Have you ever lied on your CV? Were you found out?

[Shirleyphallus]

I’m in the process of applying for jobs and am keeping to the letter of the law on qualifications / results etc as I’m terrified of being found out for embellishing it somehow!

Has anyone ever lied on their cv and if so, what was the outcome?

I think there’s a number of jobs who do as we do and check the detail. We do it for all grades of staff even the lowest paid (about £29k) but even then very occasionally someone slips through the net and isn’t caught out until after they’ve started. That’s hard on both parties as they are then jobless for a lie about something that doesn’t really matter except in terms of their integrity. Silly to lie.
We do it mainly to check out their level of honesty; we cannot accept anything but absolute integrity and probity.
Dishonesty at work is a discipnary offence - we’d expect people to own up to errors not try and hide mistakes. We expect people’s diaries to be accurate and honest. I don’t give two figs if someone goes to their child’s nativity or gets a haircut during the working day but I do care if they lie about doing so. I expect honesty in terms of sick leave or other absences. I’m perfectly happy with someone asking to miss a meeting because their husband or wife has a hospital appointment they want to attend. I’m not happy for them to ring and say they’ve been sick all night.
An honesty culture reaps huge benefits. We might not be very exciting - no wild office parties, photocopies of bottoms, no Christmas jumper days but we can, because we trust our staff, be very flexible in time off, not overmanage people and avoid too many difficult conversations. If appointed, people tend to stay a long time so we save on recruiting costs too.

How on earth are you expected to remember the exact date you left a temporary job in a shop fifteen years ago for example?

See, until I started reading mumsnet it would never occur to me that people wouldn't have kept a record of things like that, because it has always been normal for me to have to provide it.

I'd love to work in England, it seems so much more straightforward to apply for a job.

@cherrypavlova how do you check jobs from years ago where the companies no longer exist?

I've lied about my Maths grade on my CV - said I got a C instead of a D as many places specified you needed at least a C grade in Maths and English.

I've never been asked to show certificates in any job and I work for the NHS in an admin role.

I haven't out right lied on my CV but I do have some qualifications where I don't remember what year I gained them, so make that up (roughly). However, I have the certificates for the degree and post grad so the other aren't so important anyway.

I never put GCSE or A levals on because I don't have any !

People in very senior professional jobs do get away with it sometimes:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-46258687

It doesn't say much for the GMC checks.

Why would you lie? I think it smacks of being a person with a low level of integrity. Just don't include your grades on your CV if you're ashamed of them, you don't need to. I only include my latest qualification grade anyway. I've always had to bring in qualification certificates for my posts.

I've never lied on a cv, never needed to.

Years ago however, I came across a manager who claimed to have gone to the same university as me (he didn't know I'd been there). It became very obvious to me that he hadn't even set foot in the place (small university town). I don't know if he was ever found out, as I left!

I always put a couple of A levels on. No one ever checked.

Not me but I helped a friend with her CV years ago and I am quite sure she had lied about her experience. She has since gone on to rise to quite spectacular heights and I sometimes wonder if she's ever worried about being found out.

I don't understand why people need GCSE certificates when you say have a degree that you needed GCSEs to do?

@countrybunny I recently got asked to provide my GCSE certificates. Apparently my degree certificate wasn't enough to prove I had GCSEs even though obviously I needed them to do my A Levels and degree. But because the job spec only specified "GCSE English and Mathematics Grades A*-C" they'd only accept my GCSE certificate. Had a right stress trying to find my certificates in time for the interview.

To the posters who work at firms where candidates anomalies are checked with awarding bodies and employers, I'm surprised that you'd get this information - isn't it confidential and asking for the information breach of GDPR?

Exams etc are a matter of public record aren't they? And membership of professional bodies. If you can't check if someone has been struck off there's not much point in membership existing really.

But I'd imagine it's normally in the small print anyway, along with the bit where they ask permission to access your medical records.

Depends what you mean by lie?

Your CV is to sell you for that job. It’s not actually a truth document. I’ve seen some awful CVs because people insist on putting every job they’ve had on it, going back 15 years and including the job they did for 3 months. I’ve seen details of poor GCSEs when a simple “9 GCSEs achieved” would suffice.

You’ve got to make yourself look good!

Although GCSE results are undoubtedly taken into account for admissions there are lots of
very prestigious degree courses which don’t, for example, explicitly insist on English and maths GCSE (even though in effect everyone on the course almost certainly has both). My English Lang and Lit degree certificate therefore doesn’t actually prove that I have these qualifications and as I work in a profession where they are mandatory I have had to produce my certificates numerous times.

I wouldn’t work for a company that expected GCSE certificates unless it was uniformly the case in my industry (usually the case in overly bureaucratic job creation organisations where people blindly follow old processes without thinking ie government organisations, local authorities- not particularly good employers tbf, as well as places like the police/ financial services/ foreign office where it is understandable.

I don’t know the exam boards I took exams at. My upper school was sold off for housing 15 years ago. My certificates which were faded away last time I saw them, where kept at my parents and they threw everything like that away when they downsized.

I’m 40 years old with a degree, professional qualification and 20 years professional experience. I’d think any HR department asking for GCSE certificates a bit pathetic and certainly old fashioned.

Exams etc are a matter of public record aren't they?

No, not results. I worked at an exam board this summer and we weren't allowed to give past results to anyone over the phone or email. The candidate had to send a request for their results and the reprinted cert would go to an address of their choice. Only the candidate could request the info.

Why would exam results be public record?

I wish I had the balls to lie on my CV. I got terrible grades for my A-levels but did really well in my BA/MA. I often wonder if they think how did a C/D level student get into uni.

I've fudged dates from years ago to cover gap before.
I've never had to provide any proof of qualifications (I work in software development) before not even my degree and wouldn't have a clue if a company asked for to the day job history, I've never recorded that!

@Bunnyhop1502 if you have a BA and an MA there is no reason at all to list your A levels on your CV, they’re irrelevant now you have higher qualifications - unless for some reason they’re directly relevant to your job role, which they rarely are

Why put your grades on your Cv bunny? Just put your degree down. They can ask if they want to know

I put them down because every single time I’ve been interviewed for a job when I’ve just put down my degrees I’ve been asked if I have GCSEs which is absolutely ridiculous but there you are I may start leaving them off again though as I don’t know where the certs are so couldn’t prove it anyway!

I've 'forgotten about', and therefore omitted, a couple of jobs that I wasn't at very long. I've doctored the start leave dates on jobs either side to conceal this.
I have done this for one very brief job. I only put the year for my start/finish dates for jobs and as it was way, way less than a year (and then some) it is all true what is on there.

treaclesoda I'd really struggle if I had to remember the day I started/finished most of my jobs (I'm in my early 50s and despite being a layabout student for quite some time, have had a very large number of jobs). Apart from the one that I finished on the 31st Dec one year and started the new one 1st Jan, so that one is easy!
I would be hard pressed to remember the month in some cases, though I suppose I could take an educated guess at that and put the first/last day if I had to?

I have a friend who has got a long way up the graduate ladder despite not having a degree. He just lists the dates he was at uni (dropped out) and they never checked. He advised me to do the same instead of going back and paying another 18k to finish my degree. A different friend who works in recruitment says they never check or ask for certificates. I'm not ballsy enough to do it though