The resume illusion – why Gen Z feels forced to lie on job applications
TikTok influencers are encouraging Gen Z to lie on resumes to land jobs in a competitive market. With over 80% of young job seekers admitting to resume exaggeration, "CareerTok" is reshaping how Gen Z approaches job applications.
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TikTok influencers are encouraging Gen Z to lie on resumes to land jobs in a competitive market. With over 80% of young job seekers admitting to resume exaggeration, "CareerTok" is reshaping how Gen Z approaches job applications.
I remember once I stacked shelves on a mind-numbing night shift in a hardware store.
The pimped out version of this for a resume would read something like: “Orchestrated autonomous overnight inventory deployment and shelf staging for next-day demand.”
This kind of fakery is what’s currently being advised on TikTok, with popular influencer @womptomp advocating overplayplayed exaggeration, and downright lying to get ahead in the recruitment game.
In his viral video, with the advice of “lie to get jobs,” emblazoned across the front, he says that “an underrated skill you need to get good at is bullshitting on resumes.”
However flimsy your job experience is, this influencer has a way of laying it on thick in order to bypass outworn hiring practices.
“If you ever lock the door to a retail building, you’re a security operations manager,” he advises.
A coffee barrister should say they were responsible for developing customer relationships, especially if they were working at a drive-thru, @womptomp encourages.
In an age of over-scrupulous HR workers alongside artificial intelligence (AI) ruthlessly checking everything, perhaps this form of reverse-engineered hack will help Gen Z professionals get ahead.
From grind to grandeur
A recent Career.io survey revealed that almost half of Gen-Z admitted to providing fake information on job applications.
Another from StandOut CV claims over 80.4% of 18-25 year olds have lied on a CV, compared to 46.9% of people aged 65+.
The tech-driven pressure of introducing AI scanners filtering keywords forces candidates to stand out and bypass the standard churn of point, click, and apply to be selected.
As LinkedIn culture is full of fake experts writing AI newsletters en masse, it’s no wonder the younger generations have impostor syndrome when it comes to the application process.
The main problem would be if a young candidate appeared to be hyper-qualified for a role, or the airbrushing was so obvious that the employer ran a country mile.
Ghosted by the truth
The risks involved are quite obvious. Sending a spurious application is one thing, but winging it past second and third round interviews is another, especially for a white-collar position.
Reframing your experiences as project-based interplays is better than straight-up embellishment.
AI is likely to find us out anyway, even if a human doesn’t – so if you were serving up McFlurries last summer, best not say you were a Cold Chain Logistics Specialist.