Lying on a CV: Worth the Risk? Repercussions of a Fake CV

Can you lie on your CV about grades or work experience? This article isn’t here to moralise or make you feel bad—far from it. It’s here for an unbiased take on whether lying on a CV is a risk worth taking.

Spoiler: it really isn’t, not by any stretch of the imagination. The short of it is that you stand to gain little to nothing and stand to lose a lot—including things you don’t even have or cherish yet. There are better ways to impress, just check out the CV below, and read on for the full story.

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An example of not lying on a CV

1. Lying on your CV

If you’re here, it means that you’re considering lying on your CV or you’ve done so already. Or maybe not lying, exactly, but bending the truth, a little. And it’s not you who’s done it but a friend who’s thinking they might have, accidentally. Let’s be real—it is lying and lying is generally dishonest.

But that’s certainly not the only reason not to lie on your CV. Lying on a CV is just a bad idea all round. We’ll get into the cost versus benefit analysis in a second, but first you should know that there are a million ways to get caught-out lying on your CV. It mightn’t always seem like it, though.

Ways you could get caught lying on a CV:

• The recruiter simply starts calling around (they do that).
• Your application gets passed through a service that verifies university degrees listed in your CV (they’re pretty common).
• The recruiter jumps on your Facebook, LinkedIn or Google and something jumps out at them (happens quite often).
• Your story doesn’t add up—what seemed like a fool-proof lie to you was an obvious red flag to someone else (the things we don’t that we don’t know).
• You’re put to the test—‘You’re an advanced Excel user? Great, this’ll be a cinch for you’.
• You slip up somehow—most people aren’t Don Draper and even Don Draper slipped up.

And say you get the job, there a million other ways things could go badly. Just for example, imagine HR wants to add you to the company website, and they need a quick bio, so they start googling. And the consequences are much, much worse if you’re found out after having got the job. More on that below.

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2. What you stand to gain

The most common things people lie about on their CVs don’t actually improve their chances of getting a job very much. Retouching a former job title, exaggerating education levels or grades, creeping job end and start dates closer together to close over an employment gap—these aren’t make-or-break changes.

Requirements like prior experience or academic qualifications are either ‘nice-to-haves’ and don’t matter in the end, or they’re ‘must-haves’ and will be checked out thoroughly before a contract is signed. Piling on fake CV ‘nice-to-haves’ won’t do much good. Adding ‘must-haves’ will, but you’ll be caught.

Then there are the more rare and extreme examples of lying on a CV: making qualifications, companies, and accolades up. This actually could get you an interview. If you’re very good it might even get you the job, and that would be a disaster. Luckily, you’ll be probably be exposed at the interview stage.

3. What you stand to lose

Lying on your CV, even little, so-called white lies on your CV, can end up being a very costly mistake. If your lie is obvious and easily proven to be a lie, your CV will be rejected immediately and you could get blacklisted. The same holds true if you make it as far as the interview stage.

If you do make it that far then you’ve just irritated that many more people, and wasted so much more of their time. They’ll be more motivated to warn other companies, or their subsidiaries. This is all not to mention the embarrassment surrounding the whole situation. Being caught in a lie is never fun.

If you do get the job, then the stakes get infinitely higher. You’re likely to be dismissed immediately—the company would have no choice, no matter how well-liked you’d become and how much you liked your job. You’d be dismissed for dishonesty, and that’s the label that follows you around.

If the things you lied about on your CV meant that you were unqualified for the position, the company might see you prosecuted for fraud. Again, they might have to: you’d have put them at risk of legal action themselves. If it turns out that you’re dangerously underqualified, then you could face jail time.

4. Is it illegal to lie on your CV?

Yes, lying on a CV in the UK is illegal. If the CV you use to get a job is even partially fabricated, then you could be said to have obtained your job by fraudulent means, and fraud is very much a crime that carries hefty penalties. 

Being convicted of fraud doesn’t sound like a great time at the best of times, but if your CV untruths have put you in a position of responsibility for children or vulnerable people, then things can really get nasty. This could leave you serving prison time and essentially being marked for life.

You can expect legal consequences from the harsher end of the spectrum if your lying on your CV comes out because something bad happened and it turned out you shouldn’t have been working in that capacity in the first place. You can very much expect to be hung out to dry by your employer.

And they’d have to do it, or face the brunt of consequences that weren’t their doing. This is a common theme in the horror stories of white lies on a CV (and outright fraud, to be fair) spiralling into prison sentences: organisations get backed into a corner and lash out to protect their interests.

7. What to do instead of lying on a CV

Have another look at the CV near the beginning of this article. See what the CV includes and notice that it’s based around measurable (even if sometimes estimated) achievements. It’s packed full of actions and the benefits that those actions brought to the given employer. A few quantified and verifiable bullet points will do wonders.

Be realistic with how you calculate or estimate these achievements, though. You don’t lie by accident. Be ready to describe how you arrived at the numbers in your CV. Even a rough estimate can and should be justifiable.

The other major way you can avoid feeling like you have to lie on your CV is to gain the experience or develop professional skills you lack. Grades and degrees are almost always less important than experience, so focus on that. Feel you’re management material? Start taking on the responsibilities of a manager. Need to improve your skills? Go to Udemy or LinkedIn Learning and take a course. Many of those are free and don’t take up much time

In many situations that will be worth more than a degree or a job title. This isn’t a quick fix but it’s a tried and tested method for advancing through your career and truly excelling at what you do, and all with a clean conscience. 

You don’t have to be a CV writing expert. In the LiveCareer CV builder you’ll find ready-made content for every industry and position, which you can then add with a single click.

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I hope this article has succeeded in showing you that lying on a CV is usually a no-win scenario. It just doesn’t work, and the risk is nothing to be sneezed at. Please leave your questions, comments, feedback and (err, anonymous) experiences below. Have you ever submitted a fake CV? Have you lied about your experience or grades?

How we review the content at LiveCareer

Our editorial team has reviewed this article for compliance with Livecareer’s editorial guidelines. It’s to ensure that our expert advice and recommendations are consistent across all our career guides and align with current CV and cover letter writing standards and trends. We’re trusted by over 10 million job seekers, supporting them on their way to finding their dream job. Each article is preceded by research and scrutiny to ensure our content responds to current market trends and demand.