These People Completely Lied On Their Job Applications And Paid The Price

I graduated with a degree in Journalism, but while taking video editing classes I became interested in After Effects and animation in general, so I learned After Effects on the side.

One of the first jobs I applied for was a 3D animator position. I figured if I could learn After Effects I could learn a 3D application…

But they figured wrong.

They asked me if I knew 3d Studio Max, to which I replied, “Oh sure. I’m not an expert, but I took a few classes in college.”

I had never seen or even heard of that application before. If you’re not familiar with applications like 3d Studio or Maya (which I also later learned) they are so vast, deep and complex that it easily takes five to ten years to use them with competence, and even more than that to even begin to master the software (which is next to impossible),

“And that’s not counting the render engines, scripting and supplemental applications needed along the way.”

For nearly a year, after everyone went home from work I would stay until nearly midnight going through tutorials. I would come in on the weekends for 8-10 hours per day.

I applied for the college program at Disney and you get a catch-all phone interview for every department you express interest in. I expressed interest in almost everything, cause I was like, increases my chances, right?

If only we could have told them…

And I acted like I was this badass that could handle anything in the phone interview. I was assigned to the hot dog restaurant on Main Street. And no, I could not handle anything.

For some reason, we’re not surprised.

Not me but a family-friend growing up. He had just been hired as CEO of a multi-million dollar company when it was discovered that he lied about being on the tennis team in college.

So how’d he get caught?

His college didn’t have a tennis team until 6 years after he graduated. He was immediately fired.

And why such a serious reaction?

Crazy how little that would have mattered in terms of his qualifications for the job, it was just the fact that he lied.

I lied about being a bartender. Said I worked at all kinds of restaurants around Australia figuring they wouldn’t fact check me from the U.S. All jobs give you a little training to get familiar with what is going on so I just had to be focused and learn very quickly.

Focus can help you manage any job, but some things will always be out of your control.

They would ask me to make pretty basic drinks and if I didn’t have time to google it without them seeing I would just say, “How do you make yours? I want to keep the drinks consistent for the regulars”

This hack helped a bit.

They would show me and I would write it down. Eventually I was on my own on a Friday night and oh man was it tough.

Luckily they didn’t do checks (even-though they said they would and I supplied a few spare numbers and created emails for them), and I’m still doing pretty well at my job.

And what job can afford not to do checks?

I mean it’s retail, it’s not like anyone’s life is on the line.

I worked with a guy who clearly lied about having excel experience. It was discovered in the first 10min of training when he started asking how to make very basic updates to cells.

How long did he keep the job?

He lasted 5 weeks which was 5 weeks too long.

I didn’t, but my coworker lied about how much programming experience he had. It was about two weeks before my boss caught on and fired him.

How’d this genius get caught?

Dude had spent over a week working on a project that should’ve taken him a day.

I put I was able to speak French in my CV at the start. Wasn’t a problem until I was interviewed by someone who spoke fluent French when I’d just barely passed it in school.

Haven’t lied on my CV since, just fluffed it.

I wanted to make a career change into data science but never took the time to learn any query languages (I was going to get to it eventually). Then a data science/statistician job opened in my agency for 40% more pay than what I was making at the time.

So what did he do?

I applied for it, and wrote in my resume that I had completed some e-learning courses on various query languages – but I told myself I would do it very soon. I didn’t even think I’d get the interview and long story short I got the job without ever learning those query languages.

Straight out of high school lied about knowing how to work with aeronautic composites and how to paint planes. Got the job and they quickly found out I knew nothing about repairing airplanes.

This was a pretty bold lie, but it wasn’t all bad for him in the beginning.

So I was made a prep guy. All I did was prepare airplane parts to be painted or sometimes I would spray flame retardant material on finished parts. Was let go after a year.