5 Resume Issues that Will Get You Fired or Keep You from Being Hired.

It’s easier than ever to get caught fibbing about your credentials. Earlier this week, as I started to prepare my latest article on job market statistics, I came across the following headline: “Trump’s New Press Secretary: Not-Quite Attorney at Law” in the New York Times. The new press secretary, according to the New York Times, claimed to be an attorney, although she never passed the bar exam.

Katie Zacharia is certainly not the first person ever to land a job by exaggerating her credentials. No doubt, she won’t be the last one to do so either. Nonetheless, when an ordinary job seeker exaggerates credentials or experience, their tenure in their new job will probably be even shorter than Katie’s time at the White House.

What You Will Learn in this Post

It’s easier than ever for prospective employers and current employers to verify your credentials and experience today. That makes it especially important to avoid misstatements and exaggerations. Here are a few examples of the facts you should get right:

1. Skills,
2. Job titles,
3. Job descriptions,
4. Business accomplishments,
5. Education and training credentials.

Be prepared to stand behind everything on your resume and LinkedIn profile at interviews and during the onboarding process. A material misstatement, either intentional or unintentional, will cause you to miss an opportunity or to be terminated once you are in the job. Here are our suggestions for each section of the resume.

Skills

Avoid including skills on your resume that you do not own. This seems obvious, but it happens. For example, an inexperienced or well-meaning writer or an AI may include a skill on your resume because the skill is required for the position you are applying for. Employers will ask you about how you use a specific skill at an interview, or even test you on the skill, so you are wasting your own time as well as a recruiter’s time when your resume includes skills that you do not possess.

For example, if the job requires you to use Python, only add it to the resume if you are prepared to demonstrate your knowledge of this technology at a professional level.

Job Title

Miss Zacharia learned the hard way this week that you cannot claim a job title that you are not legally entitled to hold. You cannot call yourself attorney at law or general counsel unless you are admitted to the bar in a U.S. state. Similarly, you cannot call yourself a physician unless you are licensed to be a physician in a U.S. state.

Civil service and corporate job titles present another problem. They are often incomprehensible to outside readers. For example, my civil service job title in the federal government was GAO Evaluator GS- 347-I- FP. That was meaningless to employers in the business world, so I had to figure out a way to explain it. Instead, on most resumes, I used the term “Management Analyst” and put my formal civil service title in parentheses.

LinkedIn poses another challenge with regard to job titles. Specifically, for best results, you should use a “market job title” in LinkedIn’s database for best search results when filling in your job title field. The market job title may differ from your formal job title. Compound job titles may muddle search results if you use them in this field, so you may want to include your formal job title in the first line of the job description beneath the job title field.

Job Description

Most of the resumes I have received from potential clients and clients over the last 25 years have been little more than a series of job descriptions. The problem with job descriptions, among other things, is that they include the tasks you are responsible for doing but that you may never have had the opportunity to do. As a result, when you copy a job description into a resume, you may be including tasks that you do not own and have never done. Once again, you may be invited to interviews and be asked about tasks that you know nothing about.

Think in terms of the scope of your job instead of its formal job description when you prepare your resume and LinkedIn profile. You may want to include some language from your formal job description to make sure the resume matches up with what the company’s ATS system is looking for, but you will avoid the mistake of including tasks that you have never done and know nothing about.\

Business Accomplishments

Your business accomplishments are the heart of your resume and LinkedIn profile. Accomplishments include the problems you addressed, the actions you took to address these problems, and the quantifiable results of these actions.

Avoid exaggerating your accomplishments even though it is very tempting to do so. Prospective employers in your field know, for example, whether it is plausible that you increased sales more than 50%. They may ask your prior employer whether you achieved such a number if they do not think it is plausible. Alternatively, the hiring manager or recruiter may simply decide not to move you forward for the position without discussing the issue further. And if you do land the position, you may not be able to achieve the results that you claim you achieved elsewhere.

Education

It’s easy for employers to verify educational credentials, certifications, and licenses today. Verifications can often be done immediately online. Additionally, you may be asked to bring original diplomas, degrees, and licenses with you for onboarding during your first day of work.

Avoid fudging degree details on your resume and LinkedIn profile. For example, if your degree is in computer science, do not write that your degree is in data science to match the requirement in a job description that you have a data science degree.

Do not misrepresent your credentials even if the  degree, diploma, certification, or license is not required for the  job you are accepting. You will, at a minimum, lose credibility if the information you provided on your resume or during onboarding is inaccurate. It is quite possible that you won’t get the job or keep the job if you are not honest about your credentials even if they are not required for the specific role. Remember that the president’s press secretary lost her job because she lied about being an attorney even though the job she was hired into did not require a law degree or admission to the bar.

Key Takeaways

You don’t need to be lying on national TV to lose your job when you fudge credentials or experience. Take the time to make sure all aspects of your background are represented accurately on your resume, LinkedIn profile, and related career documents.