Fake It Till You Make It? Here's Why Fake Experience on Your Resume Does More Harm Than Good

I increasingly notice a troubling trend among candidates for Automation QA positions (and even Manual QA): they often embellish their resumes or claim experience they don’t actually have. In attempts to compensate for their inexperience, candidates try to use tools like ChatGPT during interviews to answer technical questions.

The problem seems clear: candidates hope to secure a job without having enough knowledge and experience. However, the solution is not as straightforward. I'll share my thoughts on this issue.

One of the (perhaps primary) reasons for this growing problem, I believe, is the influence of mentors and various IT schools for testers that actively promote such "shortcuts" to landing a job. These educational institutions often teach not only basic testing skills—which you could learn independently and often for free - but also offer questionable advice on embellishing experience in a resume.

Some mentors and IT schools openly suggest that to get hired, you should "list a few years of experience" on your resume, even if the candidate has just completed a course and has no real practical experience. Often, employers don’t verify such information, and as a result, the candidate might successfully pass the interview - perhaps with the help of ChatGPT or due to insufficient technical screening. The candidate then receives an offer, but this leads to problems for both the individual and the company, and here’s why:

Rapid exposure of real competencies in practice:

Test automation often requires not only knowledge of programming language syntax and basic project frameworks but also broad technical and practical skills (including an understanding of testing methodologies and techniques). Even if a candidate passes the interview, within the first month, it will become clear: due to a lack of broad knowledge and practical experience, such an employee's productivity will be extremely low. Obviously, this employee will not pass the probationary period.

And this issue leads to a second, even more significant concern:

Decreased motivation, confidence, and disillusionment with the profession: Imagine that someone who dreamed of working in testing managed to "slip through" into a large company thanks to IT school advice and a fake resume. After a month or two, the company uncovers the deception and decides to fire the employee. During this time, the worker may have made several embarrassing mistakes or failed to complete tasks, and, moreover, it all ends in dismissal. This will inevitably leave a mark on their confidence and motivation to move forward. In trying to cheat the system, such a person misses the chance to learn, grow, and achieve something because motivation and self-confidence are the fuel for self-improvement.

Vulnerability in the job market: Such deception at the start of a career can affect your reputation as a professional, which may come back to haunt you even when you’ve gained real experience. Information spreads quickly in professional circles these days, and negative reviews or mentions on internal company lists can limit future career opportunities. As the problem of "embellishment" in resumes becomes more prevalent, companies are increasingly introducing practical tasks in interviews and thoroughly assessing actual skills based on candidates' descriptions of their experience. When such candidates are caught in a lie, they risk ruining their career in the industry for good.

Personal realization of mismatched qualifications: Even if the employer doesn’t uncover the deception and the candidate holds the position for a long time, the ease with which they achieved results won’t foster a real understanding of the effort required to gain the skills needed for the job. Over time, this dishonest approach to getting a job decreases motivation for real learning and professional growth, which won’t allow the person to develop in the long run. After all, they once managed to cheat the system and achieve results they didn’t deserve.

Here’s my recommendation for interviewers to identify candidates with false experience:

Testing practical skills during interviews: Interactive coding tasks are an effective way to assess candidates' real knowledge and skills. I don’t like live coding, but I think offering candidates a pre-prepared code with errors and asking them to explain and fix it is an optimal solution.

Technical questions about real experience: An experienced candidate can detail how they used a specific tool, on which projects, and what challenges they faced. Don’t hesitate to ask many questions about the candidate's personal contributions; people love to talk about their successes and solutions they’ve come up with. Based on their answers, you can definitely determine their actual involvement in the project.

In conclusion, I’ve encountered candidates more than once who, in their attempt to secure a position above their actual skills, tried to invent tasks or achievements in the company they listed on their resume. However, due to a lack of real experience with those tasks, their stories sounded either silly or implausible, completely mismatched with the knowledge they demonstrated during the interview. But in situations where they had to think of a solution themselves or complete a practical task that didn’t require much experience, the candidates performed excellently. It’s a shame that potentially good specialists, in their attempt to quickly land a higher position through deception, end up ruining their careers. In my opinion, for job seekers, the best path to success is honesty and the desire to continuously learn and grow, because real knowledge and skills can never be taken away from you, and those are what employers truly value.