A recession fraught with risky résumés

Résumé fraud always has taken many shapes and forms. Touting exaggerated accomplishments or compensation. Tweaking job titles or employment times. Tossing in a nonexistent degree or award. But now, with the unemployment rolls teeming -- 14.9 million, which can translate into hundreds of applicants for a given job -- there is a whole new way of hedging the ol' curriculum vitae. "Disembellishment," Jeff Fix calls it. The vice president for human resources at Ceridian in Bloomington added, "You still see a lot of embellishing, but now you're sometimes seeing people playing down their abilities [after being] told that they are overqualified and that is why they didn't get the job." Desperate times, it seems, call for unusual measures. "Some people have multiple versions of their résumés," said Minneapolis executive recruiter Mark Jaffe, "and while none of them is a complete fabrication, each version is different. It's like in baseball, a pitcher has a fastball, a slider and a sinker. People feel like they have to have multiple pitches." This form of "downsizing" might explain why Jaffe and Fix have seen a slight uptick in résumé fibs during the past two years. Fix, whose company provides human-resource services, said deception is common in 25 to 30 percent of applications.

Automatic Data Processing's 2009 screening index showed that 46 percent of 5.5 million individual background checks "revealed a difference in information between what the applicant provided and what the source reported."

Best policy: honesty

There's nothing illegal about lying on one's résumé. "It is, after all, an advertisement for what you do," said Jaffe, president of Wyatt & Jaffe, "and there are no truth-in-advertising laws for individuals."

But signing a job application that contains fabrications can lead to legal problems or dismissal.

High-profile examples range from Frank Abagnale Jr., the 1960s "Catch Me If You Can" pseudo-pilot/doctor/lawyer turned jailbird, to George O'Leary, hired as football coach at Notre Dame in 2001 and fired five days later for major résumé discrepancies.

In the Twin Cities, a woman worked for six months as a lawyer at Dorsey & Whitney before her fake credentials were discovered in 2005. The firm earned kudos for its handling of that situation, including returning all the woman's billings to clients. Now, according to Harry Poulos, director of lawyer recruiting, "virtually all of our new associates come through our summer programs, which is also a vetting process."

That makes it easier for those seeking entry-level jobs to fudge, hedge or fib. A Minneapolis man named Jimmy (who requested that his last name not be used) has gone this "resourceful" route.

"A lot of times, you fill in [unemployment] gaps with your personal experience," he said. "So I'll put 'personal contracting' on there if I had helped a friend build a deck or paint a house. It's not so much a lie as filling in a gap, which you have to do or employers won't look at you, especially if you're from the inner city."

Some job seekers get help from professional résumé writers. Other go a more devious route, getting a bogus "quickie" degree or using a website such as CareerExcuse.com, which offers up fake work histories and references for a fee.

Dilemmas on both sides

But there's a huge risk to including any falsehoods in this particular historical document: Get caught in one little lie, and you're outta there.

"People who lie do other bad things. They cheat; they steal; they hit on the receptionist," he said. "It's a package of bad behavior, like the Dear Abby deal where the woman is having an affair with a married man who keeps on saying he'll leave his wife. And the response is 'Even if he does that, once he's married to you, you can expect the same behavior as his current wife is getting.'"

The exception, Jaffe added, might be the newest form of fibbing, understatement.

"People don't want to appear overqualified because the employer fears they're going to lose them as soon as they're hired, or they're going to be haughty. 'I'm not used to sharpening my own pencil.' And those are legitimate concerns."

Fix, whose résumé includes human resources stints at United Health Group and International Paper, disagrees.

"I don't think people should be playing down their experience," he said. "I would love to hire a high-quality person who can do more and has a runway for other potential roles. I'm happy to hire anyone who has the right stuff."

"The best person is typically working. Why? Because companies don't let the best people go," Jaffe said. "The rule of thumb is that if you're employed, you've obviously made yourself indispensable to someone. Once you get on the sidelines, that bench time works against you. And that's why people fill up that gap with BS consulting gigs."

Of course, the deception can cut both ways.

"Why is it always the job seeker who is asked if they lie or fudge on their résumé," said Kelly McKenna, product manager for Apollo Corp., a bathing-system manufacturer, "when companies lie about the pay, advancement opportunities, solvency of the company, merger plans, etc. all the time?

"If companies expect complete honesty from their applicants, shouldn't we expect the same in return?"