Approximately 2/3 have a white lie on their resume

It is not completely uncommon to have one or two harmless white lies on your resume but if you have written down a half-truth, have you then ever been confronted with it?

We have asked our panel members in the Nordics and Ireland if they have ever been confronted with a lie on their resume. If you for instance have lied about the ability to speak French, you may have been forced to do so during an interview or perhaps you have exaggerated your Excel skills which you have had to admit after getting the job.

This at least seem to be the case for quite a few of Userneeds' Irish panel members. Ten percent thus say that they have been confronted with a white lie on their resume, which is ten times as many as in all the remaining countries, where only one percent say the same thing. This, however, does not mean that nobody lies on their resume in the Nordic countries. Between 27 percent (Norway) and 34 percent (Finland), have in other words chosen the option "No", admitting that they do have white lies on their resume but simply haven't been confronted with them.

In Ireland 39 percent have chosen the option "No" and almost half of the 1796 Irish respondents (49 percent) thus have a white lie on their resume. At the other end of the spectrum we find Norway, where one percent have been confronted with a lie, 27 percent have a lie on their resume but have not been confronted with it and 72 percent do not have any white lies on their resume.