Memo to job applicants

Don’t lie on your CV. Really.

I’m hiring for interns again. One of the candidates who I was about to shortlist had put as their most recent employment that they had worked for a friend of mine. I checked out with my friend who said that the candidate had worked there only for a few days, not quite the six weeks of employment stated on the CV – which is otherwise quite impressive, but now I must distrust every other detail given. And I don’t have time to check those details out, so into the bin it goes.

If you lie on your CV, you will get caught. And even if you get away with it this time, it will have a corrosive effect on your ethics. How many more times will you pad out a few details, just because it looks a little better than the truth? In the field where I work, it is a small world and we all know each other. And even if you work in a less focussed field than I do, as you get farther up the tree, your lies will come back to haunt you, until you fall spectacularly.

Just tell the truth. It’s easier all round.

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