Yesterday we talked about why you might consider using a professional resume writer.
Most recruiters are not professional resume writers so that right there is a good reason to not allow most recruiters to rewrite your resume.
From time to time, there will be occasions where a recruiter finds out that you have experience that is either not mentioned in your resume or is mentioned in a way that undersells what you achieved. I can think of numerous cases where I knew a particular job required specific experience and upon speaking with a job candidate, find out that they have the experience but either don’t even mention it in their resume or don’t really make it clear to the reader that they have this experience. In this instance, I’ll suggest how they add it into their resume to draw attention to it.
This only makes sense and is a benefit of working with a good recruiter since they can tell you what parts of a job description are “must have skills” that you should highlight in your resume and which skills are “nice to haves” that are perhaps not as important. When you simply read a job description and apply for the job yourself, you often can’t tell exactly which skills and experience is paramount and what isn’t as important.
One area that you need to be aware of though is the issue of when a recruiter tries to get you to overstate your experience or flat out lie in order to make you qualify for a job that you really don’t qualify for. Just like it’s not right to make stuff up yourself and lie on your resume or in an interview, it isn’t any better when a recruiter convinces you to do it.
I once worked with a recruiter who was renowned for this especially with clients he was working with. He’d often add stuff into a person’s resume without even letting them know. Other times he would convince them to change their job title or accomplishments to make it seem closer to what the job required even if it was a lie. He ended up getting fired for another reason so things caught up to him in the end.
But what’s the point in lying like this? If you’re applying for a job and lie about experience you don’t have, if this experience is really that important, it’s most likely going to come out in the interview that you don’t have this experience and if not, it will probably come out once you’ve been hired so either way you’ll probably get caught. If the experience isn’t really that critical then I wonder why you’d lie about it in the first place and risk getting caught! So in either instance, it really doesn’t make sense to lie since getting caught or exposed can end up causing even bigger troubles for you down the line.
Allowing a recruiter to help you tweak your resume to better match your legitimate skills and experience to the job makes sense. Allowing a recruiter to convince you to lie or choosing to do on your accord does not.
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