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The ramifications of lying on your CV

February 8, 2010 |

If you are not having much luck getting job interviews, or feel that you should be earning more money than your qualifications and experience would otherwise merit, you might be tempted to upgrade your CV with a few lies and half truths.

Recent research by The Risk Advisory Group indicates that around 65 percent CVs contain some kind of lie. These range from relatively minor misdemeanours such as claiming to have been the captain of a university sports team or naming a friend as a referee to far more serious offences such as failing to mention a criminal record or inventing qualifications.

Lying on your CV might seem like a great idea in theory, but in practice it is fraught with problems. While it is not technically illegal to tell lies on your CV, if you then go on to get the job, you will be earning money under false pretences, which is an offence that you can go to prison for.

There are a number of factors that can influence how much trouble you will get into for taking a job after lying on your CV. These can include the type of job that it is, the nature of the lie, and the size of the advantage you gained by lying.

There are certain types of job where lying on your CV would be considered a more serious offence. For example, if you were to lie about your qualifications to obtain an important job with the NHS and you were caught out, you could expect to be in very serious trouble indeed, as you would have effectively defrauded the public and possibly endangered lives.

Whether a firm or organisation is likely to press charges against you is dependent to an extent on the size of the advantage that you gain by lying. If you got the job ahead of someone else solely because of something fraudulent that you put on your CV, the employer will have a very good reason to feel aggrieved at you.

Although having a lie on you CV discovered by an employer is very likely to damage your chances of getting or keeping a job, a tiny minority may be willing to overlook this in favour of the big picture. Once an employer does discover something about your CV that does not stack up, it leaves you very much at their mercy, as it gives them a right to sack you at any time without severance pay or a period of notice.

Thanks mainly to the internet, it has become a whole lot easier for employers to check up on the facts you present in your CV. Several recent high profile cases of CV fraud have also encouraged employers to be more vigorous in their fact checking. This has made telling lies on your CV a lot riskier in recent years.

Karri Farug was looking for jobs and found the Guardian Jobs website, he now recommends it highly.

Article Source: The ramifications of lying on your CV


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