Ask HN: Faking your resume to acquire projects
It has been two months joining a company as a fresher. I was pulled into the project within a month. I am comfortable working as a shadow for the project. Recently I as well as others with 1-2 years of experience were asked to prepare a resume which is to be sent to clients for acquiring few projects. Even though it has been just 2 months, I was asked to showcase myself as a developer of 2 years of experience. I promptly said I cannot do that. They accepted it, but then submitted my resume to the client not only as a developer of 2 years of experience but also with fake projects that I had never worked on. They told me this is how other companies also work and there is nothing wrong in "pumping up" the resume. I again went to the HR and said I can't be a part of this process, as my conscience does not allow me to do that. They were polite and accepted my reasons. But I could see that they are really not happy with what I did. I have just started my career and not sure what will be the consequence of my decision. I am willing to lose this job instead of faking my resume.
Did anyone has been in this situation? How things went by when you refused to do such kind of unethical activities? Did you get punished indirectly? Is it a common practice in all companies?
73 comments
[ 5.3 ms ] story [ 154 ms ] threadTake a copy of your resume with you, the real one and go to your first meeting alone. Get them to talk about their stuff before handling your cv, act interested ask follow up questions and push on it. Then when it comes to your CV act surprised when they talk about stuff you didn't do. Tell them you have your cv as given to the intermediary and compare notes. Tell them you are disappointed with wasting their time but that the job looked really interesting. Most times the company is happy to find out their intermediary is shit and sometimes offers to take you on on trail basis.
But if you really want to quit over this: listen to your instinct. I wouldn't, but that's me.
It's literally fraud.
> intentional misrepresentation of material existing fact made by one person to another with knowledge of its falsity and for the purpose of inducing the other person to act, and upon which the other person relies with resulting injury or damage.
Everything is fine until "resulting injury or damage". You'd have trouble proving that a guy who falsely said he wrote parallel FizzBuzz with REST API on a 500-client kubernetes rack caused you any harm.
If he gets a job the wages are damage to the employer.
If he gets an interview the time spent interviewing is damage to the employer.
* On one hand, I originally hail from a country where majority of population would have absolutely agreed with this - it "doesn't hurt anyone", it's fine, everybody does it. It's also, related or not, one of the countries where people will judge you negatively if you pay your taxes ("what are you, a schmuck??"), if you don't haggle, etc. It's a hard country in hard times and you're expected to do whatever it takes for yourself to come ahead.
* On the other hand, I've been living in Canada for 20+ years (not the least because the culture and ethical framework work for me:), and while absolutely definitely "shady stuff happens in unseen corners" and not everybody or every org is honest, on average, I could get a whole chain of workers and management fired if I brought something like this to light. Certainly, the average person in average situation would indicate this is unethical, it directly hurts the people potentially hiring you (as they're literally not getting good as advertised), it indirectly hurts your own company (through reputation etc) and market at large (through inflated requirements and misaligned expectations). It's effectively lying for personal gain. It's wrong. And most people have the luxury of treating it as such. But I also know, as per #1, places where it's just how business is done... :-/
It's important to take note that if you lie about your educational achievements, you may be breaking the law (depends on the locality).
Ugh. Attitudes like this are exactly why the software industry will be stuck with stringent developer interviews with coding questions for foreseeable future.
To the point where my organization issued a RFP asking for "engineers with 15+ years of experience" in something that did not exist five years prior. I asked the obvious question and was told "that's the only way we'll get anyone competent."
I left that job.
Maybe you can find some answers there ?
You're doing the right thing, but that doesn't mean you won't be punished for it in the short term. Hopefully someone recognizes your integrity in the long term and you are rewarded accordingly but there are no guarantees.
The other problem is that the person you speak to and agree to do the work with is often not the one who will actually be carrying it out. Generally speculative applications where the quality or focus area of the portfolio doesn't match the job is another problem.
Looks like what you're doing is a very clear cut textbook violation of the law.
https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/nationalorigin.cfm
>National Origin Discrimination & Work Situations
>The law forbids discrimination when it comes to any aspect of employment, including hiring, firing, pay, job assignments, promotions, layoff, training, fringe benefits, and any other term or condition of employment.
It's not as clear cut as you are trying to make it out. Perhaps he simply wasn't clear in his wording....
Yes. No one else uses the phrase "joining a company as a fresher" .
I remember someone from Brazil once telling me that if you get swindled, society looks at you as a sucker who clearly deserved it, not at the swindler as a bad person.
It leads to an extremely inefficient and low trust business environment. In many cases the idea of a win-win is almost non-existent because if the other side wins too then it means you didn't squeeze them hard enough in negotiations.
Most of South America operates like this also, in fact I find Ukraine to be far more oriented towards western ethical ideals than India or any country I've done business with in South America. Much of Eastern Asia also operates on this level.
Lighthearted, but surprisingly insightful. Especially the part about treachery!
Demand: The vast majority of customers they get are seeking to get a lower price. Many of the customers are in non-technical companies, doing non-technical things, and they are told to acquire a software service company to develop something. They approach it as a bidding process and they go for the lowest bidder since they can't really assess anything else. Larger companies usually select a few long-term vendors and they work with them exclusively. Therein starts the problem.
Supply: Likewise, many of those software services companies will actually go out and try to compete on price. When they do that, they know that most of the customers they sell to have very little technical knowledge (think of banks, retailers, insurance companies, freight companies, telcos, etc.). When they're one of the few (or exclusive) vendors that the work with the client, they're creating a bulk deal for x amount of resources (i.e. a number of people). So they have to provide those people. However, the supply of skilled developers is low, since there are many great product companies within those countries (India, Ukraine, and Belarus) who offer great jobs to the experienced developers. So the fastest and cheapest way to meet the quota is with "freshers" (as they appear to be called in India). So now they're billing for people who have no experience at a very low rate in order to be competitive, they're also paying those developers pennies, and they're patching it up by having the few seniors within the company act as leads. And those seniors are split between 2-3 projects, and on each one of those projects, they have 4-5 juniors below them. This gives them a good "blended rate," but they still can't make a profit higher than 20%. The rate at which they lose talent is fast because the product companies are always stealing their good developers.
Overall, when I ask them why don't they just sell the senior developers at a higher margin and have fewer JR devs, the answer is that they'd never get a project because the competition is undercutting them on the price.
Until last week I worked at a software company doing safety critical software, the boss citing 2 or 3 similar thoughts like yours about other countries. He himself (German) wanted to get a bid for a project and was planning himself to fake 2 years experience instead of 2 months. I quit immediately - he'll not have the manpower to pursue it.
Anyway, just stop it. People from all over the world do it, there are even statistics about it that many employees/applicants from G20 countries do this.
> I'm guessing you're in India?
Yes.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fresher
(India) A fresh graduate looking for his or her first job.
I would like to know more.
quite common in indian firms.
I've never seen this outside indian consultancies/bodyshops. But I don't know for sure.
Technically, you were not a part of this - some salespeople lied to the client and your company got the contract. You did not partake in this. If you want to only work on contracts that were won 100% ehtically, you probably should open your own company, as, from what I've seen, you won't find much companies (in the "generic software development" market) doing that. Or, more realistically, work for a company that writes software for its own use and not for clients.
It was a large public tender, we were a big team (of mainly unexperienced engineers), we won it and we did a really good job.
It was probably unfair competition to lie on the resume - but I think my employer knew better what they needed, than they did themselves, so we gamed the tender.
This is a terrifying sentiment.
It's really doing a disservice to Indians who are actually competent and giving companies that employ Indians a bad name...it's not good.
If it comes up while talking with a client, I would just tell the truth about the specific part they are asking about and mention that there must be an error in the document they were given. That is what I've done when I found that recruiters added lies to my resume in the past. I don't think anyone ever held it against me. I take my own copies of my resume with me, but I'm not sure if that applies in your situation.
I don't know what I would do in your position. I have almost 25 years of experience and won't lie ever. If I can't get some job, I'd look for another one worse paid.
I had just completed my Masters program from a well known university and was in the job hunt phase. I was contacted my multiple 'consultancies' that offered to tailor my resume to the needs of 'prestigious' clients and get me the position.
They were planning to show 7 years of work experience - I was just over 5 years out of my undergrad - which included actual 4+ years of experience, a nice break and then a 1 years Masters program.
I could not fathom how they would fake my resume to show the 7 years experience, but they were very confident about it. I was amused at the practice.
I was at the risk of having to leave the country if I could not secure a job over the coming months, and would have student loans to deal with as well. Despite this, I could not digest the idea of having a fake resume that I will have to carry for my entire professional life.
IMO - Do not do this if your moral compass does not allow it. You will be better off in the long run. (:fingers-crossed)
BTW, I am Indian and was in Bay Area when this happened (2014) and the 'consultancy' was also local.