As I have grown older, I have realized dead-honesty is a false ideal to live by, especially when it comes to being rewarded in the capitalistic world. I know someone who reached executive level position in a major company and all of his career progress can be traced back to lying on his resume about a NASA internship he never got, which he conveniently purged later from everywhere.

I wouldn’t go that far, but I think it’s perfectly fine to reverse-engineer the interview game and reap the rewards. There’s no reason to feel guilty about it.

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chatmasta 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The candidate may have had more success if he saved the honesty for after he solved the riddle he claimed he already knew how to solve.

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artisinal 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I learned that if you put

“2015 - 2020 / University X, Computer Science”

on your resume, nobody asks if you actually graduated.

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ButlerianJihad 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Because they know that if you had graduated, you would have, at every turn, mentioned the name and date of your degree, instead!

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artisinal 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

In my country “Computer Science” would be your degree. Your graduation date also isn’t mentioned, just the year.

	▲	ButlerianJihad 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		"Academic degrees" are, by definition, named something as categories. In your country do they not have the concept of a "bachelors" degree, or "associate" degree or "masters" or "doctorate"? B.A., B.S., A.S.? Other popular categories could include "fine arts", "PhD", etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_degree Anyone putting letters after their name, i.e. postnominals, has graduated and obtained a degree. Sometimes they put the field of study but sometimes you will just see someone on LinkedIn as, "Jane Smith, MA". Could probably write something like you were in the B.A. track of your field of study. People will write "pursuing graduate degree" or "postdoc" or suchlike. But that is not what GP wrote. GP wrote a field of study; while "Computer Science" describes degree programs, it is undifferentiated, and wouldn't be considered a "degree" by the skeptical reader of CVs.

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gambiting 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Eh? Would you? I have two degrees and I never mentioned exactly what they are on my CVs, literally just like above - "2010-2014 Computer Science at University X". I've reviewed countless CVs when I was a hiring manager for a few years too, and I don't really recall if people wrote down what they got, nor was it ever relevant for any position outside of intern ones.

	▲	ButlerianJihad an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Whatever the reason for not asking that question, it would be a terrible question to ask an interviewee in that situation. "Did you actually graduate from this place?" It would be the equivalent of asking "did you lie on your CV?" If I wrote a CV and they began asking me questions that were answered by my CV, I would read that as skepticism. Conversely, perhaps the interviewers are so good that they only ask questions where they already know the answers, in that regard. Neither of you have mentioned the qualifications of the jobs you sought. Perhaps those companies did not require or factor-in the degrees of candidates. Perhaps they can open up LinkedIn and see whether or not you graduated. Perhaps they just called their sorority sister at the Registrar for an informal reminiscence about the weather in 2021. I can understand if you want to put the year-range that you attended college. Perhaps you want to prove you graduated in 4 years, rather than taking 6. There are more people who are unwilling to put any year at all to their education, lest someone figure out that they are over 40. The bottom line is that if you ask 5 people about résumé building and job interviews, you'll hear 6 opinions on what is right, what is wrong, what is legal, etc. There is plenty of bad advice, and narrow opinions, mine included.

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Aurornis 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> and all of his career progress can be traced back to lying on his resume about a NASA internship he never got, which he conveniently purged later from everywhere

I don't like when people get ahead by lying either, but nobody cares about your internship at the executive level. That one lie helped with the first job, but it doesn't explain all of the person's success.

> There’s no reason to feel guilty about it.

Even if we ignore guilt, there's a subtle problem that happens when you tell a lie to get a job: You have to forever hope that nobody checks it, that no contradictory evidence accidentally shows up, and that it never becomes a point of contention.

I've participated in a lot of interviews where candidates never expected us to check claims they made. It's interesting to see the entire hiring panel's view of a candidate change when someone discovers they lied about something. Everything else comes into question.

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bigstrat2003 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I disagree strongly. Yes, in terms of benefit to yourself honesty may not pay off, but that's not why you should do it. You should be honest (and I try to be honest) because it's shameful to be a deceitful person. Virtue actually matters, it's not all about getting ahead materially.

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anal_reactor 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This is one of the reasons why I want to exit the workforce and retire ASAP. I just cannot function in an environment where ignoring the elephant in the room is the expected behavior. I am a dead-honest guy and I've surrounded myself with friends who appreciate this trait but they were really hard to find.