People who lied in their resume and actually got the job they were unqualified for, what ended up happening?
Well, I wanted to be a photographer, but didn't have any people I could shoot.
I was in a new town, knew nobody, and had zero experience.
So I put out ads for free engagement photos from a "professional photographer who was switching fields."
I figured, what could the harm be if it was free...if they hated the photos, they could just pay someone for a real session.
So I actually get a couple to respond, I show up to the shoot, and they're BOTH drop dead gorgeous.
And I realize I'll never get another chance like this again.
So I shot EVERYTHING.
I think in a 2 hour shoot, I ended up with something like 12,000 photos on 6 SD cards.
I was so concerned about focus, that I
would literally put the camera on burst mode, and shoot off like 30 photos as I manually turned the focus ring thru its full arc so that at least one of them would be in focus.
I was shooting from in the ocean, climbing cliffs, full sniper mode in the sand...I was relentless.
Then I spent 3 straight weeks editing for like 12 hours a day, basically using these photos to teach myself Lightroom and Photoshop.
I delivered them 400 finished photos, and lo and behold, they loved them!
I put those up on my website, was off to the races, and now eight years later it's my career and I've done about 800-900 weddings.
I got an insultingly small raise for speaking a 2nd language, and since none of my bosses spoke Spanish, they never figured out that my skill level was comparable to that of a toddler.
All of our Hispanic customers found it adorable.
I worked on an assembly line making oilfield tools, told them I had oilfield experience.
Got sent to an offshore oil rig a few months later.
Turns out your just picking up heavy beep and getting picked on for the first few months anyways.
My very first job "in finance" was as a Data entry clerk for a mortgage lender.
They asked if I could type 70+ wpm, I lied and said I could.
I really could type about 25 wpm.
When I got the offer, I spent everyday till my hire date practicing the beep outta my typing speed.
Got up to about 50 wpm, which was enough to overlook my first two weeks of the job.
By the time I got promoted to underwriting a year later, could easily type 80+wpm, and knew 10 key by touch.
It wasn't on my resume, per se.
But when I was in my early 20s (55 now) I was working for a company doing basically video editing.
They needed someone in the IT department, and the manager knew I had a home PC and asked me if I "knew anything about mainframes."
I lied, said I did, and he transferred me.
He figured out pretty quickly that I was full of beep decided I was still the best candidate, rolled up his sleeves and taught the beep out of me.
Over 30 years later, he's still the best boss I ever had, taught me how to be a husband and a father, taught me how to manage projects large and small and how to manage teams
large and small, still one of my best friends, considers me his second son and I certainly consider him my second father, and I've had an IT career ever since.
Been the Director of IT for 3 separate companies, plus owned my own technical consulting firm, etc.
So, that little lie worked out pretty good, I think.
Not me, but my Dad when he was drafted for WWII.
They asked if he could touch type, he said yes.
I don't think he had even seen a typewriter.
But they put him in intelligence because of his answer and no one ever questioned his typing skills.
Not me, but a guy I've worked with on occasion had gone to school to become an architect.
There was a prestigious firm that he really wanted to work for but they kept rejecting him.
Still, he didn't stop applying and one day they said they had an opening but it wasn't for architecture, rather wayfinding (like designing directional signage etc.
for facilities or even cities), and they asked if he had experience doing this.
He lied and said yes and got the job.
Now the guy is in his 70s, about to retire, and is super well known for his creative and clever wayfinding systems.
I said I was proficient in software I had never used before.
When I got asked for an interview, I learned enough to BS my way through.
When I got the job, I spent the next two weeks learning the beep out of that software.
6 years of using it all day every day, and training other people how to use it, I'd say I did pretty good.
College buddy left after four years or so.
Couple years later we are hanging out and he is a energy commodity analyst.
Wtf?
Lied and said he had a mathematics degree.
They never checked, he did well.
Couple years later he gets a huge promotion to switch to another company.
Tells the truth that time.
They hire on the condition he finishes his degree.
They got busy, told him to drop out.
He is now a C level executive of a smaller energy logistics company.
Not me but I remember seeing someone who clearly did.
I got hired as a contractor for a major brand pretty much everyone has heard of.
They had a lean fiscal year and laid off a large portion of their front office people.
Me and anther person were hired to help fill in some holes left by the people let go.
On our first day we were being shown some basic tasks and how to work with the database.
I had a notebook with me and was taking some notes and asking a lot of questions.
The other person looked like they saw a ghost.
By the time we came back from lunch the other person miraculously got a better job offer and left never to return.
Said I could do pivot tables.
Had a very basic knowledge of Excel.
Got the job and literally never had to do a pivot table 🤣
Picked up a lot just by playing around with Excel too.
I realised that everyone in the company lied in their resume as well
I learned and became good at my job lol
I didn’t technically lie, but I certainly beefed up my CV a got a job that I was way under qualified for.
The guy I was taking over from was a trained accountant and had been doing the job for 16 years, I was 23...
However, I just kept telling myself they wanted some young blood, someone to bring fresh ideas and not be an accountant, so that’s how I played it.
It wasn’t until my first day that I got to begin a handover with the incumbent that I realised, it was at this moment, I beep up.
I was blown away by the first 5 minutes and this role sat across two separate business elements with constant communication with all parties; heads of development, programme managers, project managers et al, I’d
just left a job selling doors... anywho, somehow I managed to blag it for six months and the entire portfolio didn’t collapse.
I eventually got let go when our team amalgamated with another which had mirrored personnel and my oppo was 20 years into the role.
To be honest, when I left, I was relieved.
I don’t stress much but the constant fear of being ‘caught out’ was hard to cope with.
The money however, was excellent.
Anyway, I now sell doors again, who knew?
I was running the network for a pretty big company and the boss hired a temp to help me with a project.
He claimed to have a lot of experience with Cisco routers.
Within 2 days it was obvious that he had no experience at all, didn't even know how to log in to the router.
He was fired by my company and blacklisted by the temp agency.
We hired someone who lied on their resume, it took about 2 weeks but we fired them.
They later applied to a similar position with a different team in the same company and referenced working on my team.
So yeah, they didn't get hired when the obvious reference check was made.
I've also known of 2 cases where people were so bad at their jobs, it prompted someone to look up their degree and find it was fake.
They got fired, and in one case sued.
If you are going to lie, try to not lie big, or about something easily provable.
My uncle did this.
Showed up for a mass interview.
They said they would call people they wanted after.
He didn't get a call, but found out where people were supposed to go the first day.
He just showed up!
I think when he was asked, he just told them that he had been told to come, even though his name wasn't on the list.
He retired from that company about 45yrs later.
This was back in early 90's.
Changed my GPA/grades to get to the minimum required on interim transcript.
Got the job.
Launched my career.
100% worth it.
0% regrets.
They asked me how well I understood theoretical physics.
I said I had a theoretical degree in physics.
They said welcome aboard.
I hired someone like this.
In the interview he claimed to have experience working with all of our equipment and we hired him.
He showed up from Alaska and had absolutely no idea what any of it was or how it worked.
I spent three months training him on the most basic equipment and he couldn't figure it out.
I lied, but spent a lot of my free time in work and became good at it.
Now 10 years later, my boss told me that he know, that I lied :-)
I'm currently flying a commercial 747 towards LAX and have no idea how to land.
Help!
I got really good at excel quickly
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