Study: Nearly half of job applicants lied on résumés

By Lore Croghan
New York Daily News

New York - Almost half of the job-seekers in a new study lied on their résumés - a staggering statistic, considering how likely they are to get caught.

"People are saying, 'Everybody's doing this; I should, too,'" said Michael Worthington, co-founder of the Web site ResumeDoctor.com, which did the survey. "But something you put on your résumé could haunt you years later."

Look what happened last month to RadioShack Chief Executive Officer David Edmondson - make that "former CEO."

He lost his job because he lied on his résumé - more than a decade ago - about Bible college degrees he didn't actually get.

"He didn't do anything different from what I see every day," Worthington said.

Worthington's résumé-writing service, based in South Burlington, Vt., spent six months checking the accuracy of more than 1,000 résumés chosen from the company's database. It found "significant inaccuracies" in 42.7 percent of them.

For diversity's sake, the résumés came from all over the country and a wide range of industries, including banking, telecommunications, manufacturing and the service professions. Job descriptions ran the gamut from entry-level to executive positions.

There's no telling whether men or women did more of the lying. ResumeDoctor.com didn't analyze the results according to gender.

Job-seekers up and down the employment ladder lied to try to land work - "from people who have been out of school for one year to the executive level," Worthington said.

He blames their behavior on fierce competition for jobs in a tight employment market - and the mistaken notion that these are little white lies that do no harm. That couldn't be more wrong.

Companies are cracking down - and checking résumés more than ever before. Increasingly, they're also scrutinizing criminal records, credit reports - even driving records.

"There's a much greater rigor and sensitivity about background checks," said Bill Olson, CEO of MRINetwork, a big recruiting firm.

The most frequent fibs on résumés are about dates of employment, job titles and education.

The ResumeDoctor.com study found:

  • People say they stayed at jobs longer than they really did. Some are trying to match the requirements in a job posting, when they don't have enough years of experience. Others lie to cover up long periods of joblessness - and there's no need to do so. In today's economy, there's no shame in losing a job.
  • People inflate their job titles, in hopes of qualifying for a higher position - and higher pay - than they currently have.
  • People say they earned degrees when they were a couple of semesters short. Sometimes they say they graduated from a school they never attended at all.

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