Here's Why One Man Has Lied On His Resume For The Past 10 Years
You've probably heard or read that at least a million times.
And, generally speaking, it's a great piece of advice. But there is one scenario in which it's actually okay to lie.
The Muse recently published an article that pointed to a blog post titled "My résumé is fiction" by Chris Baglieri.
Baglieri is a Philadelphia-based engineer who starts the post by saying that he updates his résumé with falsehoods at the start of every year.
"I lie, intentionally and boldly: proficient in X; launched Y; led a team and successfully Z'd. I mold it to perfection," Baglieri writes. "I craft it as perfect as an antiquated and dead document can be crafted."
And then, he says, "in its perfect state, wrought with lies, I think about what steps I can take in the coming year to make it less fiction and more non-fiction."
Baglieri explains that he does this because his résumé serves him. "I'm the audience," he says. "When someone other than me requests a copy of it, I lie some more. I serve them a part of my résumé. I take my wonderfully crafted piece of fiction, and, omitting the falsehoods, or more specifically, the falsehoods that remain at that time, serve the requestor a non-fiction form."
He told Business Insider that he's been updating his résumé in this manner for close to 10 years. "What prompted it, truthfully, was taking note of how I treated other people's résumés. I'd be on deck to conduct an interview, glance at this document just before, extract a few talking points from which we could launch into a more meaningful conversation, and never really look at it again," he explains. "When I looked at a résumé in this light, while valuable to me, it seemed to have more value to the author."
He says this strategy, which he recommends to everyone, is the modern day version of "dress for the job you want."
"Craft your résumé to how you want it to look, and then figure out how you're going to make that piece of fiction a piece of non-fiction in a year's time," Baglieri concludes.
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