The lighter side: Top CV lies

Upon receiving a stack of CVs to review if you were to divide in half and add a bit more to one pile that would be the amount of resumes that could contain lies.
That’s according to a survey of more than 23,000 businesses by career matching website OneShift. It found more than 56% had experienced staff lying on their CV.

OneShift CEO Genevieve George told News Corporation dishonesty was surprisingly common.

"People do it because they want to impress and tick all the boxes. It's about getting the interview and once they're in the door they sell themselves on personality, but they feel they have to over-impress to get past that first barrier," she told the news site.

According to the survey here are the seven most common things people lie about in their CVS:

• Dates of employment
• Job titles
• Skills and accomplishments
• Salary
• Education
• Responsibilities
• References

It may pay to take particular interest in education, too, as another survey carried out by careers information website Graduate Prospects found that 46% of CV lies related to grade inflation.   The results showed graduates were declaring a higher class of degree than what they actually achieved and 28% of incidents saw grads claim to have completed a course they partly finished. Furthermore, 15% claimed to have completed a degree that they hadn’t and 11% changed the subject of their qualifications to suit a particular job’s requirements.