Worker Describes The Secret To Her Successful 15-Year Career And It Started With Her Resume
Hey, we all gotta start somewhere, right?
Spiderstock / Getty Images Signature | jamiestentaford / Getty Images | Canva Pro With the way the job market is set up it can seem downright impossible to get your career started, especially given the typical job requirements nowadays. It's enough to make you consider just lying through your teeth about your credentials and hoping for the best.
But that's crazy, right? Maybe not, if one woman's career path is any indication. As she shared on Reddit, that's pretty much exactly how she got started, and it has paid off handsomely.
She revealed that the secret to her successful career is that she lied on her resume to get started.
It's an age-old conundrum, of course: How on Earth are you supposed to get your first job and gain experience in your field when every entry-level job wants years of experience?
According to this Redditor, it's very simple: LIE.
"I lied on my resume to land a job I wasn't qualified for," she wrote in her post. "Fifteen years have passed since that fateful decision."
The way those 15 years have shaken out says everything about how absurd the job search process really is and how we should all be approaching it.
She didn't expect lying on her resume to actually work, and when it did, she dove in with both feet and made it work.
From the sounds of her post, she never dreamed that her dishonesty would actually lead anywhere. "The initial interview went smoother than expected," she wrote. "My fabricated qualifications seemed to impress them."
Before she knew it, she was being shuttled along to the next round of interviews, and soon enough, "the job offer came, and I accepted, despite the sinking feeling in my gut."
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That sinking feeling soon turned into a cold, hard reality. "I was drowning in tasks I had no idea how to handle," she said. "Panic set in as I struggled to keep up with the demands of the job."
At that point, it's sink or swim, right? There's not much else you can do than put your nose to the grindstone and figure it out, and that's precisely what she did. She consulted with other professionals online "who generously shared their expertise" and slowly but surely "learned the ropes through trial and error."
Fifteen years later, she's now in a thriving and successful career.
"I persevered, determined to prove myself worthy of the position," she wrote, and over time it paid off. Fifteen years later, "I am now a master at my job, a testament to resilience and hard work."
She now feels differently about the lie she told that started it all. It's still a lie, sure, but it's also "a success story of perseverance and growth."
She admits that a part of her is "disgusted" with herself for "cutting corners," but she's also very proud of herself for what she's accomplished. Hilariously, these days she is a "Senior Fraud Analyst," a laugh-out-loud career to end up on the basis of a lie. "Even [my husband] told me he doesn't believe I really did that," she wrote.
Studies show that almost everyone lies on their resumes, and experts say sometimes it's the right thing to do.
It's probably good that this woman has some semblance of moral shame about her lies, but in this case, should she really be upset about it? First of all, practically everyone does it. A 2023 survey found that 70% of respondents copped to lying on their resumes at one point or another.
And men do it twice as much as women — and there are a lot more men in leadership positions, a notoriously high number of whom don't know what the heck they're doing! At least this lady took it upon herself to develop the expertise she lied about having!
Even HR and recruiting experts say that, in some cases, you SHOULD be lying on your resume, especially when it comes to job titles and descriptions that don't match up to the realities of your job duties, workload, and skills. You should give yourself the credit your boss hasn't, basically.
The bottom line is that none of us created this ridiculous job market where five years of experience are required for every entry-level position, and software — or even AI — are the ones reviewing our resumes instead of a person who can actually parse our qualifications.
When you're immediately penalized — and often disqualified by applicant tracking software — for having even a month-long gap on your resume, you gotta do what you gotta do, especially if you're from a marginalized group that has an uphill employment battle anyway.
Just lie! You're probably more qualified than you think you are, anyway!
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.