Reasons not to exaggerate on your resume
Despite today’s tight job market and difficulty getting job interviews and offers, exaggerating on your resume is not a good idea. Any exaggeration, such as lying about your age, puffing up your job history or stretching your education, can end up backfiring on you during an interview and immediately eliminate you from consideration for the job.
What you want your resume to do is to attract the person reading it who will then invite you in for an interview with his or her company. You want your resume to portray you as a highly qualified candidate with the skills and background the employer is looking for. You want your resume to tell the truth so you will have no difficulty backing it up during an interview.
If you are invited to interview with a company, the interviewer obviously liked what he or she saw on your resume and is now looking for more in-depth information. Interviewers often ask some very difficult and probing questions about your education, training, work history and accomplishments. Interviewers also look for candidates who come to the interview fully prepared with knowledge of the company and the job and also with examples of how their skills and background make them the best candidate for the job.
If you have misrepresented yourself on your resume and included false information, it will be difficult to pull off a successful interview. For security reasons, many employers today do thorough background checks before bringing new hires into their company. Many hiring managers ask for references from previous jobs to verify employment. Most interviewers can quickly detect uncomfortable body language, stammering over words, a lack of direct eye contact - all indications that the candidate may not be telling the truth.
If you do manage to pull off the interview, even get the job offer, you may still find yourself in trouble once you start the job. Without the skills and experience claimed on your resume, your job performance may prove less than satisfactory. You may not be able to meet the demands of the job and you may end up losing favor with your boss, put on probation, even losing your job. Also, you most likely wouldn’t get a reference for any future jobs you apply for from that employer.
What you can do on a resume is brag about yourself, something people often have difficulty doing. You want your resume to highlight your qualifications and briefly detail your accomplishments on past jobs, showing what you have done already and what you bring to the table. You want to sell yourself to the interviewer. This can be done in aprofessional mannerwithout appearing cocky and without exaggeration or misrepresentation.
Writing a resume that exaggerates or misrepresents is one of the biggest resume blunders you can make. Developing a professional resume that truthfully highlights your qualifications and details your relevant strengths is a much more advisable approach.
