10 Outlandish Resume Lies That Can Kill Your Job Chances

A recent CareerBuilder survey found that 58 percent of hiring managers and HR professionals have found a lie on a candidate’s resume, and 33 percent of the 2,188 respondents said lying on resumes has increased in this post-recession job market. Aside from the ‘standard’ lies like fudging dates of employment, embellishing a job title, or claiming greater responsibilities, respondents found some truly laughable whoppers that stuck with them over time. Here are the most unusual lies employers caught on candidates’ resumes.

In-depth: For a deeper look at the lies people tell on their resumes read the full article: IT Resumes: Lies, Half-truths and Embellishments.

This prospective employer included job experience that was actually his father’s. Both the father and son had the same name – except one was Senior, one was Junior.

In this country you can be anything you want to be if you work hard enough, except perhaps, the assistant to the prime minister of a country with no prime minister. That’s exactly what this guy did however. This diplomat claimed to be the assistant to the prime minister of a foreign country that doesn’t have a prime minister. Do a Google search for goodness sake or ask Siri or Cortana.

This particular applicant claimed to have been a high school basketball free throw champion. Why? We have no idea. In any case, he admitted it was a lie in the interview.

Talk about going for the gold. This individual claimed to have been an Olympic medalist.

This prospective employee claimed to have been a construction supervisor. However, the interviewer learned the bulk of his experience was in the completion of a doghouse some years prior. Thankfully he didn’t use the dog as a reference.

This poor individual claimed to have 25 years of experience at age 32. Maybe he needs to remove math skills from his LinkedIn profile?

This person thought name dropping would do the trick; they claimed to have worked for 20 years as the babysitter of known celebrities such as Tom Cruise, Madonna, etc. No such luck however.

This worker listed three jobs over the past several years. When the employers/references were contacted, the interviewer learned that the applicant had worked at one position for two days, another job for one day, and not at all for the third.

And finally this eager beaver applied twice for the same position and provided different work history on each application.

In-depth: For a deeper look at the lies people tell on their resumes read the full article: IT Resumes: Lies, Half-truths and Embellishments.

Yet another applicant applied to a position with a company who had just terminated him. He listed the company under previous employment and indicated on his resume that he had quit. Maybe he thought they wouldn’t notice?