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SALT LAKE CITY — The act of lying on a resume is something that can put you in serious hot water at work. Just ask former Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson, who resigned his position Sunday after he was caught in a lie on his resume.
But how frequently does resume "fibbing" occur? It happens more than you might think, and right here in Utah.
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Yahoo's dysfunctional turnaround efforts have morphed into a Silicon Valley soap opera, one that has taken another strange twist with the Internet company's ousting of CEO Scott Thompson just four months after his arrival.KSL News posed the question to several people Tuesday: Have you lied on your resume, or do you know someone who has? Not surprisingly, it's a topic most people don't want to talk openly about. But we found a couple who would, even if only under the promise of anonymity.
A woman who hires for a local small business says an employee she recently hired turned out to be a convicted felon — and it wasn't some sort of misunderstanding.
"She wrote straight out: ‘No felonies.' And she got the job and everything," the businesswoman said. "She had been working for us and was a really good employee."
In addition to a drug arrest, employers discovered the woman had been convicted of several thefts, including car theft.
#poll
Lying about your criminal history is one thing; that can be proven with a simple Internet search. But what about embellishments or slight tweaks of the truth? According to Forbes.com, about 40 percent of people admit to having, at one time, lied on their resume.
We found another example in Utah's architecture industry. Generally, an architects have college degrees — that is unless you are friends with a man who spoke with KSL.
Also wishing to remain anonymous, the man said he had a friend who dropped out of Salt Lake Community College. That friend, he says, lied on his resume and is now a working architect.
"I think it was his working of the systems enough to convince them and present himself," the man told KSL, citing the reason he believed his friend got hired.
According to Forbes, the most common resume fibs are lying about your college degree, lying about your final GPA, and lying about your previous salary.
