Cover Photo by Gauraangi Gupta
It’s that time of the year when fall graduates and spring internship seekers are getting their résumés straight, adding all their skills, great projects, certificates and leadership roles. They do so all while making sure the font, size and layout are right and that the page count sticks to one.
For many college students, their résumés are the first big step toward life after college.
In today’s job market, however, hiring managers expect nothing short of an Olympic-level career feat, and the unrealistic expectations cause job seekers to exaggerate and overpromise on their résumés. Now, everyone becomes a “visionary leader” in just four years of college.
According to a 2023 survey by ResumeLab, about 70% of job applicants exaggerated or considered lying on their résumés.
So, when some students state they managed a team, it sometimes means they asked a team member to create a Google Drive to upload the project. For others, being fluent in Excel means the student knows how to add a graph to the sheet and change colors.
But students should not be faulted for exaggerating or giving fancy words to their bare minimum achievements.
Most jobs these days proudly expect their entry-level candidate to have at least five years of experience and a graduate degree, making it unfair toward undergraduate students. It’s like saying, “A Nobel Prize is preferred but not required.”
Because of this, students opt for some linguistic embellishments to boost their résumés.
Political science junior Camryn Alberigo said, “I wouldn’t really consider it exaggerating, it’s just a matter of presentation and confidence.” Alberigo added, “There are multiple ways to say the same skill, but you will be judged based on how well you connect it to the company’s vision.”
Strategic communication junior Zoe Crooks also weighed in.
“I’m scared that if I lie and they ask me to do something I lied about knowing to do, I’m going to get in trouble,” said Zoe Crooks. “Exaggerating just gives my skills a little extra padding when it comes to descriptions.”
For students like Crooks, the field they are in changes the perspectives of the exaggerations as well. Working in social media, Crooks believes that, technically, anyone can learn how to do social media management, but not everyone knows how to really tell a brand’s story — and that’s where her true skill is.
“Social media is a more complicated job than people realize,” Crooks said. “So instead of saying I know how to ‘advertise a company,’ I say ‘I help with corporate storytelling in order to attract more people who are interested and aligned with a brand’s vision.’”
While many students lean more on honesty in how they position their competencies, for hiring managers today, being competent isn’t even good enough anymore.
Apparently, a college degree these days is merely a compliment to the bajillion years of experience required.
Not to take a jab at older populations like the Baby Boomers, but many of the office veterans who have been “leading initiatives” for years don’t even know how to share a screen during a Microsoft Teams call.
To clarify, this isn’t a put-down of experience. Yes, experience matters. That’s how you know when to panic because a client got upset or when to close your laptop, take a walk and pretend the Wi-Fi isn’t working.
This conversation, however, is about how college students are nearly forced into exaggerating because of the unrealistic expectations and their need to stand out and look confident.
Employers preach that a degree is just a piece of paper and they look at skills. They want fresh ideas and new voices, but ironically only from those applicants who’ve already done the same job twice for another employer.
Perhaps the real question is: If every job wants experienced workers but none of them want to give new job seekers the opportunity to get that experience, what are students expected to do next?
Without the exaggerations, or linguistic embellishments, to give the illusion of years of experience, we’re left with an awful lot of overqualified Uber drivers, Shoppers and Dashers. Is that the goal? It cannot be. If it is, we may have officially lost the plot.
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