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Resumes as fiction

 
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In the other thread on visas and outsourcing, several interesting points were made before it degraded into personal sniping. The last one was important enough, though, that I thought it deserved its own thread:
Teri To: All resumes lie to a certain degree. That's what interviews are for.
Actually, lying on a resume is punishable by dismissal here in the US. There have recently been several high profile cases of people getting fired from very important positions for having lied on their resume.
Is anybody else bothered by this particular statement?
Joe
 
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I would agree with what your saying Joe. However this begs the question: Does omitting information count as a lie? For example if I was to say:
"I was involved in a very important project at my last place of employment. I used technologies X, Y, and Z"
instead of
"I was involved in a very important project at my last place of employment. I used technologies X, Y and Z. Unfortunately the project was a complete disaster as I confused feet with metres, and kph with mph. NASA are doing quite fine without me now"
What do others think? If you were sacked is this something that you really want to put on your resume?
Mark
 
Joe Pluta
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I would agree with what your saying Joe. However this begs the question: Does omitting information count as a lie?
No, I don't think so, although it depends on how you represent your employment. For example:
"I was involved in a very important project at my last place of employment. I used technologies X, Y, and Z"
If I had any brains as a prospective boss, I think I'd catch the key phrase "I was involved in" . In fact, if the person DOESN'T have a good reason for why they left a company, it's a red flag.
I don't think a resume is necessarily a life history. I wouldn't want to tell someone that they must put "fired for bopping the boss's wife" on their resume. That's the sort of thing references and interviews are meant to identify.
Joe
 
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A resume is just a sales pitch. Untruths on the application is grounds for dismissal.
 
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'Bopping' the bosses wife?
I worked with a young consultant who crash-landed in a MUCH more spectacular
manner. He was working in Holland and attended the client's Xmas party, got drunk, made a move on a lovely woman who just happened to be the Managing Director's wife, then took a swing at the MD himself when he intervened!
After that he didn't even get fired. In fact I ended up as his senior on the next assignment. Jeeze Louise.
They promoted him to senior consultant and put him in charge of a project 6 months later. He ended that project in the hospital for a month with a nervous breakdown.
To top it all he left spectacularly. He accepted a job from a competitor, got a late offer from another competitor. He tried to get the two into a bidding war and ended up with BOTH offers withdrawn!
I lost track of him after that, but I'm willing to bet he landed on his feet. At least after the drink/drug binge wore off....
Talented kid but no governor.
I do wonder what his CV makes of all that? I'll bet it's check full of lies and omissions.
[ November 26, 2003: Message edited by: Alfred Neumann ]
 
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Hi,
Is it a deja vu? I thought resume topic already discussed in this forum.
How could a resume be a fiction of yourself? You must have a behind bars wish. I read on the news sometimes ago in this year a grandma earned a jail time in California for creating a fairy tale of her resume.
A resume is a sales pitch of yourself begging to resume to labor market. How many sales people lying to you only con people do? Sales people tell you the truth but the way they present the pitch so smooth that you side track and create yourself a different expectation.
Teri T and Nikhil D tell us otherwise because they are not coming from law and order country. I bet they never have the opportunity sit in the courtroom with their colleagues listen their company business lawyer tearing apart the opponent over lousy product or something else. I mention this because I hope none of you people have to go through.
Regards,
MCao
 
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Originally posted by Joe Pluta:
Teri To: All resumes lie to a certain degree. That's what interviews are for.
Actually, lying on a resume is punishable by dismissal here in the US. There have recently been several high profile cases of people getting fired from very important positions for having lied on their resume.
Is anybody else bothered by this particular statement?
Joe


People who are really, strictly honest are getting killed in the marketplace where employers are demanding about 30 different skills and the employers hire the person (liar) claiming to have all 30 of those skills yet who may have only a few. I hate seeing the honest people getting screwed, so I can't blame them for puffing up their resume to keep up with all the other liars. Regarding how I feel about, its a matter of degree, not principle. I think the employer should have some responsibility in sorting out the liars. I consider myself in the honest category.
[ November 26, 2003: Message edited by: herb slocomb ]
 
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Joe, you are taking my comment too literaly. Lying does not necessarily mean that saying you worked in Java while you worked in C#. Resume is nothing but a sales pitch and all sales pitches lie to a certain degree. Many a times consulting companies change the resume before submitting a resume to the client. Some don't even tell the candidate. What is that? I am sure many of the consultants have experienced this.
Matt Cao, you are right. There is no law and order in my country. That's why I lie. Everybody is honest to the core in your country.
 
Joe Pluta
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What do you consider an acceptable lie, Teri?
Joe
 
Terimaki Tojay
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Originally posted by Joe Pluta:
What do you consider an acceptable lie, Teri?
Joe


None. No lie is acceptable to me in the resume. If I find out that a candidate has lied in his resume, I'll not take him.
However, my acceptability has nothing to do with the fact. The fact is many resumes lie and my feeling is almost all resumes lie to a certain degree. You free not to believe that.
 
frank davis
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Originally posted by Joe Pluta:
What do you consider an acceptable lie, Teri?
Joe


There's not even consensus on what a lie is in regards to resumes. People can claim they have a skill, which they learned in a one semester class and perhaps some additional reading and tinkering, but does that really mean they "know" that technology as they claim on their resume? They may actually honestly conceive of themselves as an expert in java, whilst the employer may later fire them for "lying". There's just too wide a gap between what two people may read into a resume for me to take this issue of resume puffing seriously. Also vague, is the term "knowledge of XXXXX technology", which I've seen on resumes and on job postings. No one knows what it really means. I can't fault someone who may put in their resume just to be on the safe side when he even has doubts on whether its true. Another trouble is that applicants are not only trying to second guess what the employer actually needs, but the employer's own incompetance in specifying what he really needs/wants. HR departments writing job postings are the clearest example of of such incompetence.
 
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Originally posted by Joe Pluta:
There have recently been several high profile cases of people getting fired from very important positions for having lied on their resume.


Lying to get high profile job might be unethical. However, if someone trying to get a 25$ per hour job so that he can feed his family I�m not convinced it is unethical. Society has no right to push people to the limit and expect them to quietly go away.
[ November 27, 2003: Message edited by: stara szkapa ]
 
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On a related note, I am currently reading Lying by Sissela Bok. I'm about 50 pages into it so far. It's a very deep treatment of lying. What consitutes a lie, when are lies acceptable, white lies, lying as an alternative to harm, etc. The author seems to have really done her research drawing upon a wide range of philopsophy, ethics, history, literature, medicine, law, politics, and more. I had taken a vow to never lie (I slip about 2-3 times a year), but my vow is under reassement as I read this book.
--Mark
 
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Mark!
Do you want to write a review for our bunkhouse?
 
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If person writes in a resume 'Good knowledge of Data structures' and he fails to answers the basic questions(questions can be configured!!),Will that be a lie?Will person be punishable?If person writes 'good team worker' and has problems with his collegues later in a company,Will that be a lie?
 
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Matt Cao, you are right. There is no law and order in my country. That's why I lie. Everybody is honest to the core in your country.[/QB]


 
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I've always held that honesty will get you furthest.
It's indeed harder to get a job when your CV is honest yet recruiters expect it not to be, but once you do get that job you'll do better in it...
In fact I'd sooner downplay something I have limited experience with than emphasise it in the hope noone notices that.
If it's important to the prospective employer you'll be drilled on it anyway during the interview at which point you'll be found out...
And indeed having a faked CV is reason for firing on the spot without unemployment benefits when you're found out (as I've seen happen with one colleague who really messed up).
 
Joe Pluta
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I wouldn't want to count on someone who considers lying acceptable.
Joe
 
Al Newman
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On another note, if Resumes are fiction, why not offer a yearly prize for the best fictional resume, as they do for other forms of fiction?
We have something called the Booker Prize in the UK for obscure and pretentious fiction of massive self-importance.
For the resume perhaps we could institute The Hooker Prize?
Unfortunately someone from the Government or Entertainment industry would win each year. Perhaps both.
I have a candidate. Glenda Jackson, MP......
 
frank davis
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Originally posted by Joe Pluta:
I wouldn't want to count on someone who considers lying acceptable.
Joe


Joe,
You're taking the strongest stand here against lying, yet you're not even addressing what a lie is in a number of typical scenarios. We'll start with the easy ones first :
1. An inexperienced college graduate honestly thinks they know a number of skills and puts them on his resume, yet his knowledge of the skills he listed is so far below acceptable by the employer that he is later fired for lying. I would say this is clearly not lying.
2. A much more experienced programmer, wise in the ways of how HR departments are often completely incompetent in translating the requirements of an IT manager into a job listing, lists a few skills on his resume that he has very minimal knowledge of, but that he believes are inessential to the real duties of the position based on the job title, its listed resposiblities, and his personal knowledge of those with the same job title within the company. He knows that if he leaves off those skills his resume will be immediately rejected in the screening process by HR, he will not get the job, and his children/spouse will suffer by his unemployemnt for the next 3,6 9 months or more... Is it his duty to make himself and his family suffer for an indefinite time simply because the HR department is ignorant?
This brings up the issue of lying in ordinary day to day life. Often you will answer a question that someone asks in a way that looks at the intent of the question, not the literal wording. In some cases I believe that is more honest than answering the literal wording of the question.
Here's the best I can come up with in a few seconds of thought :
Manager : "Mr. Pluta, I need someone to start on project Fromhell; did you finish your project Wasteoftime last week"?
Pluta : "No". (answered honestly, but he finshed it the prior week)
Now, isn't Mr Pluta actually being a liar by answering the question literally without looking at the intent behnind the question? If you believe Pluta to be the liar, then could we argue the programmer above is actually honest since he knows what the position requires and he knows he is very good at it?
3. Another programmer also knows from experience that HR departments are usually incompetant as well. He lists a whole slew of skills he has even less knowledge of than the programmer above. He knows from experience that the only way to find out which skills are truly necessary and which are helpful but not needed, is by talking with the interviewer during the interview. At that time he plans to clear up any possible misconceptions by being completely honest as to his skill level and experience. Often the only way to clarify what someone really means is through dialog and discussion. The programmer then finds out that the employer actually only needed passing familiarity with a few of the skills listed and that the others could be picked up in a few days. The employer was so impressed with the high skill level of a few of the skills the applicant had, that the less significant skills that the applicant barely know, were not of any consequence. The applicant was hired and he was working out fine until a few months later when a senior level director, Mr Luta, reviewed the resume and questioned the applicant on some obscure skills. The applicant was then fired, recieved no unemployment benefits, his children suffered, he filed for bankruptcy, and his wife later committed suicide. Hey, but its principle of literal honesty thats most important...
[ November 27, 2003: Message edited by: herb slocomb ]
 
Joe Pluta
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Herb, the last thing I'm going to do is start a side discussion on morality. You can split as many hairs as you want. My definition of lying is knowingly and purposely, through comission or omission, causing someone to come to the wrong conclusion.
By that, your number one would not be a lie. I would hope the issue would come to light in the interview. That's what interviews are for, but people slip through the cracks. At that point it's a judgment call as to whether the person was lying or not, and hopefully you'll make the right decision.
Numbers two and three are liars. You may say they're doing it to get a job, but they're still liars. If your own moral compass includes lying in order to get ahead in life, then this is acceptable. In my view, they are subject to termination.
The bit about bankruptcy and suicide is all firmly on the shoulders of the person who lied in the first place. The employer didn't make the applicant lie.
Personally, I'm pretty absolute on this point. I believe personal integrity to be the one thing we have control of in an often difficult world, and I try never to lie, and through practice, I've gotten pretty good at it. Like Mark I'll bet I only lie a couple of times a year at most (and I feel like crap when I catch myself doing it). This sometimes costs me money, and opportunities, but in the long run I believe I come out ahead. Of course, I have a loving wife who understands and agrees with me, so that's helpful.
Joe
 
Al Newman
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Joe, by your definition every manager who ever told the staff about the incredible importance of meeting the deadline without actually believing it should be summarily fired.
Do that and you'll only be left with dumbass managers, won't you?
 
frank davis
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Originally posted by Joe Pluta:
My definition of lying is knowingly and purposely, through comission or omission, causing someone to come to the wrong conclusion.


Using your definition, would the person who comes to a wrong conclusion depend on who that "someone" is, or is it anyone in general in the universe?
I'm not playing games here, its the same point I raised in the prior post in scenarios 2 and 3. There's two different groups of people the resume will be directed to, the HR screening dept and the actual decision maker.
What will cause one group to come to wrong conclusion may not cause another. In the real world there is disconnect between HR and their requirement list and how it is worded, and the actual decision making person who does the hiring.

Most jobs are found through networking, so consider this typical scenario :
You've been informed by someone who works at a company that a web development position has opened there and that this person believes you would be perfect for the job based on your skills. You read through the 10 item list of skills and you see applets and TCP/IP mentioned amongst them.
You consider yourself very skilled in 8 of the other 10 skills. By looking at the website you see that it is simple informational site with no applets anywhere. You have developed a few applets in the past in educational setting. You also know there are huge gaps in your knowldge of TCP/IP although you know enough HTTP to competently design servlets to exploit a wide range of HTTP functionality. You clarify with your contact what the job entails and also by closely reading the advertised job listing. Normally you would not consider yourself skilled in TCP/IP or applets, but based on the available knowledge it does not seem they are essential skills so you mention them (and there is some particle of truth in listing them as skills.)
Now, if you neglect to mention applets and TCP/IP in your list of skills, HR will reject your resume and you will , to use your own definition, "knowingly and purposely, through comission or omission, causing someone to come to the wrong conclusion." The employer, acting through the HR dept, will come to a wrong conclusion of your abilities to do the job. This is what I tried to bring out in the prior sceanrios (2&3). Saying you do have applets and TPC/IP does have some particle of truth in it, and it would be clarified at the time of interview their degree of importance, if any.
 
Mark Herschberg
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Map, you can be sure I will. (I've got another 2-3 books reviews I need to submit.)
Yep, these splitting hairs issues are exactly what are addressed in the book. :-)
--Mark
 
stara szkapa
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People higher in the hierarchy tend to be against lying simply because everyone watches them and lying is too risky for them. People lower in the hierarchy tend to accept occasional lying since it helps them survive, and even if they are caught the consequences are negligible. As to lying on resume, there is no evidence indicating that people who lie on resume are less productive then people who don�t.
 
Joe Pluta
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You consider yourself very skilled in 8 of the other 10 skills. By looking at the website you see that it is simple informational site with no applets anywhere. You have developed a few applets in the past in educational setting. You also know there are huge gaps in your knowldge of TCP/IP although you know enough HTTP to competently design servlets to exploit a wide range of HTTP functionality. You clarify with your contact what the job entails and also by closely reading the advertised job listing. Normally you would not consider yourself skilled in TCP/IP or applets, but based on the available knowledge it does not seem they are essential skills so you mention them (and there is some particle of truth in listing them as skills.)
This is a wonderful, carefully crafted situation to justify lying, but as it turns out you really aren't lying. In this particular situation, if all you said was that you had some skills, you wouldn't be lying. And in reality, if somebody just asked for skill in applet programming, then they that's all they're realyl asking.
Now, let's change the scenario just an iota out of your tightly woven parameters. If you said you had expert skills you would be lying. If you had never programmed an applet in your life and put down applets as a skill, you would be lying. If you said you had programmed applets in a busniess environment, you would be lying. All of them are subject to immediate termination.
This is really very simple stuff. You can rationalize all you want, but if you lied to me on your resume and I caught you, I would fire you on the spot, because, as my Grandma always said, "A liar is a cheat, and a cheat is a thief." If you can justify lying, then you can probably justify a lot more, and I don't intend to plumb those depths. Where does the lying end for you, Herb?
1. If I lie about my skills I can get the next project lead spot, which is a bigger bonus.
2. My boss is not giving me the raise I deserve, so if I lie and get her fired, then I'm just doing it for my family.
When is lying justified? To me, never.
This is one man's opinion, and you asked for it, so you got it.
Joe
 
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All resumes lie to a certain degree. That's what interviews are for.
Hi,
I think you made wrong statement. Not all Resumes you can say most of the resumes.
Becoz I feel 100% honest on my resume. I am not here to show my self as bill gates in resume. I don't like also. So, don't blame all the threads in pool if one thread does not do it properly with reason of environment.
I think you got my point.
So, never ever try to blame whole batch if one person in batch make fault.

SKY is always up if you keep mirror down and see. So truth is always truth..belive in it.
bye.
 
george franciscus
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Hi Joe,
You know from past 2 years I am not working anywhere. Since I never ever kept at least single lie on my resume. If you want you can search a job for me...
if you do that..
bye. :roll:
 
george franciscus
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hi joe,
If you make such statements if anybody see these. I & people like me will not get jobs..so don't ever make such statements with out understanding..please correct it to 'most of the resumes' insted 'every resume'

I will not lie insted I die..thats better.
We are not rich country people like you..we are poor ..so don't make us still more poor by ur contradiction statements..
Thanks..

 
Joe Pluta
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George, I didn't say all resumes lie. I was quoting Teri.
Joe
 
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Would it be a lie to say you've been "consulting" during a period of unemployment, though you've not had any consulting work during that period and only been open to the possibility of contract work?
I think so, which is why I've not filled the gap in my resume with 'consulting'.
 
frank davis
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Originally posted by Joe Pluta:

This is a wonderful, carefully crafted situation to justify lying, but as it turns out you really aren't lying.


I don't consider this sceanrio especially well crafted or unusual, everyone must struggle with what experiences and skills should be listed on a resume and how they should be described without short changing yourself. Typically, when someone says "experience", it is assumed to be experience with a previous employer listed on the resume. In many cases if you say you have a skill, it is no doubt also assumed that the skill is from work experience. I believe HR often takes this view and that the prior sceanrio was a lie to them.
My main point has been that HR probably takes a narrower view of such things and the hiring manager does not. Although, you agree with me that educational and personal experience with certain skills may count as "experience", HR often does not, and therefore the resume would/could have deceived them and been a lie to them, making both of us liars if we knew that HR had this viewpoint and the hiring manager did not. But this is the quandary, we do KNOW that HR and the hiring manager often do have different criteria and expectations even though they agree on the actual literal wording of the job posting; and by knowing that we can find ourself lying to one to AVOID a lie to another.
In my resume, I make the distinctions since I state "educational experience in .." and also "personal experience in ...", but there has got to be a point where years of self-education, educational experience, or classroom experience, or personal projects become equivalent to "real" experience whether HR recognizes it or not, and if so, I am lying to the hiring manager by continuing to make this distinction since he is deceived into thinking that the reject pile of resumes contains unqualified people.
 
Terimaki Tojay
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Originally posted by Joe Pluta:
If you said you had expert skills you would be lying. If you had never programmed an applet in your life and put down applets as a skill, you would be lying. If you said you had programmed applets in a busniess environment, you would be lying.


As per my experience in interviewing canditates, most of the resumes lie to a certain degree. This is how I arrived at my above conclusion: When I interview a candidate, I ask him/her to rate him/herself on some key skill sets that are required for the job. Many times, a canditate rates himself 9-10 in say Java and when I ask questions, I find that he is no more than 4-5. Now, Java is a quite broad term so may be he did not lie and may be he does know quite good on some others topics. So far so good. Then I ask for a rating of his skills on something specific, say Swing or Servlets. Now in such specifc cases, when a candidate is not able to justify his own rating, I say that he lied in his resume.
May be your experience is different, but I find that most of the resumes lie. Interview is the only place where I can sort out whether the candidate is really as good as he seems to be from his resume.

Originally posted by Joe Pluta:
All of them are subject to immediate termination.
Joe


I don't think it works that way in practice. If a guy has never done any work in JSP but is confident(and right, of course) as hell in answering interviewers' question, he'll get the job. Further, if he performs well on job, why would he be fired? No one knows that he lied in his resume.
On the other hand, if a guy didn't lie in his resume and he really did a lot of work on JSP but is not able to perform on the job, he'll be fired.
In my experience, there is no benefit in polygraphing a candidate. I just see how good he is with the concepts.
 
Joe Pluta
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I believe HR often takes this view and that the prior sceanrio was a lie to them.
Herb, if they didn't ask specifically for experience in a prior business, it wasn't a lie. You're not expected to read someone's mind when a question is asked. If they DID specifically state prior business experience and you said yes, you would be lying.
It's REAL simple until you try cluttering it up with "I think they meant this."
Personally, I think you're trying to use your assumptions about the HR person to justify falsifying a resume. My point is that what YOU think is in the HR person's head is irrelevant. The issue is whether what you put on your resume is truthful. If you are answering a skills assessment worksheet, then you answer the questions truthfully. You don't say "Oh, they MEANT this." Just answer the questions. And if you lie, you're fired.

But this is the quandary, we do KNOW that HR and the hiring manager often do have different criteria and expectations even though they agree on the actual literal wording of the job posting; and by knowing that we can find ourself lying to one to AVOID a lie to another.
Herb, the above paragraph doesn't make any sense to me. You don't KNOW anything about what the HR person or the manager is thinking, so you just answer the questions truthfully, as asked. You keep trying to substitute what you think they "meant" instead of what's clearly on the paper in black and white. That tactic can be used to justify any level of crap, and is just that: justification, nothing else. An excuse to lie.

Joe
 
Joe Pluta
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In my experience, there is no benefit in polygraphing a candidate. I just see how good he is with the concepts.
In my experience, habitual liars will screw their clients, their coworkers, their company and eventually themselves. That's why, if someone lies on their resume, which is their first contact with my company, then they're likely to lie elsewhere, and I have no use for them.
Joe
 
Joe Pluta
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May be your experience is different, but I find that most of the resumes lie.
I have hired dozens of people in my career, and worked with hundreds. Only a very small portion of the resumes I received in my time contained blatant lies. Some people over-assessed their skills, but that's different.
In fact, it may well be a cultural thing. The majority of my hiring was among Americans and Russians; this was during the 90's, and they were the only ones with both C++ and business backgrounds. I found that on average, Americans slightly over-assessed themselves, Russians under-assessed themelves. So self-assessment is probably culturally biased.
Maybe some cultures think lying is okay.
As I said, I had very few liars, and only one got through the my interview process. That guy was trouble from day one, but because he was a lovable sociopath, he managed to get people to cover for him for months. In the five months it took me to catch him, he probably robbed my company of 10-12 man-months of effort. I've worked with a few others, and the result was always the same. They cost the company not only their time, but the time of others and often the loss of clients. Liars are not worth the time spent unraveling their deceits.
Joe
 
Terimaki Tojay
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Originally posted by Joe Pluta:
In my experience, there is no benefit in polygraphing a candidate. I just see how good he is with the concepts.
In my experience, habitual liars will screw their clients, their coworkers, their company and eventually themselves. That's why, if someone lies on their resume, which is their first contact with my company, then they're likely to lie elsewhere, and I have no use for them.
Joe


It is a matter of preference, really. I would prefer smart guy who lied on his resume to a truthful but dumb. In fact, I have no way of knowing that a candidate lied on his resume (other than the mechanism I described above). So I don't see how it makes a difference in the hiring process.
Habitual lieing is a disease, btw, and we'r NOT talking about that.
 
Terimaki Tojay
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Originally posted by Joe Pluta:
[QB
In fact, it may well be a cultural thing. [/QB]


I get that point well, Joe. However, due to market conditions, people are forced to make up resumes. So you can't really compare your hiring experienced during the 90's to now.
In an ideal world, nobody would really want to lie. I read a report couple of months back in NYT. It said that lieing is genetically coded into human beings. As per the report, it is considered healthy/normal when a kid lies (fibs) about the cookies
 
Joe Pluta
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But I'll be perfectly honest, Teri, if you lie to me on your resume, even if I didn't fire you I would never fully trust you again. Because while you can teach programming, you can't teach morality. "A liar is a cheat, and a cheat is a thief."
Honest, unskilled people will work to get better and ask questions when they don't know things. They can be taught new skills, and can be trusted to deal with others, including clients, with integrity.
Talented liars are still liars, and looking to get ahead regardless of the cost to others. They'll lie about what they know, blame others when things go wrong, and lie to clients, and that's just not my idea of a good hire. In the long run, talented liars cost far more than they're worth, especially since their true nature tends to show up on critical projects when the pressure is on.
Joe
 
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Originally posted by Joe Pluta:
But I'll be perfectly honest, Teri, if you lie to me on your resume, even if I didn't fire you I would never fully trust you again. Because while you can teach programming, you can't teach morality. "A liar is a cheat, and a cheat is a thief."


I do agree with that at a personal level. But when it comes to job, we are all professionals. No matter how a guys gets his job, if he works well, he works well. I am not sure what level of trust you are talking about but yes, I would not trust his deadlines for sure

Originally posted by Joe Pluta:

Honest, unskilled people will work to get better and ask questions when they don't know things. They can be taught new skills, and can be trusted to deal with others, including clients, with integrity.
Talented liars are still liars, and looking to get ahead regardless of the cost to others. They'll lie about what they know, blame others when things go wrong, and lie to clients, and that's just not my idea of a good hire. In the long run, talented liars cost far more than they're worth, especially since their true nature tends to show up on critical projects when the pressure is on.
Joe


Again, we are talking two different things here. A guy who plays games is definitely out the first time he does it. And I agree with you that such people are no good.
However, not all liars are necessarily cumpulsive liars. People lie. Everybody lies. Situations make people lie. That's why we are humans. I am not saying lieing is acceptable but I think it should be factored into your "risk matrix" because it is not so uncommon.
What is a fresher supposed to do when there is no requirement for freshers in the market and he is sitting idle? What if he invests his time in studying and says that he has one yr experience? What if he cracks the interview, gets the job, and performs well? I won't blame the guy for lieing. Everything else being equals, I would trust him.
Further, it seems to me that the higher you go up the corp. ladder, the more you have to lie. Managers lie to workers about the raise, VPs lie to clients about product features, CEOs lie about company performances etc. What is that? They are all cheats, but no body says anything to them. So many people loose their money in stock market, mut funds, because of cheats. Whom do you hold responsible?
BTW, a quick question, would you trust a car salesperson?
 
Seriously Rick? Seriously? You might as well just read this tiny ad:
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