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Lying on your CV?
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
in Work & Study
A recent survey by the BBC suggests that 64% of people either lie or put deliberately misleading information on their CVs. Employers are said to be 'horrified' at this.
Is this really such a bad thing? I can understand it being dangerous if the job is in the medical profession or something like that but for the rest of us, it's no big thing, surely?
If employers didn't make their requirements so unrealistically high then we wouldn't need to do it. My CV is, shall we say, 'creative' in places and no, I'm not appropriately qualified for the job I'm doing but.....I do a damn good job and have done so for 4 years. My employers are none the wiser so nobody gets hurt.
In fact it's better for them: if I really did have the qualifications/experience my CV says I have then I would most likely be looking for higher annual payrises.
It's even illegal to lie on your CV apparently - what the hell for? There are far worse things you could do
Is this really such a bad thing? I can understand it being dangerous if the job is in the medical profession or something like that but for the rest of us, it's no big thing, surely?
If employers didn't make their requirements so unrealistically high then we wouldn't need to do it. My CV is, shall we say, 'creative' in places and no, I'm not appropriately qualified for the job I'm doing but.....I do a damn good job and have done so for 4 years. My employers are none the wiser so nobody gets hurt.
In fact it's better for them: if I really did have the qualifications/experience my CV says I have then I would most likely be looking for higher annual payrises.
It's even illegal to lie on your CV apparently - what the hell for? There are far worse things you could do
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Comments
depends what you're lying about.
i don't see a problem with pretending you enjoy the opera and dostoyevsky when you're really about as cultured as a big mac, or exaggerating the importance of your role as stationary cupboard prefect, but if you're lying about qualifications or experience, they yeah, it's a bad thing.
the interviewer brought his violin along
The thing is no employers ever check up on things so they should be horrified - with themselves
Although I sometimes think that I might as well put down that I have 700 years experience, or I'll never get a fucking job.
But why is that a bad thing?
why the hell should you get any job based on qualifications you haven't got? it's unfair to people who have got them, and worked their ass off to get them.
a lot of people are disadvantaged.
the first time i took my A levels i was disadvantaged. it would have been very easy to just lie about what had and what grade i had, but instead i re-sat them.
if people are allowed to get away with bumping up a grade here, and making up an extra A level there, the work i did in that year means nothing.
Blame the employers for that - they set their standards too high. If their unreasonable demands were lowered then I wouldn't need to lie about my qualifications.
As I said, I'm not fully qualified to do my job but I've been doing it perfectly well for 4 years. The world of employment is dog-eat-dog and you need to do whatever you have to do in order to secure employment IMO.
Read my original post again please.
exams aren't just about intelligence though. just like work isn't just about intelligence. they are as much a measure of how hard you are willing to work for what you want.
I think I've managed to disadvantage myself more by bothering to study a subject for 5 years. Might as well have come straight out of school and started work, and got further along than now.
</same old rant>
Ok, I respect your opinion, the reason I mentioned looking at my original post was because you brought up the medical profession which of course requires people to be highly qualified, one cannot argue with that. The same (IMO)goes for professions like Law etc.
However in many many jobs specialist qualifications aren't required, yet are still asked for. I work in IT and would not have got through the front door without at least an HND in Computing however the highest I attained was an AS level, however I've been doing my job for several years without any problems or concerns for my employer. Now had I seen this job and thought "I'm not qualified for this" then I would have missed out on all the great experiences my work has brought me (such as travelling around Europe to their overseas branches).
My employers are happy with me, I love my job, everyone benefits.
You don't get anywhere in life if you aint prepared to tell a few white lies.
As I ahve already said, I've lied about the fact that I have a criminal record on plenty of applications. I have got away with it i.e it was worth doing.
Misfit.
Yes of course it's lying but I feel justified as I see it as the employers' fault. An example for you, Carphone Warehouse require their sales staff to have 2 A Levels or equivalent. Since when did you need just 1 A level to sell mobile phones?
People will say that they ask for this because people who have 2 A levels tend to be perhaps a modicum more intelligent - rubbish, and you don't need A levels to be intelligent.
Incidentally I worked for them for 18 months. Did I have 2 A levels? Did I hell. During that time I met or exceeded my monthly sales targets 14 times and performed very well.
IMO qualifications for this sort of job mean nothing. Think of all the good salespeople they are keeping away by having unreasonable requirements.
They didn't have jobs...Jesus was the Son of God so I suppose nepotism helped there :thumb:
The reasoning behind a qualification for entry into a position is to state that a certain amount of knowledge is required to do it, so people do not waste each other's time. It doesn't necessarily mean that you *must* have that qualification but you should have something that equates to it.
An employer cannot interview every single person in the world for every job, so they set a bar at a certain height saying "don't bother applying if you can't leap this bar."
The fact that you managed to either bullshit or correctly answer the way through any interview and tests suggests that you had the knowledge that the employer was after at the time, or that you were lucky.
Incidentally, the fact that you've been doing a job for a certain number of years is no guarantee of anything either. I know lots of people who have done jobs for years that they are absolutely shit at. They stay in the jobs by sponging off of others that are good at it or through the gift of the gab.
Either way, lying on your CV is, in reality, a fairly bad idea. Any employer that conducts proper checks when they employ you is likely to pull you up for things that you have said that are not true. This could result in you not getting a job that you have interviewed for. At worst, it could result in prosecution.