If you are job hunting, you need to understand exactly what it means when people say “interviews are an opportunity to tell your story”. It means playing the game.
Executives know this, and often lie to get ahead. Do they think it is unethical? Not at all… they see it as “playing the game”. This has nothing to do with morals. They may be honest with friends and family, but in a business process they treat the conversation like a negotiation.
This also applies to the hiring process. In August 2023, a large national study surveyed business leaders from various industries about their honesty during the hiring process. The findings were concerning: 36% of hiring managers admitted to regularly deceiving job candidates. Among them, 75% confessed to lying during the interview, 52% to presenting misleading job descriptions, and 24% to including false information in the offer letter.
To read about the ethics of lying, see our stance here.
The Recruiting Loophole
The trick is that for large companies, and sometimes even firms with 100-250 employees, much of their company’s hiring comes through staffing agencies. So it’s expected that although you worked at McDonald’s, you actually got paid by XYZ staffing company. That staffing company handles your benefits, pays you, is your direct report, handles your raises, and keeps all records for you. McDonald’s has no record that you worked for them, even if you actually did. And a job verification check would never go to McDonald’s to verify your employment.
Therefore, in order to fabricate the company you want to show employment for, your title, dates, etc., make sure it does not conflict with the dates of the real jobs on your resume. Then, when the employment verification asks for reference information, state that you were employed through a staffing company, and use that company for the verification.
To read about the myth of the recruiter blacklist, see our stance here.
Warnings about Lying
If someone were to do this, you need to make sure you are doing this correctly. That means the staffing company has to look legitimate, the party verifying your employment is both trustworthy, and and knowledgeable about the background verification process. This is why people will often choose to outsource it to a trusted partner, to make sure everything is done correctly.
In whichever case you decide, the most important task for you, as the job seeker, is to make sure the verification is covered, and goes through smoothly. We have written extensively on this, and recommend reading through those guides carefully.
