How Much of Your Resume and Cover Letter is Discounted?
Despite the time you’ve put into creating a masterpiece of a resume and cover letter, your best efforts are being discounted by human resources managers. Why? Well the answer rests in the fact most HR people and hiring managers have encountered so many people that exaggerate on their resume and cover letters that they will discount each and every resume and cover letter that they read.
How much do Human Resources managers and hiring managers discount each resume and cover letter? Based on recent surveys up to 25%! So if you’re being a straight shooter and not exaggerating ANYTHING in the least, then you’ve just given yourself a serious handicap against your competition for the job.
“Hire Right” did a study that showed how prevalent resume fraud is. The company’s figures show that 80% of all resumes and cover letters are misleading, 20% include fraudulent mentions of certification or degrees, 30% show changed employment dates, 40% have inflated salary claims, 30% have inaccurate job descriptions, 25% list companies that no longer exist, and 27% give bogus references
In case you’re curious about which industries have the largest amount of lies and exaggeration, hospitality, transportation and IT had the highest rates of falsified resumes, while the public sector had the lowest.
Have you lied or exaggerated on your resume? If so how much? Did you get away with it? Or are you someone that was 100% honest on your resume an got penalized for it?
