4 ms·

As someone who hires if I find a lie on your CV, even a relatively small one, I have to make the assumption that you're untrustworthy and I won't hire you. It m

As someone who hires if I find a lie on your CV, even a relatively small one, I have to make the assumption that you're untrustworthy and I won't hire you. It may be the only one but I have limited exposure to you and limited time to build a view so one lie is a big deal. And if you say "I did it to get your attention", my response would be "why, haven't you done anything real worth my attention?" The problem is that most people who lie aren't undiscovered geniuses, they're simply liars. I might miss out on a genuis at some point in my career but I'm certainly going to miss out on a lot of the grief that comes with hiring dishonest people. EDIT: Removed a section based on something I think I've misunderstood.

cgmorton 14y ago
Hold on. I might have misread, but I thought the point was he -didn't lie-. He put 'Mensa' because he was in Mensa. It stood out because so many other people had an 'education' section at that spot on their resumes.
- wccrawford 14y ago
  There's a lot of confusion about that. I thought that was the point, too, but enough other people thought differently that I searched for him. He doesn't seem to be a current member of Mensa. That doesn't mean he wasn't a member at the time, though. So far as I know, there's no way to look up records of past members. (Except maybe by a Mensa employee, which I'm not.) Still, I don't think he meant that it was a lie. If someone asked me about it on my resume, my answer would be much the same as his. I usually have a second reason, though: If it bothers anyone that I'm a member, I don't want to work there. In my experience, people who have a beef against Mensans tend to make life very hard for smart people in general. They seem to make it their life goal to bring them down a notch. I don't need the extra stress, so I just avoid those companies.
3pt14159 14y ago
But he didn't lie... He was part of Mensa.
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- Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
  The reasoning runs: * A CV is not created under stress, it's a considered document which will almost certainly have been drafted and reviewed. Lies on a CV are not spur of the moment things, they're thought through. * Yes we all lie but there are different levels of lie. Lying in a way which might involve someone making a decision to give you a job (and thousands of dollars) that they might not otherwise give you is a significant act of dishonesty. * An interview is a time limited thing and because of that I have limited information on which to base a decision. If one of the things I discover during that interview is that you have perpetrated a significant, considered act of dishonesty, it's almost certain you're not going to have done anything to allow you retrieve the situation. I'm not saying the person is a habitual liar, I'm saying I don't know but I'm not going to take the risk given what I've seen. Probably worth saying that I'm talking about lies here, not exaggerations (which I accept as part of the game).

cgmorton 14y ago

Hold on. I might have misread, but I thought the point was he -didn't lie-. He put 'Mensa' because he was in Mensa. It stood out because so many other people had an 'education' section at that spot on their resumes.

wccrawford 14y ago
There's a lot of confusion about that. I thought that was the point, too, but enough other people thought differently that I searched for him. He doesn't seem to be a current member of Mensa. That doesn't mean he wasn't a member at the time, though. So far as I know, there's no way to look up records of past members. (Except maybe by a Mensa employee, which I'm not.) Still, I don't think he meant that it was a lie. If someone asked me about it on my resume, my answer would be much the same as his. I usually have a second reason, though: If it bothers anyone that I'm a member, I don't want to work there. In my experience, people who have a beef against Mensans tend to make life very hard for smart people in general. They seem to make it their life goal to bring them down a notch. I don't need the extra stress, so I just avoid those companies.

3pt14159 14y ago

But he didn't lie... He was part of Mensa.

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Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
The reasoning runs: * A CV is not created under stress, it's a considered document which will almost certainly have been drafted and reviewed. Lies on a CV are not spur of the moment things, they're thought through. * Yes we all lie but there are different levels of lie. Lying in a way which might involve someone making a decision to give you a job (and thousands of dollars) that they might not otherwise give you is a significant act of dishonesty. * An interview is a time limited thing and because of that I have limited information on which to base a decision. If one of the things I discover during that interview is that you have perpetrated a significant, considered act of dishonesty, it's almost certain you're not going to have done anything to allow you retrieve the situation. I'm not saying the person is a habitual liar, I'm saying I don't know but I'm not going to take the risk given what I've seen. Probably worth saying that I'm talking about lies here, not exaggerations (which I accept as part of the game).