Compilation of Resume Offenses

July 24th, 2013

It never occurred to me to lie on a resume, but I have seen people do it. Here's a short compilation of some of these offenses:

• "Knows PHPUnit"
  In reality: hasn't read the documentation yet.
• "Implemented an API"
  In reality: witnessed someone implementing an API.
• "Organizer of a conference"
  In reality: was assigned a few easy tasks to see if he was ready to become an organizer, failed or forgot the tasks, never made it into the team.
• "Coached developers"
  In reality: was coached.
• "Built a cloud management software"
  In reality: had no functional code after nearly a year; another developer built the software instead.
• "Built a site in two phases"
  In reality: failed the project; had to redo it for free.

If you have any more examples, please add them in the comments. Here are the rules: avoid naming people or companies, avoid judging the skill level as that is always subjective and debatable, only say things that you know for a fact rather than heard from untrusted sources.

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