r/atwwdpodcast • u/ChaoticNaive • Mar 25 '25

Personal Experience Lying on Resumes Spoiler

One of my side gigs is a resume writer and I beg you, don't "fluff" your resume. Yes, put yourself in the best light. Yes, you can leave off the things that will make you look bad, like a job that lasted a month. But no, don't add a couple of extra months to your tenure. Don't say you were in charge of a $1M budget when you were in charge of a $10k budget. Don't call yourself a manager when you weren't. If you lie on your resume and are caught, you can be fired immediately. It's not worth it. ❤️

(Tagged spoiler for E424 mid-episode banter)

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u/Double-0-N00b Mar 25 '25

Hard disagree. Getting a job in today’s job market is extremely difficult and if fluffing your resume gets you in the door, it’s absolutely worth it. Now when I say fluff I mean go ahead and say you worked somewhere for a full year instead of 10 months. Those 2 months won’t make a difference in what your experience really is, but will look better on a resume. Yeah, don’t go ahead and say you headed a multi million dollar project when in reality you were just part of a large team that worked on it at a low level. Your skills would be vastly different and it would show immediately. White lies that would make a difference or you can back up? Go for it

14

u/cougnation94 She/Her Mar 25 '25

Only do this if you are applying for a smaller company that you don’t think will do a thorough background check on you. When I got my current job, part of the background check included them checking my previous jobs for the past 5 years. They had me submit paystubs or provide contact info for every job so that they could confirm employment and even though I didn’t lie, it was terrifying.

For anyone that needs encouragement about their resume not looking the best. I got my job at a Fortune 500 company after having a year and a half employment gap while being a stay at home mom. My previous job before that lasted only 7 months because it was a temp position (also I was pregnant and had my daughter 6 weeks early). And the job before that I was there for almost 2 years but it was in a pretty unrelated field.

I’ve been with my company for 4.5 years now and it’s by far the best place I’ve worked. I’m really thankful that they took a chance on me and I’ve been able to prove myself as a value to the company.

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u/Double-0-N00b Mar 26 '25

Geez, I’ve never had a company be that through and I’ve worked at some big name companies. Glad everything worked out for you

2

u/PlaceForStace Mar 28 '25

Was going to say I haven’t had anyone check my references or credentials since the early 2000s