Winning Resumes: When it’s Okay to Bend the Truth

When applyingfor jobs, your resume is your weapon of first resort. It has one primarypurpose: to get you an interview. As such, it needs to present you to the worldin the best possible light. Occasionally, this means you need to bend the trutha little.

Now, before weget down to details, let me make myself clear: it is NEVER okay to tellstraight out lies on your resume. DO NOT create jobs or positions you neverhad. DO NOT manufacture qualifications you have not earned. DO NOT change datesto hide awkward gaps in your work history. Lies are lies and eventually willbring you unstuck. And don’t kid yourself: after years of reading resumes, Ican assure you that any good recruiter can spot a piece of CV fiction from agood distance.

That’s theparental lecture out of the way. What about ways you CAN, legitimately, bendthe truth on your resume to improve your chances of landing an interview forthe job?

Don’t tellthem your age!There is noreason to provide your age or date of birth on your resume, particularly if youare concerned that it might work against you. Simply leave it off. If theyreally want to know how old you are, they can deduce it from your career andeducation background anyway. But you want those things to be read before such aconclusion is drawn. You don’t want (and this does happen) the recruiter todiscard your resume without reading it simply because they see your date ofbirth as 1962 on the first page.

The sameapplies here to any other thing you fear might cause you to be discriminatedagainst: gender (if you have a non-gender specific name), disabilities, ethnicorigin and so on.

Clean up yourposition titles! Ever had oneof those wonderful modern job titles that hardly fit on to a business card? Youknow the ones: Senior Client Satisfaction & Outcomes Manager, PeopleCapital Executive Personal Attendant, Vice President: Housekeeping and BathroomHygiene. These might make you look grand to your clients, but they make nosense to people trying to learn about your past.

So simplifythem: Customer Service Manager, Human Resources Assistant, Cleaner.

Provided youare not presenting yourself as something you are not - providing your dutiesare consistent with the more ‘traditional’ title used on your resume - there isabsolutely nothing wrong with this sort of truth bending. You are simply makingyour background clearer and, as a bonus, more database friendly.

Leave offreasons for leaving! There aremixed views on this one, but in my experience it is cleaner not to state thereasons you left your previous jobs. There are only really two reasons forleaving a job: because you wanted a change, or because you were asked to leave.In these heady days of financial crisis and uncertainty, both are perfectlyvalid. And both are best discussed at interview, so let them wait until then.

All of theseguidelines apply as much to application letters as they do to resumes. And, ofcourse, feel free to ignore them - especially if to do so would be to paint youin a negative light. If youth is likely to be important, and you are youthful,then there is no problem leaving your age in.

David James Brewster, is a writer for Classifind.com.au. Classifind.com.au is Australia's largest search engine specialising in jobs. Hundreds of thousands of job listings from major Australian job boards are brought together in one place, reducing search time.