What’s on Your Resume?
By:
Andrew Adams, Leah Ali, Maike Blakely, Lauren Boe, and Brittney Bryant
Advisor: Dr. Stephanie Wetzel
2012 URP Ethics Forum
June 25, 2012
What’s On Your Resume Summary
Recently several well-known people have been caught with lies and embellishments on their resumes. Unfortunately they are not the only ones lying on their resumes. Approximately half of alljob seekers are embellishing and a third are lying on resumes. These breaches in honesty and integrity affect both the employers and the other job seekers.
The most well known case in academia is Marilee Jones. She worked for the admissions department of MIT for twenty-eight years and worked her way up to be the head of admissions for MIT. When she resigned she revealed she did not have all the college degrees she claimed on her resume. Her lies brought negative attention to MIT and degraded her integrity. Other well-known cases are the CEO of Yahoo lied about having a computer science degree, Robert Irvine from the food network embellished about previous jobs and lied about working on Princess Diana’s wedding cake and George O’Leary was the head coach of the Notre Dame football team lied about having earned a master’s degree and about his football career. In all three of these cases they lost their jobs, degraded their integrity and brought negative attention to the institutions they worked for. In order to avoid violating ethical values and putting the potential job at risk avoid embellishing and lying. Embellishing is exaggerating real accomplishments for example in the process of earning a degree compared to having actually earned a degree. Lying on a resume is providing any fabricated information. Ways to enhance a resume without violating ethical values are to use keywords to help your résumé stand out, focus on accomplishments that are quantifiable, only change titles if it’ll clarify your position, and address gaps in your résumé.
Most hiring managers are skilled at interpreting embellishments in a résumé. Therefore its important to avoid the consequences of being caught was a resume containing false or exaggerated information by improving your resume with actual accomplishments. Apply for jobs that you are qualified to prevent loss of your professional credibility.