Résumé Inflation

The other day, my friend Sean sent me an e-mail letting me know that he'd come across the whereabouts of a former colleague of hours. I had to laugh when I saw what the fellow was taking credit for having accomplished at our old company - come on, now, do you really want me to believe that you were responsible for a 200% increase in sales during your tenure there?

I looked around a bit to see what some of the other folks in sales management at that place were saying, and damned if all of them weren't responsible for triple-digit sales growth.

Too bad none of that translated into either triple-digit revenue growth, let alone single-digit profitability.

No matter.

I'm sure that these guys were telling their version of fingers-crossed truth: that one quarter when, starting from a base of near zero, they were able to goose things up.

It's not just sales, folks, of course, who aggrandize their accomplishments.

I notice that most times when I read the management bios on a company's website, the managers managed to hold "executive" positions in every last company they've worked for. Doesn't anybody actually start out in a lowly, entry level job?

In any case, after getting on a roll looking up the sales managers from my old company, I thought I'd check out what one of the marketing alumni had to say for himself. There wasn't all that much inflation on that part of his résumé, but I did notice that he was happy to brag about his next company's having been named to the Leaders' box on the Gartner Magic Quadrant. His doing, of course. (Let's hope his new company doesn't expect an automatic repeat. What if this time he's stuck with a sorry-ass product and lame-o financials, and gets stuck in the Niche box on the MQ. Since I've landed in all four boxes at one point or another during my career, I'd be happy to help him spin up the marvels of the Niche box. But I'm guessing if he ever gets boxed in there, he'll be leaving off how instrumental a role he played in getting there from his résumé.)

Of course, what's behind all this is that infernal pressure to showcase "results" on your résumé.

So what if that company's 6 feet under: you got results.

Thus the temptation to claim some responsibility for anything that happened on your watch just because you were present at the creation. Or to play the numbers game and demonstrate the miracles you were responsible for. Of course, most people know enough when they see those percentages to figure out that the absolute numbers are probably pretty miniscule. (Hey, I was VP of Marketing at a software company during the period when revenues more than tripled! Of course, we started off with revenues of a little over $2M, and when I left, we were a little over $7M. Of course, the struggle to achieve even this paltry level of sales took us years. No matter. If I were the real résumé inflation type, I could say "as VP of Marketing, grew revenues by over 200%". Damn, I must be good!)

At one point, I came across the management bio of the CMO of one of the larger outfits I worked for. In it, he claimed to have invented the product category we were in, which was pretty funny, given we were in that category before he blew in to town. He also talked about his responsibility for an award-winning and iconic marketing campaign. Well, award-winning and iconic may both be true, but here's where I'd have wanted to see a bit about the results. The marketing campaign cost tens of millions of dollars, and yielded something along the lines of 0 in new revenue. Talk about iconic!

Most of us are guilty at one point or the other of a bit of résumé BS-ing. And, in truth, I think it's relatively harmless - unlike the out-and-out lies that make there way onto some résumés, which are invariably and inevitably caught at some point.

Stick to the truth is generally a pretty good policy to follow, especially since that damned truth has an annoying habit of sticking to you, doesn't it?

As for a little résumé inflation, a tiny bit of spinning up and polishing, for those in the real know, it's always good for a laugh.