I recently returned from a conference about building online communities (yes, we consider NETSHARE an online community, even a family), and I learned something very interesting – people lie online. Okay, this is not a huge revelation, but the thing that I found surprising was that experts from a wide variety of leading companies are seeing an increase in online liars. People are padding their LinkedIn profiles. In fact, when asked what would be the most significant improvement you could make to online communities, one executive suggested adding a “Liar, Liar” widget to identify online exaggerators.
I have some personal experience here. NETSHARE has been around for some time, and we don’t have a huge staff, so it’s easy to look around the office and know who is here. When I did a LinkedIn lookup for my company, apparently I have more employees than I know about, including a C-level executive. Okay, some of this is just outdated information that never fell off the ‘net, but a lot of it is just flat-out lying to pad your profile.
In talking to other attendees from Cisco, AOL, Microsoft, Motorola, and other well-known companies, I discovered all of them are seeing an upsurge in people posting exaggerated, puffy, and flat-out wrong information in their profiles. People are inflating titles and responsibilities.
Let’s be blunt. Lying online is dumb! It’s too easy to out a fraudulent profile, and those lies live on forever. Like elephants, the web never forgets. You need to be very careful about how you present yourself online. You will be outed.
A classic example is of the MBA who was offered a very cushy job with a leading Silicon Valley company who then went on Twitter and tweets to his/her friends, “I’m going for the fat paycheck and a job I’m going to hate.” Well it went viral and, needless to say, the job offer was rescinded. As I said, dumb!
I suspect that people are padding their online profiles to get attention. They are trying to add in titles and keywords that will attract recruiters and hiring managers and land them an interview. Again, dumb! It’s too hard to defend the lies in an interview, and too easy for recruiters to check up and uncover the lies. If you are caught in an online exaggeration, it voids the veracity of your entire profile.
Lying in an online profile is the same as lying on your resume. People do it, but when they get caught the consequences are dire indeed. Be smart, and be honest.
