Thursday, July 12, 2012

Your Resume: Be You, Not Someone Else


It seems like such an easy thing to do; just list out what you’ve done in your career thus far on some paper, and abracadabra, you have yourself a resume!  But we all know it is not that simple.  Building your resume can be a time consuming process, and one where every single word matters.  So, logically, you want to make sure that you have the best possible words, right?

Well, not necessarily, because those best possible words might not always describe your actual experience.  Now, I know that you hear to build up your resume and spin things to accentuate what you can bring to the table.  All that is true, but you still have to have actually done what you claim!  Resume fraud is one of the easiest ways to get yourself removed from consideration for a position, or even get fired if you’ve already landed the job.  It’s not just college students that are prone to this either.

Ever heard of Scott Thompson?  No?  You’re probably not alone.  Well, he was the President of PayPal until earlier this year, when he left to become CEO at Yahoo.  Pretty impressive if you ask me.  His main problem though was that his resume had been falsified.  It wasn’t even anything egregious, just adding a degree he didn’t have.  Yet within a week of this being unearthed, he was gone from Yahoo despite all his success in the business world. 

Let’s think about this.  If a company like Yahoo is willing to move along from the person they selected as CEO over a falsified resume, do you think you’re going to stand much of a chance when (because it is when, not if) your employer finds out that you lied?  My money is on NO!  Be yourself, whether on paper, in person, over the phone, or any other media.  That’s the truest way to success.  Let your real skills shine through rather than taking the temptation to make something a little better than it really should be.

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