A new survey finds a majority of job seekers lie about their qualifications on cover letters, resumes and in job interviews, and it cites eight more honest options.
It’s pretty much a given if you want to even get through the automatic HR software many companies use. They don’t care about your experience or how it could translate to a new situation, all they want is a match on a list of keywords.
Our team consists of a few internal employees like myself and a larger group of individual contractors hired for a year or two at a time. Due to procurement laws, we have to start a new tender when one of the contracts end, we can’t extend a contract indefinitely. Which sucks because the contractors really are part of our team and have built up a wealth of domain knowledge. So we formulate the tender to make sure our current contractor is a perfect match and gets a chance at an interview (our work is specialized enough that it would require a miracle if a second candidate is just as knowledgeable and available).
Anyway, we had a situation wherein our own contractor did not get through the HR selection process for a resume that was specifically written for him. Turns out he used a slightly different description than what HR was looking for and got denied even though he was a literal perfect match.
HR and similar organizations don’t look beyond the limited list of keywords they know. If being less than perfectly honest on your resume gets you through the first round of selections, then I’d say go for it. There’s always more nuance to a resume than just the list of skills you can tick off.
edit
Oh and before I forget, recruitment agencies do this all the time but for exactly the wrong reasons. The amount of lousy resumes I’ve seen come by where they try to squeeze in an applicant who’s clearly unsuitable for the position but who happens to have the right keywords is depressing. I hate having to tell a hopeful applicant that they’re not suitable, my time is hugely wasted going through all these resumes and a possibly suitable applicant is ignored because they don’t play the game as well.
Sorry, I had to add this little rant. The hiring process is one of those moments I really dread and I wish it could go smoother.
What a nightmare process. Where I’m at they can have someone lined up for a position but still have to post it, screen applicants, then pick the person they already wanted for the role, a big waste of time. But what you’re describing, good grief, that’s horrible for everyone, even the people outside of the hiring process.
Oh yes, that’s how I got my current job. I used to be an external contractor myself, said I was interested at working full-time for my employer (it’s a very stable and fun job) and had to go through an entire circus. It was guaranteed I would get the job but I still had to:
Write a resume (with cover letter!?)
Wait for the job to open up on their recruitment website (only for 15 minutes so I would be the only one who could apply)
Have several interviews
etc.
All because their HR software requires certain steps to be followed or it’ll refuse to process the application.
For our last contractor recruitment (new position, not a rehire) we got rid of our external selection agency (responsible for the first stage of resume scanning) and decided to do it ourselves, specifically for the reason in my last little rant. We didn’t trust them to select the right candidates because they had no experience with our line of work and just blindly searched for keywords.
It was nice to get to see all incoming resumes but I had to pick through 40+ of them manually. And because of procurement laws, I had to grade all of them on a 20 point list of criteria we got to decide. On top of that, an applicant (or their recruitment agency) can challenge the fairness of the process if they feel we rated them unfairly on a specific criteria. So it was important to have a proper substantiation for every single judged criteria. That was over 800 times I had to check for proof if what a applicant claimed lined up with what their resume said.
And again, it was the recruitment agencies that really ruined my days (yes, plural). You could see that the recruiter altered resumes, wrote nonsense cover letters and did whatever they could to get past the criteria. At least half of the people who applied were clearly not suitable, but I still had to explicitly say why they weren’t suitable for every single criteria.
Sorry, this is really something I can go on and on about.
It’s definitely a nightmare, but that’s what you get when you work in the public sector I guess.
You’re absolutely right. The idea to “have to go through HR process” when a favourite successor was already named is so annoying for both the group trying to retain the person and outside candidates. It would be better if they could at least be up-front about having a favourite candidate already.
The other annoying thing is requisition postings staying up after the position was already filled. I had to find out through someone I knew at the company that that was the case in one instance.
Once or twice, in a paragraph where I changed the formatting to get as many lines as I wanted to overlap on a single line and white text, I decided to put “If put in the role of [role] I am hopeful to learn to…” Then I paraphrased every job duty and qualification into that single line. That got me a screening call for a position I was still 3 to 5 years from being qualified for.
It’s pretty much a given if you want to even get through the automatic HR software many companies use. They don’t care about your experience or how it could translate to a new situation, all they want is a match on a list of keywords.
Our team consists of a few internal employees like myself and a larger group of individual contractors hired for a year or two at a time. Due to procurement laws, we have to start a new tender when one of the contracts end, we can’t extend a contract indefinitely. Which sucks because the contractors really are part of our team and have built up a wealth of domain knowledge. So we formulate the tender to make sure our current contractor is a perfect match and gets a chance at an interview (our work is specialized enough that it would require a miracle if a second candidate is just as knowledgeable and available).
Anyway, we had a situation wherein our own contractor did not get through the HR selection process for a resume that was specifically written for him. Turns out he used a slightly different description than what HR was looking for and got denied even though he was a literal perfect match.
HR and similar organizations don’t look beyond the limited list of keywords they know. If being less than perfectly honest on your resume gets you through the first round of selections, then I’d say go for it. There’s always more nuance to a resume than just the list of skills you can tick off.
edit
Oh and before I forget, recruitment agencies do this all the time but for exactly the wrong reasons. The amount of lousy resumes I’ve seen come by where they try to squeeze in an applicant who’s clearly unsuitable for the position but who happens to have the right keywords is depressing. I hate having to tell a hopeful applicant that they’re not suitable, my time is hugely wasted going through all these resumes and a possibly suitable applicant is ignored because they don’t play the game as well.
Sorry, I had to add this little rant. The hiring process is one of those moments I really dread and I wish it could go smoother.
What a nightmare process. Where I’m at they can have someone lined up for a position but still have to post it, screen applicants, then pick the person they already wanted for the role, a big waste of time. But what you’re describing, good grief, that’s horrible for everyone, even the people outside of the hiring process.
Oh yes, that’s how I got my current job. I used to be an external contractor myself, said I was interested at working full-time for my employer (it’s a very stable and fun job) and had to go through an entire circus. It was guaranteed I would get the job but I still had to:
All because their HR software requires certain steps to be followed or it’ll refuse to process the application.
For our last contractor recruitment (new position, not a rehire) we got rid of our external selection agency (responsible for the first stage of resume scanning) and decided to do it ourselves, specifically for the reason in my last little rant. We didn’t trust them to select the right candidates because they had no experience with our line of work and just blindly searched for keywords.
It was nice to get to see all incoming resumes but I had to pick through 40+ of them manually. And because of procurement laws, I had to grade all of them on a 20 point list of criteria we got to decide. On top of that, an applicant (or their recruitment agency) can challenge the fairness of the process if they feel we rated them unfairly on a specific criteria. So it was important to have a proper substantiation for every single judged criteria. That was over 800 times I had to check for proof if what a applicant claimed lined up with what their resume said.
And again, it was the recruitment agencies that really ruined my days (yes, plural). You could see that the recruiter altered resumes, wrote nonsense cover letters and did whatever they could to get past the criteria. At least half of the people who applied were clearly not suitable, but I still had to explicitly say why they weren’t suitable for every single criteria.
Sorry, this is really something I can go on and on about.
It’s definitely a nightmare, but that’s what you get when you work in the public sector I guess.
This is the bureaucracy hoops people should be pissed off about. Ugh.
You’re absolutely right. The idea to “have to go through HR process” when a favourite successor was already named is so annoying for both the group trying to retain the person and outside candidates. It would be better if they could at least be up-front about having a favourite candidate already.
The other annoying thing is requisition postings staying up after the position was already filled. I had to find out through someone I knew at the company that that was the case in one instance.
Once or twice, in a paragraph where I changed the formatting to get as many lines as I wanted to overlap on a single line and white text, I decided to put “If put in the role of [role] I am hopeful to learn to…” Then I paraphrased every job duty and qualification into that single line. That got me a screening call for a position I was still 3 to 5 years from being qualified for.