Again, I go to considerable lengths to not make any serious posts about looking for jobs here in Japan or any other job searching advice that might lead some poor souls astray (I know I couldn’t constrain myself earlier). But I again feel the need to deliver some amusing anecdotes that you can at some later point retell to amuse your friends and casual lovers with and claim as your own to become even more popular.In interviews and CV writing, I suffer from severe modesty, something that is not necessarily a bad thing since both Swedish and Japanese people share a cultural trait of looking upon modesty as a virtue. That means that I do not exaggerate experiences or competencies, something that I’ve read one or two guides that suggest you should do a little. Now, to my amusing Japan related anecdotes regarding this.
Case 1, a fellow half-Japanese friend of mine with limited knowledge in Japanese decided to put “Japanese fluency” on his language abilities as he was looking for jobs in Sweden, believing that no one would ever check up on it and that he might cover for it with his limited ability in case someone asked. He gets his FIRST interview when he’s looking for jobs, the lady looks through his CV and shines up when she sees the “Japanese” and immediately asks “Wow, that’s so nice, I worked in Japan for several years before, my Japanese is a little rusty, but let’s do this in Japanese!”. My friend? He never got the job, the interview never really recovered after his bluff got called…
Case 2, in my previous consultant job, I was interviewing an eager rosy-cheeked wanna-bee associate and noticed that her CV stated that she could speak Danish. Reverse the situation above, I shine up and say “Danish? That’s so similar to Swedish, let’s talk Danish then!”. She stutters something about not really being able to really speak or understand much. In this case, I didn’t care that much since it was hardly a merit for the job in question in any case, but when I mentioned it to El Presidente he threw a fit about “people just try to cheat” and she never got an offer from us.
I guess the moral of the story is that the more unlikely a bluff is to get called, the more likely you are to get called on it due to freaky circumstances…
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5 comments:
I've always assumed they're going to check. Why? Because if it matters to them that it was on the resume, they probably actually -want- that skill. And if it doesn't matter to them that it's on there, there's no point in it being on there.
"the interview never really recovered after his bluff got called…"
I would pay money to see a video of that moment!!! The moment she realized he was full of shit...that EXACT moment paused on my widescreen. I could use it as my new PC wallpaper.
The infiltration of video in our lives has not reached "saturation" point until that stuff is recorded and archived and studied in "Don't fake the funk on an open court dunk " (a.k.a fuck yourself hard) class...101 of course :)
Funniest post....AGAIN!!
Love this site man!!!!
They'll always find out later if you're lying or not. Just be honest. Thanks for sharing.
Aren´t you supposed to polish stuff that is impossible/very hard to check?
Stuff like being president for a fancy sounding underground society, having traveled around the world climbing mount Everest and other things that sounds impressive, but not worth investigating.
However, if having some big cahones is a merit. Lying blatantly in your CV might be a good thing?
As is said in politics, its not the lying that the problem, everyone "stretches" it to one degree or another - it's the getting caught.
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