Have you ever lied on a job application?

no but thinking about it for next time.

I don’t have a high school diploma (much to my everlasting shame), so when I was young, I lied about it to get jobs I was otherwise qualified for. By my early 20s, I had quit doing that, I let my experience speak for itself. I always felt bad about the lie, too.

Yup. I was fired from my last job (in short, I got the charge nurse in trouble for screwing up, so he made sure I didn’t last more than a month after that), but my boss didn’t want to fire me. Unfortunately, the charge nurse got HR involved so she had no choice. She said when she did it that she would tell any references that I was the best secretary she ever had and that I left because I wanted to go back to school full-time. I didn’t feel bad about lying, because I never should have gotten fired, and it happened on a stupid technicality due to someone else’s bitterness over a reprimand.

No. In today’s era of interconnected databases, it does not make any sense, because you will be found out.

No. But I did once work at a bar in Madison, WI called the White Horse Inn. Then I moved to New York, and when someone hiring me for a bartending position there mistook it for THE White Horse Inn (of Dylan Thomas fame, I believe), I didn’t exactly loudly correct him. sheepish

Yes, sadly, the companies and references in question were all small startups which had great entrepreneurial potential but failed to capitalize on the ever changing markets of today. I.e. Yeah, I worked there, try proving it…

yes,

smoking medicinal weed wasn’t so popular in those days.

Since education in the US is so diversified/unstandardized, and there is no vocational apprenticeship like in most European countries, hiring basically evolves around “screening out” as the only really reliable metric.

Unfortunately, this process leaves a lot of really able and capable people on the side of the road. It’s a shame really.