everyone always says lie on your resume, and i agree that there’s no reason not to. i’ve never done it before though so i want to know what i can and can’t get away with.
for example, if i’ve been out of work since january, can i just lie and say i’m still employed by the company i quit working at in january and make it look like i don’t have an 8-month gap on my resume? or is the HR person at the place i’m applying going to be able to figure out that’s a lie?
also please give tips on what are some good lies to add, how to punch up normal looking resume shit, etc
Death to America
The general rule to follow is don't lie about anything that they can verify. Actually don't lie at all, just think of yourself as having permission to exaggerate. Really the whole game is about exaggerating without outright lying. But to go back to your question, licensure, education, and employment dates are concrete facts that can be verified with a background/reference check, so in your case, you might have to be honest on your resume, but you can probably give some vague reason for why your employment there ended like "the direction of the company changed and I became redundant", or just say "health reasons, but I'm good now and ready to get back in the workforce", they won't probe further if you say it was for health out of fear of a lawsuit.
Something I would be comfortable exaggerating is experience with specific skills/tools. For example the last time I used Java was almost a decade ago, and it was only for college projects, nothing professional, so as you can imagine I'm an idiot compared to an actual professional Java programmer, but I'll put it on anyways (if it's listed in the job posting). It will improve the chances they'll give you an interview, and they might not even ask about it all, and if they do, it might not be a huge deal that you only have nominal experience with it.
That last point especially. I've also used Java and it was years ago, but I've also used C, C++, Python, JS, Go, Ruby, and C#. I am currently a professional software engineer who understands concepts of programming, and though it's been a while if you need Java i can write Java.
I was more commenting on the very rapidly having to learn a lot of different languages once or twice each and then putting all of them on a resume because that's what recruiters like to see.
But I see you were making a joke after typing this comment. Very good
Hell yeah, I haven't touched Java since high school comp sci but I'll put it on my CV
Bullshitting about freelance projects with NDAs can be pretty good depending on your field.
NDAs are hard because even with one, you can usually at least say who you worked for and what you did (just not the specifics.). Too verifiable.
What you want is an NDA for a project with a company that has since closed down. Of course your best friend was the proprietor of such a business and will vouch for your time in lieu of there being an existing company.
Who says lie on your resume? Lying about anything that's verifiable sounds like a bad idea. If the place you're applying to checks your past employer and the dates are wildly off, you're probably not going to get the job. If you lie and say you know how to do something and it's obvious you don't on the interview, that's also a bad time.
Most "lying" on resumes I've seen is like transforming "I used pytest" into "Wrote comprehensive testing framework[1] that integrated disparate cutting edge technologies[2]. Delivered xx% coverage[3] , eliminated cross-test contamination[4], and generated coverage reports[5] to guide the team in areas needing attention "
- Adding some text fixtures isn't really a framework nor is it comprehensive, but close enough
- It plugs into postgres and Django out of the box. What's written is arguably true though
- Really the team delivered it, but take credit.
- A plug-in does this for free, but take credit for installing it
- A different plug-in does this also for free, and another posts it on GitHub for free. But take credit.
So you can see there's a lot of fluff, but that's different than like "I worked at Facebook" when you did not in fact work there. Or saying you know JavaScript because you installed ublock once.
I was brought up to believe lying by omission was worse than lying by saying something you believe to be incorrect, which is a huge amount of the job application process. That said, I hot my current job by repeatedly describing myself as a jobless hobo at a technical school around lecturers. Idk ymmv
I was brought up to believe lying by omission was worse than lying by saying something you believe to be incorrect,
I don't think I've ever heard this posotopm before. I think it depends on context and the nature of the lie.
If they're asking about your front end experience, saying you know Javascript when you don't is worse than not mentioning you're kind of bad at CSS.
You did not grow up with controlling abusive parents?
Interestingly, after beating lying out of us unless it was admitting to "crimes" we didn't do, they were extremely annoyed that all of their kids struggled to get jobs
Nope. My parents weren't perfect, but they weren't bad in that kind of way.
