So, you know that job application struggle? Turns out, some folks out there are turning it into an art form. We stumbled upon a goldmine of stories where people spilled the beans about times they landed jobs after flexing their creative muscles on their resumes and experiences. While honesty is usually the best policy, these job seekers took a detour down the imagination lane and somehow landed on their feet. Trust us, these tales are too good not to share.
I used to work in a petrol station. And a new owner took over. He brought in a new computer to do his accounting and I helped him carry it from his car. So on my C.V. I proudly listed my achievements as “assisted with the installation of the back office system”. I now head up the IT department for a large company.
When I was offered a position in a grooming salon as a bather (coming from a kennel attendant), I was asked if I could do nail trims. An essential part of the job. I lied and said yes because I wanted it so badly.
I absolutely sucked at it for a month, but after trimming a couple hundred nails a day you get good at it fast.
So my career went from a volunteer at the zoo -> kennel attendant -> bather -> groomer -> veterinary practice groomer -> business owner
Last year I started my own mobile grooming salon and it’s been amazing!
I needed more work experience so I said I worked at an animal shelter when I was actually only a volunteer. I did most of the jobs an actual employee would do at the shelter, I just wasn’t paid for it. It helped get me my first job and second. Neither job had anything to do with animals or anything similar, I just need to have some form of experience in something to make it look good. I may have also called myself a child caregiver as a fancy way to say, babysitter.
My friend was working at a burger bar, saw an advert for an airplane marshall and he decided to shoot his shot, blatantly lying he had experience. He gets the job and makes friends with an airline pilot who takes a liking to him. The pilot trained him on his personal smaller airplane before giving him the low down to get into airline pilot school. My friend went from burger bar to airline pilot captain. Note, if I ever heard he was flying the plane, I would run off before the engine started.
A friend submitted a fake resume for some bank auditing company because one of his friends already worked there and they needed additional people. Now he makes 300k a year working like 3 days a week. I could have done it too but I still had 6 months left of college smh.
Well, I wanted to be a photographer, but didn’t have any people I could shoot. I was in a new town, knew nobody, and had zero experience. So I put out ads for free engagement photos from a “professional photographer who was switching fields.” I figured, what could the harm be if it was free…if they hated the photos, they could just pay someone for a real session.
So I actually get a couple to respond, I show up to the shoot, and they’re BOTH drop-dead gorgeous. And I realize I’ll never get another chance like this again. So I shot EVERYTHING. I think in a 2-hour shoot, I ended up with something like 12,000 photos on 6 SD cards. I was so concerned about focus, that I would literally put the camera on burst mode, and shoot off like 30 photos as I manually turned the focus ring through its full arc so that at least one of them would be in focus. I was shooting from in the ocean, climbing cliffs, full sniper mode in the sand…I was relentless.
Then I spent 3 straight weeks editing for like 12 hours a day, basically using these photos to teach myself Lightroom and Photoshop. I delivered them 400 finished photos, and lo and behold, they loved them! I put those up on my website, was off to the races, and now eight years later it’s my career and I’ve done about 800-900 weddings.
I’ve lied in both directions in the last 2 years. No one was responding to my resume so I put that I have a BA on it and suddenly the phone started ringing. I got hired by a temp agency after that and no one has ever checked. I also recently lied and said I had next to NO work history in order to get an entry-level job because no one would hire me for the only jobs available due to being overqualified. Honestly, I AM over qualified to bag groceries but sh*t, I need to f*cking eat.
I did a phone interview at a company I’d interned at. One of the VPs wanted to know what my writing experience was like. I told her not to worry, I had worked for the college newspaper for two years! She offered me a job the next day.
I managed the advertisements and never submitted anything to be published. It was a sales job anyway, get out of here with that crap question.
Not me, but a friend named Mike who’s a teacher. Mike was struggling to find a teaching job on his school board, so he convinced a successful teacher friend of his to help with Mike’s resume. His successful friend forwarded a copy of his resume to Mike, with the intention that Mike could use the formatting, and learn the kind of teacher-speak that he used to get a job. Well, Mike simply changes the name at the top of the resume to his own and saves the file. He ends up getting a ton of interviews because a successful friend had a killer set of experiences and degrees. One of the interviewers asks ‘who is a successful Friend? His name is on the file name of your resume.” Mike backpedals, saying that he only used a successful friend’s resume formatting, and Mike gets the job.
This was about 4 years ago, and Mike is still going strong (at hating everything about teaching, but that’s for a different thread).
My grandfather lied about being a nuclear specialist in the Air Force to get a job at a civilian reactor. He was actually a radar tech. He worked there for 14 years and it never melted down so I guess it worked out just fine.
Not me, but my Dad when he was drafted for WWII. They asked if he could touch type, and he said yes. I don’t think he had even seen a typewriter. But they put him in intelligence because of his answer and no one ever questioned his typing skills.
It wasn’t on my resume, per se. But when I was in my early 20s (55 now) I was working for a company doing basically video editing. They needed someone in the IT department, and the manager knew I had a home PC and asked me if I “knew anything about mainframes.”
I lied, said I did, and he transferred me. He figured out pretty quickly that I was full of crap, decided I was still the best candidate, rolled up his sleeves, and taught the crap out of me. Over 30 years later, he’s still the best boss I ever had, taught me how to be a husband and a father, taught me how to manage projects large and small, and how to manage teams large and small, and still one of my best friends, considers me his second son and I certainly consider him my second father, and I’ve had an IT career ever since.
Been the Director of IT for 3 separate companies, plus owned my own technical consulting firm, etc.
So, that little lie worked out pretty well, I think.
I applied for a job as a truck driver. The only experience I had was in a vehicle the size of a small U-Haul, delivering for a Vietnam veterans fundraising organization.
Almost 18 years later, I’m still behind the wheel for the same company, and I’ve gotten my commercial driver’s license.
I’m an architect, and I lied on my resume and said I was excellent at using certain BIM software. I did know how to use it, but only for the basics, I figured with normal use and with my knowledge of other similar software I would pick up the rest. Turns out that part of my job was going to be training one of the firm’s directors on how to use this BIM software.
I had a month before I was going to start working for the new firm, so I spent all my free time that entire month doing a ton of tutorials to learn enough so that I could teach this director.
Turned out the director was completely computer illiterate, he was still drawing his plans and sections by hand and then having a tech draw them up in Autocad. He got frustrated and quit (trying to learn the software, not the firm) after a few lessons, and I managed to get away with that lie.
I have on my resume that I won an award my company gave out. Which is true…I did win the award…but only because I was on a project team that I was added to about halfway through the project & my part was super minimal. Got a $500 bonus for it, though.
I didn’t necessarily lie on my resume, but I did lie about getting the job. I went to apply at a movie theater when I was like 17, and the manager offered me an interview right then and there. The next day, I got a work permit from my school. Went back to the movie theater and talked to a different manager and told her I got hired yesterday and they had to sign this stuff. I started a couple of days later.
According to my resume, I worked as a Zumba instructor for a summer. I thought it would be a harmless, interesting detail until I was asked to dance over a Skype interview.
I said I spoke Spanish. They never asked about the fluent part of the interview. They asked how long I had been speaking and I said since 7th grade (which is technically true because that’s when I took my first class). And, then I had kitchen jobs all through high school and university. So, I spoke really good Kitchen Spanish —which is to say I could order food and tell the cooks how to prepare it, and generally insult their brothers and sexually proposition their sisters, even if not strictly grammatically correct.
So, I got hired. We were a graphic design house in the early 90s in Texas and we had a single Mexican account.
Hey rhymes_with_chicken! These guys don’t speak English. Can you talk to them please? [hands me phone.]
uh, sure. [oh shoot] No problem… Bueno!
…[inaudible to my coworkers and unintelligible to me]
Ahhhh…sí sí
[more conversation I don’t understand]
Bien, Bien…¿con permisso? [very quickly, so as to sound comfortable speaking] Ah…yo tengo solo pequeño español del cocina a la restaurante. No intiendo nada de este conversacion.
[to my coworkers who were standing there watching me] hey guys. Looks like this will take a while. You want me to just let you know what they say?
sure
Somehow I managed to get out of the room unscathed and un-exposed. But, I also never got another Spanish call. Maybe they knew and just liked my dazzling personality shrug
A couple of years ago, I was filling out a resume for a lab tech job on some job board. It had a pop-up that required you to answer some questions before sending the application, basic stuff like “Are you at least 18,” etc. It was pretty obviously a questionnaire to avoid unqualified candidates out before the resume was looked at by a human.
The last question was, “Do you have prior experience in chemistry?” I didn’t, but checked the box anyway. I figured it was the only way to get a human being to look at my resume, and if they called me out on it in the interview, I’d own up to lying. Worst case scenario, I’m back where I started.
I get to the interview, and it’s a panel interview in front of three PhD chemists. They asked me about my specific chemistry experience, specifically Ochem, which is what they cared about. Given that the sciences tend to have some friendly competition, I figured I’d play to my audience. I said, “Well, I don’t have any, but I have a degree in physics and in my opinion, that’s even better so really you guys are getting a deal.”
They loved my answer and said that even though I wasn’t strictly qualified, they thought I’d be a great “culture fit.” I’ve been working there as a chemist for a little over two years. Still don’t know crap about organic chemistry.
I lied about graduating with an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School on my resume and applying for an entry-level coordinator position at a Fortune 500 company.
I never even graduated with my bachelor’s.
Pretty much had nothing to lose, wasn’t having much luck getting interviews at jobs, and figured screw it why not.
They offered me the position a week later, which I was not prepared for. I guess during their background check, they contacted some of my previous employers, but never followed through on checking my education credentials, assuming I wouldn’t lie about something as prestigious as getting a master’s degree at an Ivy League school.
I totally freaked out.
Did extensive research on M.B.A programs at Harvard, the school, the area, professors at the school, before I showed up for my first day of work at the company.
Thankfully no one I worked directly with actually attended Harvard, and I was able to keep the lie going, which didn’t really come up that often in conversation at work.
That was 12 years ago.
Now I’m a VP of Client Services at the company, and if anyone ever found out my professional life would be ruined.
My wife is the only person who knows it’s a complete lie, but for the sake of erring on the side of caution, my children in middle school are under the impression I went there for school.
I even have a fake degree hanging up in my study at home behind my desk.
I’m not trying to humblebrag or brag or anything but I am fairly fast But if I put 110 wpm on my resume I get “Nah! There’s no way you can type that fast!” For some reason, if I say I type 95 wpm people are like “WOW that’s cool you can type so fast!”
I lied about being an inventory manager for my previous club when I applied for a job at a new nightclub that had just opened up (My only previous experience was barbacking)
Even faked an email from my previous boss confirming it.
I got the job and did amazing at it, everyone loved me… but was fired 6 months later because I discovered that the AzBar spouts were pouring 10% too much on the rail bottles, costing the club about 5 grand a week. Never mind the Hennessy XO pouring doubles on every pour.
I spent an entire week recalibrating every station in the club (there were about 40) and then went and explained to the boss what I had done, and why since I’d just worked about 70 hours in the past week fixing the stations, I was going to take a week off. I mentioned that if I had done it right they wouldn’t have any missing booze at the end of the week.
When I came back, they took me aside and explained that I was being let go, because during the week I was gone, it was the first week they weren’t missing about 5 grand worth of alcohol, so I must have been stealing it.
I was applying with a friend for a job at a sneaker store that rhymes with “Doot Jocker” and the manager interviewed us about why we wanted to work there. My response was “I love shoes….” Guy took one look down at my janky Chuck Taylor and the look on his face pretty much just said “riiiiiight”. I got hired anyway and it was a fun job, stayed more because of the coworkers than the work environment which went downhill once managers started changing.
I used to do contract work on aircraft. Normally each contract lasted a couple of months or so, and I would move to another place and do some completely different work.
So one time, a contract ended unexpectedly at short notice after just a couple of weeks, and I needed something else fast. I phoned around a few agencies and not much was done, but one agent had a job. The downside, they had expressly said they needed experience in a certain type of connector, that I never had heard of.
I had worked on a lot of different aircraft, with a whole bunch of different equipment, and even if the manufacturer/standard was different, ultimately they were all pretty similar, so naturally I said I was good with them, and started the next day. I arrived on site, got a 5-minute walk round where the supervisor showed me the toilets and fire escapes, verified I knew the connectors (uh-oh – but I said I did again), and told me how a lot of people had been there and been fired quickly because they did not know them.
The thing was, these things turned out to be NOT like anything I had come across before. I just looked at the pack they came in and tried to work out how it all went together and just drew total blanks.
Plan B- I can install the cables, leave the connectors until last, and buy some time. That was OK for a couple of days, but by then I had started several tasks, got them 80% complete and not finished. I was building up a decent collection of parts, and my organizational skills were not the best, so I was looking for another quick exit.
Then I got talking to one of the other guys on the job. he was young, and it turned out he had finished his apprenticeship with this company, never got taken on, and had sat out of work for 18 months waiting for a contract opening there. He knew nothing about how the aircraft contracting industry worked, but he knew those connectors like the back of his hand!
So a deal was struck – he gave me a quick lesson on the connectors, loaned me the tools I needed to build them, and in return I loaned him my address book full of contacts of agents and contracting companies he could call for more work when this job finished.
It was a stressful few days to that point, but fine from then on!
I said I knew sign language ( To communicate with deaf people). It was going just fine until a deaf person walked into the store where I was working… I tried to explain to my boss that I knew an older version of the sign language.
I worked on an assembly line making oilfield tools and told them I had oilfield experience. Got sent to an offshore oil rig a few months later. Turns out you’re just picking up heavy crap and getting picked on for the first few months anyways.
Not me but I remember seeing someone who clearly did.
I got hired as a contractor for a major brand that pretty much everyone has heard of. They had a lean fiscal year and laid off a large portion of their front office people. I and another person were hired to help fill in some holes left by the people let go.
On our first day, we were shown some basic tasks and how to work with the database. I had a notebook with me and was taking some notes and asking a lot of questions. The other person looked like they saw a ghost. By the time we came back from lunch, the other person miraculously got a better job offer and left never to return.
Have a relative who dropped out of high school at 18. Wanted to be a chef. He bounced around from college dining halls to frat houses to small golf courses for a while. Got his big break by creating a huge fake life profile. It talked about his time spent in Europe, and his international business life before giving it up to follow his dream of being a chef.
It talks about his degrees from multiple prestigious universities, experience at other establishments, etc. Landed him the head chef job at a very very very high-end place. Couple Hundred dollar evening type of high-end. They published an article in the paper about how our local place was getting such an esteemed chef and everything. It was all total crap. Someone just didn’t check up on him.
A year later the establishment doubled its sales and was even in a good magazine as one of the biggest runarounds of the year. The thing is that he’s a great cook he just never followed through for real.
I had no clue how to detail cars, but filed for a business license and started advertising mobile detailing. In the first car I did, I used a spray bottle with a wipedown solution to wash it and I didn’t have money for a vacuum so I LITERALLY HANDPICKED THE CARPETS inside. I did three cars that day in three hours for a total of $120. I was making about that after taxes for an eight-hour day at the time. That was the moment I decided to quit my job.
I figured things out really fast while reinvesting every penny for the next three years. It’s been six years since that first car now and I have a 1500 sq foot shop in the wealthiest part of the entire metro area, a loyal client base, and we work exclusively on high-end cars. The business generates over a quarter million dollars a year in gross revenue, I am fortunate to have been able to hire my much younger brother at a livable wage and give him opportunities and learning experiences that very few people are ever afforded. I now manage the Financials and oversee the function of the business while also working for the county, while my brother runs the daily operations (which he does very well).
Listed puzzles as my hobby for a finance job as A newbie, didn’t have a long resume. I just winged it at the job. Didn’t go out and buy any puzzles. If anyone asked I said I did 1000-piece scenic ones. Managed to pull it off.
I remember the first time I ever lied to get a job as a tree planter. I was with a buddy who was an old baller (tree planter expert), so I could just stay off the radar if I was always planting with him. Honestly, most people probably knew I was a rookie, but nobody called me on it, cause I’m a pretty happy fella and get along with everybody!
So I left that job with the knowledge that lying on my resume could actually help me! The next job I got was as a forklift operator at a warehouse. I had only ever used a pallet jack before. I figured, how hard can it be to use a forklift?
Well, guess what? It’s not that hard! I told them I had never used this particular type of forklift before, they showed me what the buttons did, and I hopped up and drove the thing. It was easy. Nobody was the wiser.
Fast forward about 5 years, and I’m now working as a welder. I had only ever done what is called Stick and MIG welding, and they are both very basic. I go in for an interview at a place that wants a TIG welder, a much more complicated type of welding. I had never done it and knew pretty much nothing about it.
So I showed up and did the interview, “Yes, yes, of course, I have experience with TIG welding. Of course, I’ll do some for you, but it’s been a while and they might not be the prettiest welds”
As I walked into the shop, I keenly watched what people were doing. I was handed a TIG gun and a pedal. I knew the basics of welding, electrode, and filler, so I was pretty sure I understood what was going on. I laid the gnarliest and ugliest weld bead that day, but by god, they still hired me! That’s how I learned to TIG weld!
Fast forward another year or two, applying for another welding job. Now they want someone who can weld aluminum! I don’t know how to weld aluminum!! But if you asked me, “Heck yes I know how to weld aluminum. It’s been a few years since I’ve had to though, so I might be a little rough.” Rinse and repeat, gnarly ugly welds, but good enough, got the job!!
Now I’m one of the best welders and fabricators out there, and can weld pretty much any alloy with any method. I’m a specialized expert who learned everything he knows by lying on his resume. The trick is to be confident. But confidence is not all it takes, you must also be able to back that confidence up with quick thinking and on-the-spot learning. Without lying on my resume, I would not be nearly as professional as I am now.
Lied to the military about not having asthma. Six years later I tried to claim I had allergies as I was separating (to be fair, I had them worse due to sandstorms, trash burn pits, and a dorm that was 80% mold) and the doc was like, “You realize we have your asthma on record right?” And I said “What asthma? It shouldn’t be there.” And he said I was a military brat and they could pull the records from my childhood when my dad was in the army and he took me to get diagnosed. Then the doctor decided to asthma test me then and there. I passed because it was the fall though haha. Two years later I rejoined.
Not me, but a kid I had to train for a door-to-door sales job for cable/internet.
This kid was 19 and said he worked all through high school doing door-to-door sales for a roofing company. Put 5 years of sales experience on his resume. I was the top sales guy with the company, so my boss let me cherry-pick a really good neighborhood to bring this kid to so I wouldn’t lose too many sales due to training. Honestly, I loved training because people are nicer when they see a timid newbie who has no idea what they are doing. It was easier to spin sales with a “It is this guy’s first day! Give him a break” attitude.
Anyway, I told the kid he could just stand back and watch me for half the day and then it would be his turn after, but not to worry because I 100% had his back and would step in. All he had to do was repeat the introduction I had been using all morning and I would take over from there. He seemed utterly terrified when I told him this.
After his 5th attempt of just being so scared that he couldn’t even form a sentence at the door, I told him to go hang out in the car with me and settle down. When we got back to the car, he admitted that his dad owned a roofing company and he just rode around with him sometimes…. that he had never sold anything in his life. He was on the “non-commission” pay plan that allowed him to make minimum wage plus some small bonuses for his first month regardless of his performance. So, I guess he saw this as a way to make money for a month by avoiding actually working.
Unironically, he failed his drug test 3 days later and we had to let him go. In the interview, my boss asked if he could pass a drug test and not lie because it didn’t matter. He just wanted to know if we needed to cheat it or not (Yeah it was a shady operation). The kid confidently told him he could pass and then failed with flying colors lol. Fake it til you make it did not go well for this kid.
Got hired as a server at Olive Garden even though I never waited tables (I did have restaurant experience, but just in the kitchen). Went through training with no problems, did great, and even ended up being a server-trainer when they needed one. Probably the best job to have while going to college, since it’s short hours and good pay (not to mention all the “tail” I got while working there….!).
When my daughter was about to start High School, I put together a “news” website focusing on our state and the technology du jour… Made a professional first name, last name email address for my kid and spent the next 3 years putting in a few hours on the weekend scanning Reddit for news of the tech and creating “news” post items as her on her blog.
Eventually became a minor hit in the industry. The statewide association invited her and me to their annual conferences, we attended a news conference with the Governor and even made a few bucks with AdSense. People are mailing us books to review and the PR Newswires add us as a legit news outlet, the Gov’s office puts her on their media list. The blog gets mentioned in a few newspaper articles. All the state schools have links to our site and I am making an effort to highlight news out of our Number 1 state school.
So college application time comes around and I download a resume template and we get to work. Of course, we have pics from the conferences, and if you Google her name all this high-tech news BS comes up. We make it sound like she worked her fingers to the bone on this project out of love for her state and interest in technology.
After we drop her college apps in the mail, I go into overdrive, publishing every press release from all the colleges and the government’s Economic Development people. It works! She’s one of the few kids in her graduating class to get into Flagship State School. After her freshman year, I don’t even bother to renew the domain.
Not me, but:
I was working on a low-budget/independent movie. Someone who was recommended by the Costume Designer to be the Assistant Costume Designer submitted a resume to the Line Producer. On the list of their credits was a movie the Line Producer had previously worked on, and the Line Producer didn’t recognize this person’s name at all.
So she called her up and called her out on lying. She copped to it right away, saying “The Costume Designer said I should add it to my resume to bulk it up, and that since she was the Costume Designer on that movie, if she was ever asked, she’d back up the lie.” Just tough luck that the Producer of the movie caught that resume.
Hired her anyway. The Costume Designer wanted to work with her, and we would have brought her aboard anyway. All it really did was lower her pay to entry level.
Then fired her and the Costume Designer two days later because the Executive Producer of the movie ran into a girl he had a crush on in high school who “worked in fashion” so he hired her on the spot to be the new costume designer to show off.
Coming out of film school work was tight. I lied on my resumes all the time about my proficiency with different software. I figured it was up to them to decide if I was a keeper or not. I wasn’t going to make the decision for them.
The result is I landed several 3-month trial contracts doing things that my education had never covered. I’d take a look at what everybody else was doing, fumble through it, and get as much help as they were willing to offer. Then went home and crash-coursed like mad trying to learn the techniques I said I already knew.
The result was I got let go, a lot. But I also learned quite a bit, and my skill level eventually reached a point where I was employable.
Also, screw you expensive film school!
Not me but my dad.
In the late 70’s he applied for a screen printing job (or something similar). His friend told him to lie on his resume about the experience and such and once he got hired he’d show him the ropes. So my dad got through the interview just fine, and the boss seemed really impressed. So in the end when the boss asks my dad if he has any questions about the job my dad decides he’ll look good if he seems like he knows something, so he asks something about the size of the screen printing machine, not knowing it was entirely done by hand.
The boss just looks at him and says, “Boy, you don’t know anything about screen printing. But you got a lot of balls coming in here and acting like you do. You’re hired. Come in next week and (friend) can get you started.”
So he did that for a few months before he realized he could do it on his own. Ran his own graphic design company for 40 years.
In my country (Argentina) there is a guy who claims to be a cardiovascular surgeon. Not only does he claim that in his resume, he is also required to do a lot of talks, has performed over 10000 surgeries in 30 years, and is one of the best heart surgeons in our country. He is the director of the cardiovascular section in the hospital where he works and even teaches at the university.
What is so strange about this? The guy is not even a Doctor!
The man did most of the subjects, but he never finished his college career but managed to enter the residence system specializing in cardiovascular surgery and made a career from there. A few years from retirement, it was discovered that his degree was nonexistent … the “doctor” is a fugitive now and is nowhere to be found.
