You can take this title in a variety of ways, and likely you’d be right. But the issue of the moment lies in the details of what you have previously told your current employer.
Picture this: You’ve been on the job for a few years, built effective relationships, trust and a good record of productivity with your employer. An opportunity for internal advancement arises, and you have the chance to move up, earn more money, and all the perks that come with the promotion. Your current supervisor knows you are appropriate for this promotion, encourages you to apply and has offered to give you a recommendation. Because your employer must comply with a bevy of legal procedural requirements, you must submit your resume like any other candidate, current fellow employee or outside applicant.
With the application deadline fast approaching, you put together a resume and submit it with the other requisite information. A week or so later you get a call from the manager of the department with the opening and you schedule a meeting. It goes well! The manager likes you, you seem like a good fit, and your confidence level goes up.
A few more days go by, you get a call for another meeting, and an offer is made. You got the promotion. Congratulations!! You bid farewell to your former department and move in to your new office. Your first project in the new position is handed to you and you hit the ground running.
Sounds great, right?
While you’re working in your new position, a member of the HR team has received your recently submitted/accepted new resume and is putting it into your personnel file along with your promotional paperwork. The HR staffer catches a glimpse of your older resume, the one you sent to first get hired, and notices a discrepancy between your old and new document. The Education section of your resumes lists different schools and degrees.
Uh oh!!
Fifteen minutes of research later, your employer has just confirmed that you lied, not just once but twice, and couldn’t even keep your lies straight. There goes your credibility; so much for your being “detail oriented” and “highly organized”!
You then get a call to go to HR, where your former and current supervisors, along with the HR director and a senior V.P. and a member of the building’s security team meet you. “You’re fired”, says the V.P. “You have 15 minutes to retrieve your belongings and vacate the premises”.
And the employer has every right to let you go! Even if you hadn’t lied on your first resume, the second one contradicted its content. We’re not condoning that you lie at any time!!! You could have been on the job for many years, but once the lie is discovered, it is grounds for dismissal. No matter how good you are at your job, making the employer feel foolish for trusting you is not an effective way to stay employed!
Yes, you could apologize, but acknowledging your error in judgment doesn’t negate that you did lie, and you got caught. Good luck looking for a new job!