People lie on their resumes. It's not exactly rocket science working that out. But the little lies you tell can come back to haunt you. One common trick is to take out jobs you don't want on your resume. Maybe you had a bad experience, maybe they gave you an average reference, or maybe you think it just detracts from your resume in some way. So you don't put the job on your resume, and you carefully change dates from other jobs to cover the gap. And you think you are going to get away with it. Sometimes you will. Sometimes you won't.

First, you can get caught out during the reference stage of the recruitment process. One of the standard questions a good recruiter is going to ask is to verify dates of employment. Even companies that do not give references will happily verify dates of employment.

Discrepancies with dates (especially when they are longer than a week or two) are going to raise alarm bells. But here is the thing: the chances are, over a period of time, you have sent your resume to an agency more than once. Shockingly, we review the different resumes. Disturbingly, we often see discrepancies.

Worryingly (for you), we don't like discrepancies. This week, one of our consultants returned to a candidate the three versions of his own resume he had sent in. Each resume was vastly different from each other, and a message was sent with the returned resumes to advise him that we are not prepared to represent him to any of our clients. Lie about your past and you just might risk your future.