Lies, damn lies, and interviews ...

One in three adults lies on their CV when applying for a job, according to research published in The Independent on 19 February 2009. The figure emerges from a survey of about 1,300 adults.

I’ve yet to find any research about how many employers lie about the jobs they have on offer, although I can quote two cases from my own career history.

Take a well-known University, for instance, where I was employed as a PA to five senior programme managers. The other half of my title was General Office Secretary, although my interviewer assured me that this was really an office manager’s role.

He lied.

The five senior programme managers had never had a PA before and didn’t have the kind of work they could give to one, so that part of the job really existed in name only. As for the so-called office manager’s role, I seemed to spend most of my time reporting faulty light fittings and being called to look at blocked toilets. I took to signing my emails ‘GDB’ (General DogsBody) but no-one noticed.

I left that job as soon as I could and, while I was looking for another opportunity, I started this blog. My early entries show how fed up I was.

After two very happy years in my next job – where the role lived up to the promise at interview – I was made redundant and I’d either forgotten, or pushed to the back of my mind, the fact that employers lie at interview and in job descriptions just as much as candidates do on their CVs.

I took the first job I was offered after my redundancy and it didn’t take long before the lies became apparent. PA to Group Finance Director sounds good, doesn’t it? So you can imagine I was a little perturbed to be given a stack of paperwork on my first day and shown how to raise purchase orders and invoices. This, apparently, is going to be a regular part of my work. So is endless archiving (the Group Finance Director having done no filing at all since taking the job 5 years ago). And I was told by Group FD that the HR director was pleased I was on board because he had lots of work for me to do. GFD also told me that if anybody else gave me work to do, I was to do it. Hmm, so not just PA to Group FD then, more like – yes, general dogsbody.

Unlike the chief executive of a local authority who allegedly failed to mention she had suffered from clinical depression and then took 18 months off from her new job for it, I have mentioned on my ‘new colleague health declaration’ that I take Fluoxetine for depression. Much more of this job and I have a feeling that I am going to require an extended break. The new company pays eight weeks sick leave, and I think that would just about cover it.

Unless they’ve lied about that, too.