[US Jobs Vacancies] Lie on your résumé?

US Jobs Vacancies has posted a new item, 'Lie on your résumé?'



One job-seeker's moment of truth

Steve Blank, author of "The Startup Owner's Manual" and "The Four Steps to the
Epiphany"





Getting asked by a recruiter about where I went to school made me remember the
day I had to choose whether to lie on my rsum.




When I gotmy first job in Silicon Valley, it was through serendipity on my part
and desperation on the part of my first employer. I really didn't have much of a
rsum: four years in theAir Forcebuilding ascram system for a nuclear reactorand
a startup in Ann Arbor, Mich., but not much else.




It was at mysecond startupin Silicon Valley that my life and career took an
interesting turn. A recruiter found me while I was working in product marketing
and wanted to introduce me to a hot startup making something called a
workstation. "This is a technology-driven company, and your background sounds
great. Why don't you send me a rsum and I'll pass it on." A few days later, I
got a call back from the recruiter. "Steve, you left off your education. Where
did you go to school?"




"I never finished college," I said.

There was a long silence on the other end of the phone. "Steve, the VP of sales
and marketing previously ran their engineering department. He was a professor of
computer science at Harvard, and his last job was running the Advanced Systems
Division atXerox PARC. Most of the sales force were previously design engineers.
I can't present a candidate without a college degree. Why don't you make
something up?"




I still remember that exact instant of the conversation. In that moment, I
realized I had a choice. But I had no idea how profound, important and lasting
it would be. It would have been really easy to lie, and the recruiter was
telling me to do so. "No one checks education anyway," he said. This was long
before the days of the Internet.




Making the choice about my rsumI told him I'd think about it. And I did for a
long time. After a few days, I sent him my updated rsum, and he passed it on
toConvergent Technologies. Soon after, I was asked to interview with the
company. I can barely recall the other people I met, but I'll never forget the
interview with Ben Wegbreit, the vice president of sales and marketing.




Wegbreit held up my rsum and said, "You know you're here interviewing because
I've never seen a rsum like this. You don't have any college listed and there's
no education section. You put 'Mensa' here," he said, pointing to the section
where education normally goes. "Why?" I looked back at him and said, "I thought
Mensa might get your attention."




Wegbreit just stared at me for an uncomfortable amount of time. Then he abruptly
said, "Tell me what you did in your previous companies." I thought this was
going to be a storytelling interview like the others. But instead, the minute I
said, "My first startup usedCATVcoax to implement a local-area network for
process control systems." (35 years ago, pre-Ethernet and TCP/IP, that was
pretty cutting-edge.) Wegbreit said, "Why don't you go to the whiteboard and
draw the system diagram for me?"




Do what? Draw it? I dug deep and spent 30 minutes diagramming, trying to
remember everything. With Wegbreit peppering me with questions, I could barely
keep up. And there were a bunch of empty spaces where I couldn't remember some
of the detail.




When I was done explaining it I headed for the chair, but Wegbreit stopped me.
"As long as you're at the whiteboard, why don't we go through the other two
companies you were at." I couldn't believe it. I was already mentally exhausted,
but we spent another half-hour with me drawing diagrams and Wegbreit asking
questions.




Finally I sat down. Wegbreit looked at me for a long while, not saying a word.
Then he stood up and opened the door, signaling me to leave. He shook my hand
and said, "Thanks for coming in." What? That's it? Did I get the job or not?

That evening, I got a call from the recruiter. "Ben loved you. ...
Congratulations."




EpilogueThree and a half years later, Convergent became a public company and I
was a VP of marketing working for Wegbreit. Wegbreit ended up as my mentor at
Convergent -- and for the rest of my career -- my peer atArdentand my partner
and co-founder at Epiphany. I would never use Mensa onmy rsumagain, and my
education section would always be empty.

But every time I read about an executive who got caught in a rsum scandal, I
remember the moment I had to choose.

Lessons learned


You will be faced with ethical dilemmas your entire career.
Taking the wrong path is most often the easiest choice.
These choices will seem like trivial and inconsequential shortcuts -- at the
time.
Some of them will have lasting consequences.
It's not the lie that will catch up with you, it's the cover-up.
Choose wisely.





Steve Blank is a retired serial entrepreneur and author of "The Startup Owner's
Manual" and "The Four Steps to the Epiphany." He lectures at Stanford
University, the University of California Berkeley's Haas School of Business and
Columbia University, and is the author and architect of the National Science
Foundation Innovation Corps curriculum. He blogs about entrepreneurship
atwww.steveblank.com.







You may view the latest post at
http://jobsvacancies.us/lie-on-your-resume/


Best regards,
US Jobs Vacancies
http://jobsvacancies.us