But my MSc was fully funded and I got to spend a year in cheap accommodation with subsidised beer, free fibre internet, and local Counter-Strike opponents.
Lucky. I lived on about 30 quid a week because my parents were deemed rich. I never got any aid from them lmao
Please advise, my landlord won’t accept LinkedIn DMs as rent payment.
fire him; hire a new landlord
Wouldn’t you fail the background check?
Any organization is going to ask for a transcript if they ‘really’ want someone with a degree. You don’t even need a full background check.
Can’t you fake a transcript? Like if they aren’t going to check then a fake authentic looking transcript should work right?
You can get online official and physical official transcripts and, as stated previously, if the organization really wants that degree, they’ll request it.
Like, yeah, you technically can fake it.
If you are comfortable committing mail fraud ya. Most places that require a transcript will only accept a sealed one mailed by the university itself.
I mean at this point might as well commit to the sthick, like whole ass it instead of half assing it. But also fair I’ve only sent copies on online unofficial transcripts
I have never once been asked to provide a transcript. Literally never. I also don’t know anybody who has been asked to verify qualifications.
I’m sure it happens but it’s not the standard.
Most HR people are too lazy for that.
Background checks are usually outsourced to another company.
Exactly so laziness doesn’t matter unfortunately
You don’t need to lie on your resume for it to stand out and be impressive.
First, stop listing “duties” and generalized things for the role. As somebody that’s done a few hundred interviews, I quickly bin those resumes. I have a good understanding of what a related role’s duties are that would make you qualified for a role I’m interviewing for.
Your goal in a resume is to show the hiring team of what you can provide to the team/company if you are brought on board.
What you should do is keep track of you work successes and KPIs and periodically update your resume with those successes and metrics for that role. Got a top performer review status, log it. Increased sales for the department by some % for the year, log it. Delivered a highly complex & valuable project, log it.
If you do the above, I can have a good understanding of what you’re actually capable of and how you utilize the skills you have within a role.
So, what you’re saying is people should lie about work successes instead of degrees? Got it. Will do.
Are you sure not including duties and what you actually did is recommended?
Like, “Software Engineer” could mean bloody anything if you don’t specify what you actually did. You could have been mindlessly doing minor Jira tickets and running import tools, or you could be architecting entire pieces of enterprise software.
Listing your successes, metrics, and accomplishments will drive home your actual work duties and capabilities.
If you’re listing the following, you’ve failed in writing a solid entry to tell me that you’re a bugfix and data import wizard:
- Utilized Jira to fix bugs.
- Used company import tools to move data between systems.
Instead, you could write entries like:
- Took ownership and closed x bug tickets over y months which was z% over the organizational goal.
- Created and documented a Workflow to speed up the process of importing data by x%, making me the go to person for company data imports.
I’m not saying to lie or embellish either. I’m saying that you need to think about how you market your skills for sale as a service. If I’m looking for somebody with those skills, the latter two bullet points are going to stand out a far lot better than the former.
It seems to be the standard requirement in the USA, like having a resumé rather than a CV. I’d rather not, but it is standard, here.
I live in the USA. I use the process I’ve described on my resume. I’ve also just landed a new job and started within the last month. When sending out resumes on my latest job search I had a 90% response rate, all for jobs I’d actually like to work at. The job I accepted was after the recruiter that reviewed my resume reached out to me to tell me the role I applied for had been filled but that they had another role that I’d be a fit for in the process of being written and wanted to get the ball rolling so I could be at the front of the interview process for it.
I’d say it’s “standard” because people were poorly trained on what to put on their resumes starting in high school and even college. I even used the “standard” before and struggled to land interviews early in my career. It wasn’t until about 15 years ago that I did a deep dive into resume writing and job searching techniques that I completely overhauled my resume and started actually getting call-backs/emails and interviews that would eventually wind up in landing jobs that I actually wanted.
Just because something is “standard” doesn’t mean it’s what we should be doing, or is the right way. The job market has changed over the years and ATSs reviewing resumes meant that people had to figure out how to get past those systems 20 years ago. As LLMs have been added to ATSs it’s only gotten harder to get past the initial gate with a resume drop.
A Kagi search for “resume accomplishments vs duties” will give you a plethora of sources discussing this from job seekers, HR professionals, recruiters, and even some university research.
Hi, thanks so much for that useful information. I don’t have kagi or any paid additional service. I’ll see what I can find, I do appreciate your letting me know!
My unpopular opinion (and I’ll eat the downvotes) is that CV fraudsters don’t get prosecuted nearly enough.
It’s not just faceless billionaire companies you’re fucking over, it’s the other candidates who actually put in the effort to become competent at the job you lied to get.
I’ll never get my head around the popularity of the idea that lying on a CV doesn’t make you a liar.
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It’s not that unpopular of an opinion lol
Go take a look at the downvotes I got, versus the updoots that the people are getting by justifying it as “corporations bad, defrauding them good”
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It’s a shame you have any upvotes at all. It’s a moral and ethical imperative to lie on your resume. Evening the playing field is not fraud. Your cutesy dismissive retort is inappropriate because corporations have all of the power, turning job hunting into a totally atomized activity. The recruitment process is fraudulent, not the attempt to remedy it.
Job candidates didn’t start this war. Companies want ever more ludicrous requirements (so they’d have to interview fewer people), so the average CV expands to match it.
And while you may get caught with claiming to have a degree, you can certainly embellish the rest of it. Used an Excel spreadsheet? You’re now a data analyst. Dabbled in Access? Congratulations, you’re now an experienced database administrator.
And if you get found out and fired, so what? So did hundreds of people who did have all the qualifications and experience. You now have a bit more, so you know what not to do next time.
Take what you can from corporations, because they’re certainly trying to take all they can from you.
Used an Excel spreadsheet? You’re now a data analyst. Dabbled in Access? Congratulations, you’re now an experienced database administrator.
I feel personally attacked and simultaneously validated by your analysis.
When you are starting out in an hiring environment like this, you pretty much have to do this, but you should also be prepared to back it up.
25 years ago during a major tech downturn I said I had experience with C for my first programming job (I didn’t, but I knew others). Before I started I studied my ass off and learned it so I wouldn’t look like a fool on the job.
End result was that when I started, I knew C.
Don’t lie about stuff that is easy to verify like a degree from Harvard. That is just asking to be blackballed.
Lorne Lanning, the creator of Oddworld, did something similar with 3D animation back when that required super fucking expensive computers. He “ilegally” photocopied the manual of the software he was expected to know about, spent the night reading it, then, during the interview, did some bit of animation that amazed the interviewers.
I don’t recall the exact details, but you can get his account from his Ars Technica interview. Almost 3 hours long, but it’s a great listen
That’s actually pretty crazy. I could read a manual front to back twice but still look like a bumbling moron the first time I touch a piece of software.
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You’re not wrong, but I’d want to see more prosecution of job posting lies at the same time. Employers frequently add impossible requirements so they can hire H1Bs instead.
I mean, honestly, this shit won’t let up until the companies that hire them are fined. Advertising for such a requirement should carry with it the obligation to check. Would also cut down on those companies that demand such but won’t pay accordingly.
What’s the consequences of not lying on your resume? you can’t get a good job.
What’s the consequences of being caught lying on your resume? you lose your good job.
What’s the consequences of not getting caught? You get paid to do the job that didn’t require the degree to begin iwth.
The consequences are the same whether or not you do it. The benefits greatly outweigh the risks.
What’s the consequences of not lying on your resume?
You pass your background check.
Harvard and other major schools make it fairly easy to vet graduates with a call to the registrar’s office. Most schools have electronic portals to handle the requests in bulk.
This is an extremely low bar for an HR department to pass.
Most not have worked with hr much. Low bars are still way to high and AI is reading resumes that aren’t stuffed with keywords
Sure those are all well and good ideas. My wife works in HR and she’s yet to work at a company that calls the registrars office. They do criminal background checks all over, but rarely do they go beyond that. We’re in mass, so we’re entitled to a copy of our background check performed by the business, if you’re in a similar situation i’d recommend checking it out.
That being said, if you’re applying for a job you’re never gonna get an interview for (Director or Manager roles without an MBA or BS) then you have quite literally nothing but your time to lose.
My wife works in HR and she’s yet to work at a company that calls the registrars office.
It’s SOP over here. I even got bothered about it when I was in the final stage of hiring, because I graduated in December and put graduated in 2005 on my application despite officially getting the diploma in 2006.
That being said, if you’re applying for a job you’re never gonna get an interview for (Director or Manager roles without an MBA or BS) then you have quite literally nothing but your time to lose.
Reputation matters and you won’t get love in your industry by lying like this.
If you do get fired, and your employer flags you as “not eligible for rehire” that’s a big chunk of your career you can’t reference anymore because its now a black mark.
This is a big risk for anyone who isn’t simply scamming as a career.
If you do get fired, and your employer flags you as “not eligible for rehire” that’s a big chunk of your career you can’t reference anymore because its now a black mark.
Legally the business cannot say anything whatsoever about job performance or any reason behind hiring in terms of employment verification, at least where I am in Massachusetts. Employment verification here can only say dates of employment, starting job title and ending job title. Nothing else. If they say more is a massive liability and absolutely anybody can call up asking for employment verification, there’s no vetting… so getting caught telling more information is very possible.
Being banned from employment from one employer doesn’t usually do anything, and again, if you didn’t have a job to begin with and needed that foot in the door, and old small-midsize company that has zero real power, influence or clout beyond their domain will have zero impact on your job prospects. If you never get past offer phase it’s unlikely.
If you’re in a highly specialized field where there’s only a handful of people who can do your job then yes, EVERYONE in that field probably knows just who you are! But you can’t fake it till you make it at that level. low level managers and early-mid career white collar roles? Yeah you can bullshit your way through a lot of those.
Legally the business cannot say anything whatsoever about job performance or any reason behind hiring in terms of employment verification
Saying “no eligible for rehire” is enough to poison your reference.
Saying “no eligible for rehire” is enough to poison your reference.
HR departments are routinely told not to disclose that information by legal because it can result in a defamation lawsuit.
it’s not illegal for a prospective employer to ask the employee or formal employer that question, sure. A former employer would be putting their neck on the line though, because anybody can call your employment verification line. Very, very often employment verification is outsourced to eliminate any possibility of this liability.
If the policy is to never provide that information and you never provide it, you never have to go to court to prove that they are not re-hirable for a legitimate reason as a defendant in a defamation lawsuit. Background checks are typically not performed until an offer is on the table with a contingency for the former. Again, in massachusetts, the outcome of a background check must be legally provided to the one under scrutiny. If the thing that doesn’t check out is that employer’s statements, the evidence is right there. Lawyers drool over this shit.
The most in-depth background check I’ve received was a bank which actually ran a credit report. I later overheard the HR ladies talking about “y’know, why do we do that? We don’t even make hiring decisions based on the results of the credit reports…”
I don’t know how they do it in the US, but in the UK most big companies outsource application checks to several big clearing houses. They handle the logistics of checking qualifications and obtaining references from previous employers, plus the optional enhanced checking that some companies need (such as DBS/criminal record checks).
In the UK there is a single official centralised system for checking degree qualifications which covers most major universities. It’s also only a 5 minute job to email a university registrar directly. I think most big companies would consider this a bare minimum task when recruiting for any role where a qualification is in any way important.
What’s the consequences of being caught lying on your resume? you lose your good job.
I used to work as a trade union officer representing people at disciplinaries. I’ve represented several people over the years who were sacked for lying on their CVs.
Not only did they lose their job, but they’ll get a “sacked for gross misconduct” reference from that employer making it much more difficult to get another job. Those in regulated roles also ended up with gross misconduct records with the regulator, making it essentially impossible to work in that field again.
So no, it’s not a risk free game.
You took a game theory course didn’t you? Cause yup!
And it shouldn’t be too difficult to avoid getting caught. Most won’t bother checking, but if they do, you can always pick some accredited university that went defunct some years ago. It might be impossible to check if even if they wanted to. Then avoid giving details about anything from your college days, and hope a coworker doesn’t show up who actually went there.
you can always pick some accredited university that went defunct some years ago
Harvard is not one such school.
I once had a coworker whose CV said she had a BSc from Oxford University.
Clearly neither she nor our hiring manager knew much about Oxford.
I’ve got a BSc from Cambridge.
Apparently the graduate still looking for it wheeeeyyyyy
I was a hiring manager in aerospace for decades. We for sure checked transcripts before a start date.
I also just don’t get people who lie on their resumes. That would cause me so much anxiety. Even for things I have training or experience with, I always worry people are going to expect me to be more proficient than I am. I had I guy put that he was fluent in a computer language that I’m not sure he’d ever seen, so everyone was always frustrated with him and he eventually got laid off.
My partner’s dad lied on his resume long ago and held that job for years before anyone checked.
The reason he lied was because he knew he could do the job because he had enormous experience (I’m not sure what it was something related to agriculture and he had grown up farming) but the job required a degree. He did the job well.
He is an argumentative person though and I guess he finally pissed off the wrong guy who finally looked into his background and got him fired.
I guess some businesses and industries check more than others. Where I worked, you had to submit your transcripts, plus they did background checks for criminal records.
Why the fuck would they fire somebody who did the job well for years?
You piss off the wrong person, it doesn’t matter how good you are at your job. I can also say from personal experience, he is not an easy person to get along with.
I think it’s super dependent on the industry and you as a person.
I used to have a fake degree on my resume and I attribute a decent amount of my career success to that. But I am in IT where experience is a lot more important and there’s a lot less risk than engineering haha.
But it was just some random bachelors degree from a community college in my home town. I would explain it away as “just some online BS program so I would have a degree on my resume” and that was really all the background checking anyone did. I’m also very charismatic, had a bunch of professional references, and a couple certs so that helps a ton
I don’t have it on my resume anymore because I’m at a point in my career where it just frankly doesn’t matter, but back when I was just a baby help desk tech it genuinely got me a couple incredible opportunities. I didn’t feel bad because the hiring process is such nonsense and employers made candidates jump through so many hoops I just figured it was fair. They
liecreatively explain benefits and pay, so we canliecreatively explain our history.I had a 25-year career as a programmer. Not once did I ever have a company I worked for verify my academic or employment histories or even contact my references. I could have put down anything I wanted and it wouldn’t have made the slightest difference - my continuing employment was based on my ability to actually do shit.
I’m now a school bus driver and they checked out everything. And of course threw in drug testing and a criminal background check for good measure.
The school bus thing makes sense.
Dunning-Kruger perhaps. You sound like me. I have a master in thermodynamics and 20 years in the field of energetic materials, but I know that there are lots of stuff I don’t know nearly enough about.
This, I was also a hiring manager in sciencey fields. We also verified education, even with a robust job history. I share the same sentiment and could not embellish on my resume because it’s pretty hard to lie about technical expertise in science and engineering. Also, the labs I’ve worked in have very expensive instruments, not a good idea to ‘wing it’ with those things.
I’m pretty sure people lie on resumes because you’re more likely to actually get a response that way, rather than using whatever credentials you actually have.
Well sure, of course. I’m more likely to hire a painter to paint my house if he says he’s been in business 20 years, but I’m going to be pissed off it turns out in his first job and he’s bad at it.
That’s the whole thing about “fake it till you make it,” though. You fake it to get your foot in the door, pray like a mother fucker you can actually do the job, and pray like a mother fucker you keep the job. I don’t know how folks actually make it like that, but, hey… In the current dark times, gotta do what you gotta do.
Wouldn’t be worth the anxiety for me.
On the other hand, I’ve long been a proponent of the above board fake it till you make it approach. There were many, many times in my career that my boss needed something done and I told him I could probably figure it out if he keeps his expectations low. Got to do a lot of interesting things that way and learned some really cool stuff.
And every promotion was like that. They knew all of my experience, but were putting me in a new position. Managing people for the first time is always a fake it till you make it situation.
As someone that works in academia, you’d be surprised how many academics never get their qualifications sighted for employment at a university. I’ve heard a few stories of renowned individuals admitting to fake degrees before retirement, suddenly rendering their highly cited papers ignored after 20 years of publication.
sighted
cited ?
Nope.
their highly cited papers
Papers are cited.
their qualifications sighted
Qualifications are to be physically seen.
If there is doubt or the qualification can’t be physically shown, it’s a small mission to follow up with the institution they are alleged to come from—often a fee attached and time involved.
…*there
I’m sorry!
Dat’s ow klevah are akkadumiks ar theez daiz.
The studies are just in a very public place
DMs from who, though? Recruiting agencies? Those aren’t job offers, those are people who want to doctor your resume even further and some it at companies going they’ll get paid for it
How do you think staffing agencies work?
Exactly like I described. They shotgun doctored resumes at companies, hoping a few stick and they get paid for it. Getting DMs from these doesn’t mean you have job offers. It means someone wants to include you in their barrage-which means they identified you as having a pulse
Ah. There are two types of these. The national ones that put up a few hundred “local” listings for the same job, skim off the top, and hope to make a cut. Then there are actual local ones that build relationships with companies with businesses in the area and actually find proper talent instead of playing a numbers game. The way they make money is the same, but the former is definitely much less of a sure thing.
And I’m guessing it’s the former which would be DMing people in LinkedIn
Not always!
i onced followed someone profile on linkein i was with in my las semester almost a decade ago, and he was totally bsing his lab experience, because he told me before hand he dint have much or any lab experience, then every semester i saw him adding 1 years to his resume, then after he added 2 years, he was eventually hired. yea you have to bs your way.
Some companies do background checks.
Background checks can cover a variety of areas. The last 5 companies I’ve worked for have all done them. Education verification was not on any of them. They were mostly concerned about criminal records. A few of them did credit checks.
some do, most don’t.
This is true but it also varies with industry. In defence and parts of the government, potential new hires are likely to receive a full and extensive background check, including academic records and past employment. It’s similar for certain areas such as finance and some executive positions, either because it’s considered fraud or dishonesty which is considered to make people unsuitable (e.g. in banking) or because the company is trying to manage risks and they want to be sure that they know what skeletons someone has in the closet.
This sort of thing wouldn’t get you very far in those industries, and it’s certainly not unheard of for people to be fired even after successfully getting the job. A surprisingly large number of people have been walked from high-paying finance jobs because they lied on their application, even months or years after being hired.
Yep and if they decide to go for you they’ll look through your application for lies. It’s a straight sack
It’s true. I finished grad school well over a decade ago, not once has anyone verified my education. They haven’t even requested transcripts.
they wouldn’t ask you for your transcripts, they’d contact the university. If they think you faked your resume then it’d be silly to trust you to provide valid transcripts.
As well as employers contacting the university for verification, graduates can request their university send certified copies of their transcripts and diplomas. It’s also possible for candidates to supply an unofficial transcript that can be later verified.
The context of the thread is few employers seem to question if educations are legitimate, not that they suspect they’re fake. The point I’m making is that not only are they not verifying information with my university, they’re not even asking me to substantiate anything, official or otherwise.
One place I interviewed for actually wanted to see my physical diploma. This was memorable bc it was the only time it ever happened and luckily I happened to know where it was. Usually yeah they just contact the university’s “registrar” or “academic records” office and as part of the application process you sign a form saying it’s OK to release your records to them.
I’m not sure if I want to work for a company that doesn’t. That seems incompetent.
Incompetent management is the worst to work for. I can handle people who make bad decisons or assholes, but I can’t stand assholes who make bad decisions. Which is probably why I hate myself.
The verification is the Harvard sweatshirt you wear to the interview.
Now I want to do a thing where during interviews I wear merch from a different university than the one on my CV, especially from locations it would be extremely improbable for me to go to university and during interviews aggressively hint I went to said university instead of the one I actually said I went to, without outright saying anything false.
Back when I was in college, the only time you’d wear your own school’s logo was when attending a sporting event. Otherwise, folks always wore some other school’s colors — I think the implication was that they had a significant other attending another university. An unspoken “Yea, I have a boy/girlfriend, but you’ve never met them; they go to a different school.”
Ah neat. American college culture is so fascinating to me.
Here in the UK we have absolutely nothing even remotely like this.
University is just a building you go to and attend lectures at, there’s no real “campus” at most unis, the entrance is usually same as an office building - street level somewhere central-ish (at least in London), and the only people who hang out at the uni cafes and whatnot are overly posh knobs and grifters who have nothing better to do while most others are off working or getting high at home.
There’s no “dorms”, there’s usually “student halls” but they’re not related to the university, and they’re not anywhere near it, and “the halls” (like a boarding house) are shared between students of different unis, but are also seen as a ghetto and those who can afford it just rent their own place or house share instead.
I have no idea if my university had any non-staff merch and if it did whether or not anyone wore it or knew about it, nevermind sporting events.
I guess another implication could be, “yeah I go here but I was also accepted by there. Sweatshirt came in the packet.”
I’m pretty sure this is the opening plot to the TV show Community.
I thought you have a bachelor’s from Columbia?
And now I have to get one from America. And it can’t be an e-mail attachment.
What if I already have a master’s but still can’t find a job?
Have you considered a doctorate?
PHD doesnt equate to a easy job find either, its pretty difficult if not very hard to do. in my state school i had department head reviewing 30+ prof/adjunts candidates in that semester alone. when i was going to research talks, one of them said the DR(who had come to our uni to give research talk about a subject he was doing) had written 40+ PAPERS before a employer was interested in hiring them. then theres the issue with that too, the quality of papers are dismal and then the profession itself.
Do you think there’s a correlation between those who process further up the academia tree; and those who enjoy masochism?
yea, i heard alot of pi in academia are spending 60-80+hrs in thier labs everyweek managing it. plus if they are in university they are also managing classes, TA, and student labs.
JD!
Message people in your field on LinkedIn who may have a possibility of hiring you. Applying for job postings does approximately nothing.
Just keep adding master’s degrees until you get an offer, I guess.
overqualified
“Employers hate this one powerful trick!”
If you keep adding enough master degrees eventually the HR system of some company hiring you will overflow and you’ll be CISO in no time.
Good old Bobby Tables, the master in every field known to man.
Add a PhD
Tried that, doesn’t work
Try adding an MBA. Money people and managers seem to think that makes you one of them.
i think you should x years of experience instead, 2 years minimum , thats wher ei noticed where people get hired the fastest.
just add x amount of experience to your degree, they look more into the bullsshit experience you faked(but they also likely wont verify your experience, unless you are incompetent than they start to question your resume), and most of the time they dont question it. assuming your degree is one field they will scrutinize. had a friend with MS in the science gave up searching, i dint do it either with just a undergrad. just add like 1 year experience to see if anyone bites, if nobody bites in a month, add another year(i think 2 year is when you see offer starts to come in.
ALso some jobs may request LORs, fake them too.
they tend to stay away from cv/resume with 1 or less years of experience, also they use software to automatically screen out certain keywords.
If anyone is curious, they will fire you if you fabricate this level of education. Lie on your resume? Sure. Totally fabricate education and experience you don’t have? Fruad.
