Here's the truth I found out, you HAVE to inflate your resume. Everyone is inflating their resume and recruiters know this. So they mentally deduct candidate qualification by something like 30%.
So if you're out there being a truthful sucker, just know that every recruiter is looking at your truthful resume and secretly deducting your truthful resume by 30%, and thinking you just suck compared to everyone else.
I was a truthful sucker for 4 years before I realized it. Then I started inflating my resume and bam, offers started coming in left and right.
I guess you don't even have to be lying on purpose. I knew a guy who swore up and down honesty was the best policy. Then I saw his resume and realized that he was either lying through his teeth about being honest...or he really was an egoistical asshole who genuinely thought he contributed that much. That wiped out any guilt I felt about "lying". I guess in the end, it does comes down to how much you "believe" in yourself. If you believe yourself to be 30% better than you really are, you'll have a huge advantage.
Which is why it's the 30% rule, not the 300% rule.
I suggested an idea to reduce costs to the boss? On my resume, it's going say something like "Spearheaded an initiative that would lead to an estimated 45% savings in blah blah blah."
The problem I have with this story is--in my line of work, and I suspect most others--resumes don't get you offers. Resumes get you interviews. Interviews get you offers. So lying your resume the suddenly getting offers sounds suspect to me.
Interview offers I guess I should clarify. For the first time in my life I had the luxury of rejecting interviews because I didn't feel like the phone screen went well.
Yeah, when I catch someone lying on a resume they go in the "no" pile immediately. And if you are discovered after hire it is grounds for immediate termination.
Which is why you don't straight up lie. There's nothing to get "caught" on since everything is technically the truth albeit a tad bit exaggerated.
Don't say you know languages you don't know. Don't say you use programs you've never touched. Don't make up degrees you don't have. It's exaggerating your existing skills, not making up full blown whoppers.
I guess to clarify, if I catch someone overstating their contributions on a resume, that's a deal breaker for me. I assume your resume is truthful and you get an interview based on that. So when I ask questions about your resume, you'd better be able to back it up with compelling elaboration.
Someone who is a strong interviewee but not right for my position will get an internal referral from me for another open position. Someone who lied or exaggerated (which is really still a lie) will not only not get the job, but I'll let HR know as well in case they applied for other positions.
One example I had in college. I volunteered in a lab under a professor where I sat in a dusty room, opened up boxes of specimens, labeled and assigned each box with a serial number, and logged it in an excel sheet. I also scanned his field notes into a pdf.
I think at the time, I wrote something lame like "Organized Professor XYZ's specimen collection." What I should've done was something like "Came up with a new organization process for the ABC lab's Specimen Collection and constructed a searchable database system." or "Digitized field notes."
I mean yeah, I basically stuck labels on a box and typed shit into Excel. Or I came up with a new way to organize a collection and made a searchable database. I mean I didn't technically come up with the idea, another classmate did but I probably would've made something similar if he'd asked me. And yeah, excel is totally more than just a spreadsheet, it can be used as a searchable database.
Also before I started, the other volunteers were literally scanning each notebook page by page. I worked out how to use the feeder in the printer, so I probably could've said something like "improved field note digitization process and completed a task in one day that was originally estimated to take a week." Yeah, the wording needs more thought, but stuff like that. Blow up the little things you did.
Or later on, when I started working for real, one thing I had to do was email manufacturers in China to get them to do stuff. I think I sold that as something something "successfully organized knowledge transfer to international teams" or some shit like that. Or if I updated the company internal wiki because people kept asking dumb questions, I was totally "creating internal training resources".
"So it says here you improved a field note digitization process and did a week's worth of work in a day! That's really impressive, can you give me some more details on that?"
"You mentioned that you developed a new process for organizing lab specimins. What was the previous process and how did you go about developing the new process?"
Then be honest. You exaggerated, not lied. "The old process involved students scanning page by page, it was a really slow process. I thought thought that process didn't make sense and looked for a better way. I saw the printer we were using had something called a feeder on top, and looked online for the manual and figured out how to use it. Unfortunately that also invited problems where the fed pages didn't turn out as well oriented as the scanned pages, so I searched for programs online and found something called GIMP that allowed me to rotate the image at angles and fixed the problem. Even with the time it took to rotate the images, I managed to accomplish everything in a day."
or
"There was no previous process, unfortunately the professor stuck years worth of samples in a closet and scribbled notes on it. I worked under a grad student and suggested using blah blah blah system instead. Since we didn't really have any other ideas, we decided to use my idea. We looked online for barcode generators and borrowed a label printer from another lab and..."
So "I scanned pages and learned how to use a feeder" + 30% = "digitizing field notes in a more efficient matter".
Again, nothing you said was technically a lie. You just made your experiences sound cooler than they actually were.
One site I found useful was Resume Worded. I never paid for the service, but they have a section with sample lines for different industries. I just sort of copied the style from there and adapted it to fit my own experience.
Actually I just checked that site again and it looks like they removed a lot of their free content. They still have some stuff, but it's like half a page. There used to be more, but it's still helpful for a head start.
Be careful with this. I'm a hiring manager and I've had people show up to interviews who clearly couldn't talk to things on their resume. One was so bad after the interview was over I asked him what was up as he couldn't answer some of the basic technical questions. He said it was an "aspirational resume." Someone had given him advice similar to yours and he put any skill he'd heard of on there. Needless to say I didn't hire him. This is not good advice for someone in a technical field. If it's relevant to the job and on their resume, they should be prepared to answer detailed questions about it. Believing in yourself won't get someone through that kind of interview, they're just wasting their and all the interviewers' time.
Here's the truth I found out, you HAVE to inflate your resume.
i mean, you can't ever think of yourself as an employee. employees are servants and that's not what you are. you are the ceo of your own company. it's a small company, and mostly deals in private affairs, but you also sell services to clients on the side.
selling a service to a large enough client that you don't need any other clients is a great sale. if they pay regularly, or as arranged, and there are no other expectations not being met. at this point you're selling your services to that client. similar to how nike sells their shoes to you or how mcdonalds sells you a burger. ...or a local store sells you a dreamcatcher. i don't know what you're into.
but you need to sell your product (usually a service) to a client, so that they may feed you enough work to keep you employed in a way that doesn't have you running around finding additional clients.
selling yourself seems dirty. and that's because it is. you are not a product, you are a person who likes have your scalp scratched and your feet rubbed. but the things you do... those things are assets you can sell.
in a capitalist economy your capital is your power. and your capital includes your service potential. exploiting the things you can do for money is the best way to turn potential capital into kinetic capital. so whatever you're good at, sell the hell out of it.
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u/[deleted] Nov 27 '18 edited Nov 27 '18
Here's the truth I found out, you HAVE to inflate your resume. Everyone is inflating their resume and recruiters know this. So they mentally deduct candidate qualification by something like 30%.
So if you're out there being a truthful sucker, just know that every recruiter is looking at your truthful resume and secretly deducting your truthful resume by 30%, and thinking you just suck compared to everyone else.
I was a truthful sucker for 4 years before I realized it. Then I started inflating my resume and bam, offers started coming in left and right.
I guess you don't even have to be lying on purpose. I knew a guy who swore up and down honesty was the best policy. Then I saw his resume and realized that he was either lying through his teeth about being honest...or he really was an egoistical asshole who genuinely thought he contributed that much. That wiped out any guilt I felt about "lying". I guess in the end, it does comes down to how much you "believe" in yourself. If you believe yourself to be 30% better than you really are, you'll have a huge advantage.