The one thing you should NEVER do when applying for a job.

Many people don't understand the depths to which people lie.

I've seen it time and time again throughout my career. Candidates lie to get the job. Clients lie to bring a candidate on board

And it NEVER works out.

I don't have an issue with lying.

The funny thing is I'm really cool with the lies. I genuinely really don't mind 95% of the lies that we get told by clients and candidates. It's part of the game, it's part of life and it's part of what I'm trained to deal with.

Clients pay us a fee - they pay us a big fee - to see through the candidates lies and make sure that we accurately understand the situation. And equally, candidates work with us because they know that we'll see through the lies that clients sometimes spin us and try and represent the job in the most realistic light that we possibly can.

So at what point do I draw my line?

That's the real question because everybody's got a line they draw and for me, it's when candidates miss jobs off of their CV.

So let me give you an example of what I mean: candidate X goes to job Y and after 8 weeks it doesn't work out. It's been a bad move, so they quickly and rapidly cut their losses and leave. Then they go back and register with another recruiter and they miss this job off their CV.

A while ago, I had a candidate turn around to me and when I confronted him about the issue, he said "listen mate I've had longer holidays than that" and he decided that that job had never.

Sometimes it's 8 weeks, sometimes it's 16 weeks, sometimes it's 32 weeks, sometimes it's a YEAR that people miss a job off their CV.

And you see all sorts of different ways in which people do it - they elongate periods of employment at one company to backfill the period of time that they weren't there or they'll increase and invent a job elsewhere in order to in reality fabricate their CV's.

Lying on your CV is fraud

For me it's the absolute thin end of the wedge in life. I mean, that's easy for me to say because I've had only a few handful a job since I left University. But as a starter for 10, it's fraud. It's pure fraud. It's no different to being a benefit cheat or obtaining money by deception. It's a lie.

Yet actually, we often see organisations let it go completely.

I often see hiring managers hire people who they know are missing jobs off of their CV because the job market is so candidate short and they'll allow somebody to start their career with that organisation on a lie. But if you're starting on that much of the lie, where's the trust in that relationship?

How important is trust?

You know we have a running argument in our office about how great the character Jordan Belfort from The Wolf of Wall Street. People go on about what a great salesperson that guy is and how he's everything that encapsulates real salesmanship.

Me? I don't believe it. Why? because he obtained money by deception.

We're all world-class salespeople if we don't have to tell the truth.

If I can go around lying about every job that we work on I could get any candidate in the world to go and work there. If I lied about every candidate that we worked on I could get every client in the world to hire them. But that's not what being a world-class sales professional is about.

Lying damages your self-esteem.

If you're a salesperson who's missing jobs off your CV and you're okay with telling that lie to yourself, what other lies have you told to yourself during the course of that day? What other lies have become acceptable?

Trust me, missing a job off your CV, missing a year of your life, making a year of your life disappear - is only ever going to damage your self-esteem.

The crazy irony of the whole thing is that 99% of the people who are comfortable with missing a job off their CV and then submitting that CV to a recruitment consultant don't need to do it.

A good recruitment consultant should in reality be able to talk with the client through the reasons why you left that job and you as a good sales professional should be able to do so too.

The thing is if you maintain some dignity and some nobility about the fact that you've made a bad move and you're honest about it - if you say "Actually, I went to job X and I grossly underperformed" it might work in your favour.

We had a candidate do it recently where he walked into an interview and he'd had a very, very bad period on his CV. The client started talking to him about that particular period and he said "well I went through a messy divorce, I took my eye off the ball and actually I was six months in when I realised my pipeline was short. I knew I was going to get fired and it was entirely my fault."

Dignity is fundamental in a successful salesperson

The client hired him in the end. Not only was the guy a great match, but he had the honesty and the integrity to be clear and upfront about his failure.

That dignity, that nobility, that self-respect and that ability to handle an objection are surely the things that make you a good salesperson?

And trust me, you need dignity, self-esteem and integrity a lot more than you're ever going to need to miss a job off your CV.

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