Lying on Your Resume? Maybe Don’t🛑!
Photo by Sunguk Kim on Unsplash
Stretching the truth on your resume isn’t exactly unheard of. If the most complex software engineering problem that you’ve solved is simply solving a simple bug that your idiotic colleagues missed, you’re in trouble in that technical interview.
Either you stick where you are and gain more experience, or you trod the well-worn path into dishonesty. You start making stuff up.
It’s not great. It’s not a story of hard-earned success. Resume dishonesty can serve as a cautionary tale…but since I’m dishonest (more on that later) who am I to judge?
They Don’t Even Check Our Resumes
The Story
In a story that sounds ripped straight from a satirical comedy (but actually reported by the BBC) a ‘top’ engineer got their position by simply making their qualifications up.
Daniel Mthimkhulu worked at Prasa for 15 years, claiming to hold degrees from prestigious institutions and even boasting a doctorate from a German university. Not bad for a high school graduate.
Since Prasa didn’t bother to verify the credentials our man Dan secured a salary north of $150,000 a year.
That’s not a bad gig for a guy who probably still gets carded at bars. But the cherry on top? He led a major deal to buy trains from Spain, which turned out to be completely unusable in South Africa because they were too high for the country’s rail network. Oops.
The Fallout
They didn’t get away with it, and eventually landed in court for this dishonesty. Sorry for lies? Not a bit of it:
“I failed to correct the perception that I have it. I just became comfortable with the title. I did not foresee any damages as a result of this.”
The result was a 15-year prison sentence and a clear message around white-collar crime. It’s a shame that it doesn’t seem to have sent a strong message about hiring processes, where failure to validate qualifications seems like the thin end of the wedge.
The Issue In Tech
A lack of Due diligence isn’t the half of this. And it’s not about qualifications in tech, but experience that isn’t verified by employers.
The tech world is rife with inflated resumes and hiring processes that are sometimes more about who you know than what you know, or your ability to guess answers to random trivia questions under pressure.
We need to check what type of person a candidate is. Are they a competent coder is part of a software engineer’s job description (as are their qualifications), but the job is so much more wide-ranging and difficult than that.
It seems to me that most of these skills and abilities aren’t checked at the interview (or beyond), providing an incentive for software engineers to game their experience on their CV.
Inflated Experiences?
Let’s face it: nobody’s ever going to land a FAANG job by being honest about every gap in their skills. Ever heard of imposter syndrome? That’s basically a requirement for a career in tech. We’ve all had those interviews where we feel like we’re just a few steps away from being exposed as a fraud.
The key difference between us and Daniel is that most of us at least have most of the skills we claim, and we simply talk up what we have done.
The problem arises because we now need to lie to make our resume fit a job. For example, I’ve previously received feedback that I “have always been in a much smaller company or much larger company”, meaning I learned I need to sell my experience as exactly the same as the job on offer (which I now do).
I now see why people take “faking it till you make it” to absurd extremes and put things on their resumes that are simply untrue.
Why This Should Worry Software Developers
The rise of AI is about to make the whole “padding” thing even trickier. Companies are using AI to screen resumes and at the same time candidates are using the same technology to create their applications.
It’s like an arms race where nobody wins in the end (just like a nuclear arms race).
Since remote work is common, it’s harder for people to realize you’re a total fraud. Great news for fakers, right? Until the inevitable happens, and you get dragged into a Zoom call you can’t BS your way out of. Or until you have to work with such a person.
Reminds me of Sleepy from my office. The guy worked two jobs at once, occasionally sleeping in the office since he kept pushing himself too far. He got away with it, and one day left the company leaving the whole project in trouble because IIRC “I don’t need the money”. Working with such a faker is a nightmare, take it from someone who knows.
How Much Should You Really Be Padding Your Resume?
This is difficult. I’m sorry, I think that to get a job you have to bend the truth.
The underlying problem is the recruitment process. You need to pass a (possibly) AI paper stage, and you need a tick in each and every one of the “required” skills. You need to talk enough of the game to pass through a technical interview but (as we know) getting enough done if you get a job is possible with some hard work, study and use of ChatGPT.
However, Honesty Might Not Be That Overrated
Don’t take it too far. If you get too comfortable with the lie and Googling syntax you might just end up behind bars. That’s no place for a software engineer.
There are things you just can’t lie about. The dates you worked your jobs. Your job titles. Your credentials.
Most of the rest is *fuzzy* and can be talked up or down as necessary. Just make sure that your interview riff is at least based on the truth, so if you get asked questions about any given technology, you have at least a fighting chance of answering.
Don’t forget. Some jobs are looking for honesty. It’s a simpler life and you don’t need to memorize the lie. Daniel Mthimkhulu could have saved himself 15 years in jail.
Conclusion
You need to massage your skills and experience for any given job. This is different from lying and telling untruths.
I’ll leave it to you to decide where the line is drawn.