BusinessWeek offers this article – Should I ‘fess Up to Lying on My Résumé? This one is going to leave a mark and I couldn’t agree more with the author. Some excerpts:
From your point of view, stating that you majored in philosophy when you didn’t wasn’t a “big lie,” but your employer almost certainly won’t share your view. Why should they? Your résumé reflects who you are, what you value, and how much you have achieved. If you lie about something as important as your résumé, what will come next? Lying to a potential client to get his or her business? Lying to your boss about how things are going? Telling a lie to make it easier on ourselves only damages our credibility in the long run.
And he is just warming up:
To be the best candidate for a job doesn’t mean just being the most skillful or knowledgeable but also being dependable, honest, and trustworthy. In other words, a smart employer values character as well as competence.
And towards the end, he closes with the point that always stands out in my mind:
You mention the irony of having taken an ethics course in college. What may be even more ironic is that you probably would have gotten the job without the lie in the first place.
That one hits close to home. One year ago we had a strong manager candidate for one of our customers. He was a great fit for the role and was offered the job contingent upon his background check. Turns out he did not have a Bachelor’s degree as he stated on his resume. The killer part of the equation is that a degree was not required. To make it worse, our customer said they still would have hired him had he just confessed. Instead, he rode it to the bottom of the sea and he was not hired.