About 70% of U.S. workers say they’ve lied on a resume to land a job, and 37% say they lie frequently, according to an Oct. 3 report from ResumeLab.
In addition, about 76% have lied in their cover letters, and 80% have lied during a job interview, often by embellishing skills, job responsibilities and previous job titles.
“In the competitive world of job hunting, the pressure to stand out in a candidate pool leads many people down a slippery slope — lying on their resumes. All’s fair in love, war, and recruitment, right? Wrong,” Agata Szczepanek, a career expert at ResumeLab, wrote in the report.
In a survey of 1,900 U.S.-based workers, more than 70% said they’ve lied when it comes to resumes, cover letters and job interviews.
With resumes, another 15% said they’ve considered lying, which leaves a remaining 15% who said they’ve never lied or considered lying.
Those with higher levels of education — such as a master’s degree or doctoral degree — reported the highest rates of lying on resumes. About 58% said they lie frequently and 27% said they’ve lied once or twice, totaling 85%. In comparison, about 71% of those without a college degree and 63% of those with a bachelor’s or associate degree said they’ve lied.
Interestingly, no other gaps appeared based on gender, age, political affiliation, religion or work industry.
However, workers lied about different aspects of their resumes. More than half embellished responsibilities in general, while 52% lied about their job title to make it sound more impressive, 45% fabricated how many people they managed, and 37% lied about the length of time they were employed at a job. About 24% said they made up an entire position.
These trends appear to extend to cover letters and job interviews as well. About 50% of workers said they lie frequently in cover letters, 26% lied once or twice, and 15% considered it.
In addition, 44% of workers lie frequently in job interviews, 36% lied once or twice, and 20% haven’t lied.
Recent job market trends and growth around AI may lead to some of these lies. For instance, nearly half of workers who have looked for a job in recent months have exaggerated their AI skills during the hiring process, according to a recent ResumeBuilder survey. Those in management or executive levels were more likely than others to lie about their AI skills.
Despite the overwhelmingly high number of job seekers who appear to lie, many hiring managers are “willing to accept” this, according to a Checkster survey from 2020. More than 90% of those surveyed said they know someone who has lied on a resume, and yet many of the applicants are still hired.
On the other side of the hiring table, about 40% of recruiters have lied to candidates about a job or the company during the hiring process, according to another recent ResumeBuilder survey. Most often, hiring managers said they lied about job responsibilities, growth opportunities or career development at the company.
