesn’t necessarily have to be the perfect fit for an organization, but it needs to be relevant and accurate.”
Most Common Resume Lies
There are certain fabrications job seekers may try to slip past employers more frequently than others. According to employers, the most common lies they catch on resumes relate to:
- Embellished skill set – 57 percent
- Embellished responsibilities – 55 percent
- Dates of employment – 42 percent
- Job title – 34 percent
- Academic degree – 33 percent
- Companies worked for – 26 percent
- Accolades/awards – 18 percent
Survey Methodology
This survey was conducted online within the U.S. by Harris Poll on behalf of CareerBuilder among 2,188 hiring managers and human resource professionals ages 18 and over (employed full-time, not self-employed, non-government) between May 13 and June 6, 2014 (percentages for some questions are based on a subset, based on their responses to certain questions). With a pure probability sample of 2,188, one could say with a 95 percent probability that the overall results have a sampling error of +/- 2.10 percentage points. Sampling error for data from sub-samples is higher and varies.