You should never lie on your resume, but if you do, the punishment in the United States tends to be super mild. If you get caught (and there’s always a chance you won’t), you may not get the job, get fired, or be publicly humiliated. But you’re very unlikely to serve time in jail.
The rest of the world doesn’t operate in the same way. An unidentified Greek woman is currently serving prison time because she lied on her resume.
According to The New York Times, she worked for 18 years as a cleaner in a school, when an audit showed that she had “doctored a certificate to show she had completed six years of primary education (roughly elementary level) instead of only five.”
Now, admittedly, actually forging a certificate is more serious than simply lying on a resume, but let’s remember what certificate she forged: an elementary school one.
She’s currently appealing the conviction to the highest court in Greece, and there is an online petition in her favor, with almost 30,000 people supporting her.
To keep reading, click here: This Woman is Serving 10 Years in Prison for Lying to Get a Job
To have had this person in that position for 18 years, before finding a problem in education certificate, sounds very fishy as if they were looking for an excuse to fire the person. Hope there were more reasons than this, to place a person in jail.
Just wait until more employers start demanding that we list our social media history on our CVs.
jdgalt – There already are tales of people being asked to provide access to their private social media accounts during job interviews: http://fortune.com/2012/03/28/must-you-give-a-job-interviewer-your-facebook-password/