Good Morning! I hope
that all of you are having a great start to the week! I was watching the news this morning and
caught the story about Scott Thompson,
CEO of Yahoo former CEO of Yahoo, was fired for lying about his
credentials. For those of you that
follow my blog this is something that I’m pretty passionate about it and have
written about it extensively. You can
find some of my other thoughts on the issue below:
To clarify, I’m not passionate about this because it is so
wrong – the act of lying is wrong but its not an issue that gets me on the
pulpit. Instead, I’m passionate about it
because in most cases it really gains you nothing. Let’s look at the case of Pinocchio (I’d
prefer to call him Pinocchio from now on to differentiate him from other more
ethical Scott Thompsons like yours
truly) from Yahoo. Pinocchio lied on his
resume by stating that he had an additional computer science degree from his
college. Really.. Really?
This is what he thought would put him ahead? Steve Jobs didn’t even go to college!
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I’d love to go into the psychology behind why people lie on
resumes and since I’m not a PHD (nor would I put it on my resume) I’ll just
tell you what I imagine people are thinking.
I assume that these people are desperate to move forward to in their
career – it could be for a variety of reasons including drive, hatred for their
current job, personal goals, ego, etc.
This desperation leads them to take chances like padding their resume to
make them more attractive. This does you
no good and heres why:
Resumes Don’t Get you
the Job!!!!!!!!!
In my eight odd years working in this industry, I’ve never
seen anyone hired based solely on their resume.
In fact, I’ve helped many people get a job without a resume. So, what’s the purpose of a resume? It is a one sheet advertisement intended to
make people want to talk to you. It’s sole goal is to get you an interview so
you can wow the company with your awesomeness!
Furthermore I contend that any little white lie that adds a little
sparkle to your resume doesn’t matter.
Did Yahoo care that Pinocchio had a double degree? – No – they were
probably more interested in the fact that he had been the CEO of another tech
company. For the non-CEO crowd the same
is true. Most people that look at
resumes aren’t looking at the fine details of your advertisement. They are focused on three things:
- Job
History and stability
- Where
you worked
- What you accomplished
I’m sure that you could lie about these things but this gets
into the big lie category that almost always gets caught.
So, that’s my diatribe on lying on your resume. Please learn from Scott “Pinocchio” Thompson’s
mistake. It may help you in the short term
but in many cases the long term consequences are pretty rough. What do you think about the issue? Feel free to leave comments or email me at
sthompson@insurance-csg.com
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