APU Careers Careers & Learning

#WhiteLiesOnMyResume: The Implications

By Christine Muncy, M.Ed., GCDF
Contributor, Career Services

This article originally appeared as a post on LinkedIn.

It’s a competitive market, and it can be tempting to embellish on some accomplishments or your experience for you to feel that you have the edge needed to make it to the interview process. That is intentionally misleading your future employer and took careful thought. But what you may not think about too closely is a quick tweet or post about what you lied about. The disturbing reality is that people are actually participating, but what’s more troubling is that people lied in the first place. There are serious implications to falsifying information on your resume, and it is best that you are educated on what, exactly, could happen to you should that information be found by your employer:

  1. It is against the law to falsify information regarding your educational credentials. In Texas, that is a class B misdemeanor, and in Kentucky a class A misdemeanor. That means anywhere from $1,000-$2,000 in fines and potentially 6 months-1 year in jail.
  2. If you embellish or lie about past experiences, you will be faced with discussing your experience in an interview, and if you land the job, potentially lying to your colleagues to cover your tracks. Any child will tell you the initial lie is the easiest; it is every subsequent one that becomes more and more difficult until you are, inevitably, caught.
  3. Being caught can mean immediate termination, forfeiture of previously awarded bonuses (that’s right, paying them back after you just lost your income), if you caused your employer to lose money they can sue you, or worse, you could go to jail depending on the issue you lied about.
  4. No matter the length of time which passes, once it is made known you lied, you can be terminated immediately if you work in an at-will employment state. Imagine climbing the ranks and after 10 years they find out you embellished the titles of your previous positions and other ‘minor’ details, and then you find yourself unemployed.
  5. Ruined professional reputation, otherwise known as career suicide. A well-known fact is that people talk. Recruiters are really good at networking and sharing.  Your name could be ‘black labeled’ and you wouldn’t even know.

Take a lesson from former dean of admissions, Marilee Jones, who, after 28 years, was forced to resign due to her misrepresentation of her academic degrees, from Notre Dame’s football coach, O’Leary, who had to give up a $1.2 million salary, and John Davy, the former CEO for Maori Television Service who only lasted 7 weeks before being caught in a lie and was eventually sentenced to eight months in jail.

Instead of lying, work with your career coach on how to find work that perfectly matches your current skills and simultaneously devise a plan to acquire the skills you need for the next level of work you want. If stated correctly, your future employer will want you for who you are, not what you falsely claim to be.

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