Lying About a Short-Term Job?
Here is one from the mailbox:
Hey Lance,
Love your blog! But I’m here to get your advice and
opinion. I will be interviewing for a position that I am very
interested in but I resign from my last job a little over a month ago.
I have a new job but I don’t want to list the new job on my resume. I
want to know if I should lie about my last job covering the month and
half that have gone by. If I do lie, what are the chances the potential
employer calling my last job asking for my employment dates or do they
have software that tells them the length of my employment at my last
job. My main concerns is them offering the job then 2 weeks later
having to terminate me cause of my resume. Thanks in advance.
Also, what all do really comes out during the background check?
Where should I start with this? First of all, employers will call your previous jobs and, bare minimum, they will check your dates to make sure it is consistent. Now they may call you and get an explanation or they may throw your resume in the garbage. So, if you absolutely must lie, don’t add on an extra month and a half to the job before last.
So assuming that you can’t lie about your length of time at your second to last job, the question really remains for you to answer: is a gap in employment better than trying to explain why I am leaving this job after a month and a half? That is really a matter of opinion on the part of the company you’re interviewing with but in my estimation, I’d rather know that you’re doing something. Even if it is unrelated. Or menial. Or embarrassing.
A background check won’t do much to verify your employment history past what you state on your resume (so you must be accurate with dates, titles, pay ranges, etc…). It will check your criminal and educational background as well. And this is really only the good background check companies.
The real issue is why even consider risking it if you like this company? Starting off by lying is a bad way to start off any relationship even if you feel it necessary to get past the gatekeeper. You’ll always have to remember that lie. It is a real bummer you are in this situation but good luck.
Rejection hurts
Guess who isn’t a Top 100 HR blogger?
Me! (Who else would I be complaining about?)
Anyway, this list is a pretty good look at the amount of HR blogs out there. One notable omission (besides the unforgivable omission of yours truly) is any of the creations of Recruiting Animal. What gives bootstrapping person? You’ve got several blogs that haven’t updated for a month or more but no love for this goodness.
Anyway, I would add more of the one’s I haven’t heard of before but many of them don’t update even as regularly as I do. And I am definitely on the edge of acceptable blogging regularity.
Just as a reminder, some of my content is going to my Vault blog. And no, there isn’t an RSS feed yet but I am told it will be coming soon.
Experience.com provides information on internships and entry level jobs.
Video Resumes Still Suck
Despite all of the hype about video resumes, they still suck.
I have written about video resumes all of two times. All of them get regular reader responses from people trying to convince me that they some how give me more information than I have already stated. Even though I wrote the first one about eight months ago by the way.
Video resumes give me one piece of information: How do you do in front of a camera? Are you good? Are you bad? That’s what I’ll get.
Everything else is better utilized and much more efficiently done using paper or electronic means. End of story. If recruiters hate using video resumes, where is the market for this? Some silly studies based on straight curiosity?
People are trying to shove a square peg through a round hole on this one. I don’t have too much more to say then that. If I want to waste five minutes on YouTube, I am going to watch clips from Chappell’s Show or Saturday Night Live, not an amateur performance of “Hire me please!”
Your HR Guy is a Monster
Or I am at least being quoted by Monster:
Recruiters use Internet searches “to avoid major red flags, but it is just another assessment of a person,” says the anonymous blogger known as Your HR Guy. He adds, “My general view on Internet searches is that, for most positions, ignorance is bliss. Most of what is online for a majority of workers is personal, and most workers’ personal stuff [doesn’t play a role at work].”
I believe the whole fear of being Googled has been drastically overstated. I’ve Googled people before because they mentioned a band they were in or they were part of a professional association I’ve never heard of. That sometimes turns up something more interesting but I’ve simply never had the reason to discontinue recruiting someone due to the dirt found online.
There is something out there called Reputation Defender that was mentioned in the article. I can’t even begin to describe the issues it brings up but I think it is fun that you can remove unwanted content for just a little under $30. So if an acquaintance posts a picture of me doing non-stop keg stands last weekend and he calls me “totally weak” for asking him to take it down, I can sic Reputation Defender on him and get it removed?
The funny thing is how adamant they are about not doing searches for Human Resources departments. They’ve probably already licensed the product to a background search firm anyway (if it hasn’t already been developed).
I’m on LinkedIn — Now What???
Jason Alba of JibberJobber has written what I consider to be the consummate guide to navigating through the waters LinkedIn. I’m on LinkedIn — Now What??? (with three question marks!!!) captures not just the technical details of running the site and being effective but also how to get the most out of it from the user standpoint.
If I could make a comparison, it would be like a Corvette owners manual that taught you how to not only adjust the equalizer, but also how to turn the car into a hot rod, give it a sweet paint job and pick up a hot chick. That’s assuming that you can do that all with a Corvette (you can, right?).
If you are interested in exploring LinkedIn and maximizing your impact while there, this book is for you.
If you don’t understand the importance of networking or the efficiency of using LinkedIn to aid you in it, may I be the first to compel you to check out articles on mine or about 10,000 different websites on the subject. In a sea of 1’s and 0’s, knowing someone makes the difference sometimes.
Catching up…
Apologies to regular readers. I am in the midst of a move and about 100 other things right now but I figured I should update here with everything I’ve really been wanting to write about.
So if I all of the sudden hit nearly 5 posts a week, you’ll know why 
I hate the phrase “change management”
I don’t know what it is but for some reason the phrase really bugs me.
I hate jargon. Jargon, to me at least, is taking the easy way out. With jargon, you don’t have to say what you’re actually doing, people have to try to figure out what you’re doing. So while you were “creating synergistic relationships” and “professionally managing organizational change,” somebody else has you beat in my book. Why is that? Because instead of jargon, they told me what they did: “I combined two teams that led to an increase productivity by 75%” and “I led three teams of 60 through a merger with one of our leading competitors and still met goal for fiscal year.”
You know why the jargon sayers didn’t put down specifics? Because they didn’t do it. At least, that is my assumption. It has to be. If I hire you and it doesn’t work because the change you’ve managed for the past five years is changing the copy paper, that isn’t going to look so great on me. And if you were doing something significant or noteworthy with those skills, you would have wrote it on your resume, right?
Right?
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About
Your HR Guy is a Human Resources Generalist practicing in the field. But don't let that fool you, this isn't a boring blog. I seek relevance and humor in a place we will spend much of our lives. Everything from workplace issues, job seeking and terrible bosses. Read more...
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