Just a quick update to the Oratoria today, and the message is one I think our patron saint, Philip Neri, would condone:
It's never ok to embellish your resume.
Many months ago, a potential client contacted me about a resume update. This person was between jobs and career fields, so a couple different resumes would be on order, and because I could write a resume in my sleep, it would have been an easy way for me to pay the rent.
Because there were so many potential changes needed to this person's existing resumes, I offered to do a prospectus of sorts before being officially hired. Which was a mistake. No one should work for free, but I thought it seemed like pretty straightforward changes were needed, and I didn't mind explaining what I planned to do. I might have wanted the same thing, were I in this person's position.
I should have suspected from the beginning that things weren't quite right with the resume. The client (or, actually, potential client) wanted to know if it was ok to list a job title that was slightly different than the job title given to them (NB: I'm using the plural pronoun here to avoid identifying the gender of the client) by the employer. After all, they told me, they'd actually done more than the job title implied.
In other words, the client wanted to lie on their resume. No two ways about it: something like that is a straight-up lie, in this genre.
There were a few other trouble spots: the client was terminated from a job because of a falling out with an employer. Ok, but it's not alright to suggest that the job did or didn't last longer than it actually did to suggest that the falling out happened sooner or later. It's also not okay to say that you had responsibilities on the job that your former employer wouldn't corroborate should your prospective employer call to inquire about them. None of these things are okay.
So, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when the prospective client said to me, "I'm going to have someone in my field edit my resume. I disagreed with what you had to say about it." At first, I was disappointed and a little hurt. But then I remembered that I'd done the right thing. It's not okay to lie on your resumes, friends, and it's doubly not-ok to ask a professional writer to lie on your resume for you.
In the end, I hope that person heard from other people, too, that it's not okay to fudge the details of a resume. Not only is it dishonest, it puts you at risk. In other words, you can take the altruistic angle, or you can take the pragmatic angle; both lead you back to the conclusion that it's just not okay to embellish your resume.
You've been warned!