Jame-Ane Irvin posed an interesting question to users of social networks this week:
is Lying on Linkedin comedy or career suicide?
Jame describes how an ex co-worker's profile changed several times, and his supposed length of service grew from the real period of under 6 months to a whopping 3.5 years. This person also claimed responsibility for company successes which pre-dated their employment.
So the question is how much on Linkedin - or for that matter other networks - is less than 100% honest? Well.... I guess if you think about the proportion of people who claim to embellish their job applications, CV's and resumes on paper, it should not really come as a surprise that people also do so in the newly emerging online networks too.
A few years back, Corporate investigations agency The Risk Advisory Group announced survey results showing some groups misled recruiters reoutinely. In fact women in their 30's were the most likely to have discrepancies. The proportion with discrepancies? 77% (of women in their 30's). And the most honest group? Men in their 20's
The researchers uncovered outright lies about qualifications, gaps in employment or even fraud against previous bosses. Another favourite tactic is to use friends as referees - providing you with a glowing recommendation every time!
So it comes as little surprise that Linkedin profiles also contain such discrepancies.
What's different of course is that in the past you tended only to share your paper CV or resume with the recruiter, the hiring manager and a couple of others on the interviewing panel. But with Linkedin the whole point is to share your details much more widely, and to do so with your former, current and potentially future colleagues. All of these people can potentially receive automatic updates when you update your profile, and you probably won't know which of your contacts are actually following your updates closely.
Lying on Linkedin is just as much a fact of life as lying on paper CV's, resumes or application forms! Getting noticed lying on Linkedin however is much easier, and being exposed is also very much simpler. So I agree with Jame-Ane that dishonesty on Linkedin (and other social networking sites where you are jobhunting) is indeed career suicide. Expect to get found out - if not by the recruiter or your boss, then by your co-workers.
So will those in your network agree with you that a little white lie is harmless, or that inflating your qualifications is not a problem since your job is not exactly brain surgery - right!? The social acceptability of dishonesty and deception may vary in different networks.
Surprisingly they may never tell you they know.... until that piece of information becomes valuable for some reason in future. What great ammunition! This shifts office politics to a whole new level!
Photo credit: Maria Trebol
