With the job market the most competitive it’s been in years, many potential candidates are getting desperate and are starting to falsify their resumes. According to HR expert Hebba Youssef, one in three employees fesses up to lying on their resumes. She encourages job candidates to remain authentic and to be prepared when applying for jobs, especially for people who are applying to entry-level positions.
Youssef’s point underscores the importance of making sure candidates can explain why they are applying to certain positions. That’s when I want to know why you’re applying for this position. Even if it’s just a small, simple thing like, ‘Hey, I really enjoyed your company values,’ I want to know. This insight reveals that understanding a company’s mission can significantly enhance a candidate’s appeal during the hiring process.
Additionally, Youssef is almost able to tell when candidates haven’t done their homework on the companies they are trying to join. She’s noticed an alarming pattern when she interviews prospective employees. Others are being told to simply cheat—to “lie” or “fake it” on their resumes and in interviews. As genuine curiosity about a company goes a long way, she warns against this half-hazard approach that candidates should avoid, according to Miranda.
Youssef highlights the importance of skills developed by having held other jobs before, especially in terms of customer service and working with a team. She said you get a lot of valuable perspective from these roles that candidates can build off in subsequent interviews. You need to be able to tell the story about what your work has accomplished,” Youssef tells you. He even recommends that candidates come armed with stories that illustrate their unique value add.
In fact, Youssef gets more worried when candidates have a hard time explaining their experiences. When they aren’t able to give very specific examples, that should be a red flag. “If you can’t give me an example and explain its impact, that’s a little bit of a red flag to me,” she noted. This solidifies her conviction that readability and transparency come first, especially in this increasingly competitive career space.
Youssef has compassion for applicants who are having to make these difficult decisions. As he puts it, “The world is much too costly for us to be unemployed.” Even with this realization, she argues that transparency is beneficial for candidates and employers.
Finally, we want to see candidates make the case between their own values or life experiences and the positions they’re running for. She recommends that when it comes to a company, do your homework. Whether through connecting your findings to the things that you care most about, connect to your research, or your lived experience — that’s where it gets really powerful. This type of advance planning puts the talent up on display for an impressively competitive field. More importantly, it emphasizes their demonstrated deep interest in the prospective employer.