The Political World
Why are elected officials held to a different ethical standard than job seekers when it comes to lying on their resumes? Many, if not most politicians have been caught embellishing their resumes; but, George Santos is in a class of his own. This guy lied about everything. He fabricated his education, work experience, property ownership, and even claimed to be Jewish. This goes beyond the novelty of Herschel Walker flashing an honorary sheriff’s badge as a prop at the debate to lead people to believe he’s a lawman with the legal authority to detain and arrest. This goes beyond Elizabeth Warren’s claims of Native American heritage and even beyond Mark Kirk’s embellishments of his war record. His biography listed that he had been awarded the “Intelligence Officer of the Year” while in the Naval Reserve, a prestigious military honor that he never received. He also stated that he had served in the Persian Gulf war of 1991, that he once commanded the Pentagon war room and that he came under fire while flying intelligence missions over Iraq. Fortunately, he was defeated by Tammy Duckworth a military veteran who lost her legs in the Iraq war. In that race, Mr. Kirk’s website still stated he was an Iraq war veteran. It’s good to know Hillary Clinton is fine after allegedly dodging sniper fire on a tarmac at an airport in Bosnia. She clarified that she “misspoke” about the incident. Madison Cawthorn was on his way to the Navy Academy when his plans were derailed after a car accident left him partially paralyzed. He decided to deflect and deny. In his 2010 ascent to the Senate, Marco Rubio highlighted his personal story of being the son of Cuban immigrants that fled during Fidel Castro’s revolution. That didn’t add up since his parents arrived to the states three years before the revolution. His reward for this lie was to be re-elected in 2016 and 2022. The list goes on and on and on.
The Real World
In the real world, embellishing your resume gets you fired. As it should. Stating you have a GPA of 3.0 on your resume, even though your GPA is a 2.98 is lying and will get you dismissed. Degrees, certifications, licenses, and other verifications are there for our safety and to provide assurances of integrity. The simple fact is that I have never lied or embellished my resume. That could explain why it took me a few extra years to get where I am today. I think it’s so much better to get a new position based on your true merits and value to an organization than by deceptive means. Why would anyone want to go through their careers looking over their shoulder? Working in IT is stressful and complicated on its own accord. Why add an additional level of complexity to your already hectic work life? In the end, everyone always gets caught. There’s a huge difference between accentuating the positive and flat out lying.
After graduating from college, I went to work in the family restaurant while I was trying to figure things out. I bussed tables, washed dishes, worked the cash register, scheduled employees, hired employees, fired employees, processed payroll, paid vendors, and took out the trash. When it came time to get my resume in front of hiring managers, I had to translate all these tasks and activities into management terms to get me into my first post-college job. Once I was hired at my first job, this past experience at the family restaurant fell off my resume as it was being replaced by more “professional” achievements.
In 2019, I interviewed a young lady at Brave New Media for a graphic designer position and another candidate. I was immediately intrigued by this young lady because she was starting out from where I launched my career many years ago. The Creative Director wanted to hire the other candidate since he possessed more of the hard skills the Creative Director was looking for in a candidate. I selected and succeeded in hiring the young lady to join the team at the protest of the Creative Director. Why? She worked as a bar manager at Applebee’s while putting herself though college. I asked her to describe a typical day in the life of a Bar Manager at Applebee’s. Since this Applebee’s was located off I-94 in Menomonie, WI, a lot of her customers were long haul truckers. Sometimes the truckers would get super drunk and she would have to get them back into their cabs for a good night sleep. She also had to de-escalate some confrontations between truckers in the bar at closing time. This told me that what she may have lacked in hard skills on her resume, she more than makes up for in soft skills. She turned out to be our best graphic designer who quickly integrated into the team and enriched our culture. The big red flag for me not to hire the other candidate was that he never stayed at a job for more than one year over the past four years. It’s more than likely this candidate needed to embellish his resume.
Over twenty years later, it would be nice to put my family’s small business restaurant experience back onto my resume and own it like that young lady owned being a bar manager at Applebee’s. There’s no need to embellish your resume for any reason. Yes, it can be difficult to find a job and measure up to other candidates; but for the life of me I can’t comprehend why someone would go as far as to put a degree on their resume that they never received. What are they thinking? You either have the degree or you don’t have the degree and this can easily be verified. Everyone will tell you that you need to quantify your accomplishments on a resume. If I tell you that I was part of a process improvement that saved $25 million, that’s hard to check. It’s hard to know whether I was or I wasn’t part of that process improvement and it’s hard to know what the savings really were. Even this will come out in the wash in the end when your new team starts seeing inconsistencies in your approach that ends up costing the organization millions.
Final Thought
In the final analysis, George Santos should resign. He has used deception, lies, and innuendo (he clarified that he was actually Jew-ish) to catapult him to participating in representative government at the Federal level. If he is seated, how does this represent us and our values. He said, “I’m not going to make excuses for this, but a lot of people overstate in their resumes, or twist a little bit. … I’m not saying I’m not guilty of that.” He’s right to assume that a lot of people overstate in their resume, but these people are not running for Congress and they are not in the public sector. It’s good to know that federal and local prosecutors will be investigating his activities. At present, Republican leadership is mum about this. Let’s step back and ask ourselves if we would still hire this guy to represent us after all this new information came to light. I believe not. As we turn the page on another year, we should all make a resolution to tell it like it is and not feel any need to embellish, because embellishing in lying. Our career progressions are not linear. There was no straight line up for me from where I started. There was a lot of setbacks, overcoming frustration and adversity, warring with myself, insecurities, and bad timing. There road was also paved with an abundance of good luck, kindness, appreciation, successes, and growth. I believe these all go into a successful, graceful, and elegant resume. If you can communicate this journey to a hiring manager, the job is yours.