Stop Lying!

Daniel333

I have to vent.

Alright, here is the thing. I run technical interviews for engineers for my company. And I personally run an paid intern department. So clearly I do a lot of interviews. Especially as we are on a hiring spree right now.

I am sooo sick of half truths and lies on resume. I have become quite angry when I walk into an interview I am running.

1) So a guy I am interviewing for a tier level 1 system admin spot have "Linux" as a job skill listed and under his work experience "administed a cluster of Apache servers under Debian" for two years.

So I spun my laptop around and asked him to set the ip address on my laptop (runs Ubuntu 10.04) he then stated "that wasn't really his area". The jerk has Linux+ on his resume too!

2) Interviewing for an another level 1 lan operations, but we needed some minor CCNA level Cisco skills. The guy goes on about he is "starting his CCNP" and how he installed DS3 lines and bla blah. So I asked him "How do you backup a router config?". He had some dance here and I gave him another chance "Tell why you use a vlan?" he then went on about how design wasn't something he did. Sigh...

3) Desktop support guy, A+ and MCDST cert I asked him "what does msconfig do?" he didn't know. I asked him what tools he had used to for malware and all he said was Symantec. Lastly he had "highly experienced in Ghost" so I asked him how ghost worked? He had no idea.

I am just saying be honest. I would rather hire someone who had a simple honest resume than a boat full of lies and half truths. I have left spots unfilled for months now because of these people.

Anyhow, I am interviewing for a senior engineer spot next month. I was thinking of setting up a basic router on a stick and asking the guy to explain it. Any other reasonable ideas?

Version4

I take great offense to people that pad their resume. During my career I have worked with many who have said they had X cert with X years of experience. Only to find out after they are hired they really don’t have a clue. They either dumped, or lied. In my opinion, it was both the hiring manager’s fault for not knowing how to perform a proper technical interview and the “hustler’s” fault for being devious.

This “hustle” mentality is contagious not only in IT but everywhere else, it really needs to stop. Sadly, a few people I have known since high school and a few people I have known since the beginning of my career have “hustled”. The fruits of their labor are shown with Senior Admin and Engineering positions.

I’ve never padded my resume and I never will, shame on you if you have.