So the title says it all. I lied on my resume; fluffed a job and then added an entirely fictional job to extend my experience. But I nailed the interview and got the job, as the last few years of my experience are accurate and I really have been operating at the level I said I had. I even nailed the technical portion, there weren’t any questions I was asked that I was stumped on or couldn’t answer. I know the stuff and I can execute in the role (Senior in the tech industry) as I have been for the last several years.
Then came employment verification. I’ve never been forced to verify my employment history before, not like this. No company has gone this far to verify my employment in a background check. Basically in order to complete the background check, I had to supply all the places I’d worked for the past 7 years and include a W-2, pay stub, or 1099, which was fine. For 6 years and 9 months. But the other 3 months bled into that 3 years of completely fabricated experience. While I was in a technical role and going to a technical school, it wasn’t the technical experience I had on my resume and spoke to vaguely in the initial interview. I am also very confident that experience was used to justify the very competitive compensation package I have already accepted; basically I had 9 years of exp. on my resume, but only 6 of it was really applicable while the last 3 was a total lie.
I emailed the HR person I have been working with and spelled out the discrepancies in frank honesty, without adding any extra info as to why or embellishing on the facts. I also stated that I would be willing to speak to any of the experience on my resume as well to prove the rest of it was legit. Afterward, I completed the background verification honestly and have just finished up the onboarding documentation they already forwarded to me.
I just don’t know how to feel or what to think because I’ve never had this happen before, and I guess I’ve learned a valuable lesson here, but it’s so hard to get anywhere without a ridiculous amount of experience. So far I’ve been able to greatly exceed expectations and execute far in advance on deliverables and projects, so I’m confident I could do the same here, I just don’t know how common this is or if I did the right thing in being up front before the background check came back with discrepancies.
Thoughts?
TLDR; I lied on my resume to get a job, then after I accepted the offer I came clean to appease the background check gods, but I don’t know what’s gonna happen next.