A Resume or a CV in essence is your short story about your success. It is 100% biased. It is written by you about you. You can choose what you want to put on it and what not. For what you put on it, you will display it in the best light. What you know you cannot paint pretty, you just skip.

Every job you list on your CV is contains a list of achievements (if not get some help with it). It shows how you on your initiative changed the company, and increased their sales. Or something similar. But equally – fabulous! It might end with a line describing why and how you left – and landed your next job, the next step in your career.

Now imagine for a second what would your manager write about that same time period – you working for there. Would it be so rosy? No. Newer. It would actually be,… realistic. You have been late more often than anyone in the team. Some tasks asked of you, you simply did not do. You insisted on taking that holiday in the week when the product was to be released, and took unpaid days off when it didn’t get approved. Your coffee breaks in mid mornings had a really bad influence on the whole team.

The manager would also include one or two ‘OKs’ while defining you. But there is a whole world of difference between OK and a stellar career progression your utopia document called a CV is all about.

Counteroffers mentioned in your cover letters all of the sudden become redundancies or even dismissals from the employers eyes. Any good CV compared to what your teachers and your managers would write about you would actually resemble to the parallel universe scenario. But the one where there is very few similarities in between. There are actually just a few basic touching points. Those are: Dates, Schools & Employers name and your job titles. All the rest is actually Fantasy. It is Fiction.

Statistical analysis of the publicly available data and the data that is on CV’s show the complete opposites. For every university we know well what is the percentage of the people who graduate of those who start studying. In some industries and geographies that number is well under 50% – of people actually finishing and leaving with a certification. In the same time if you look at any CV database there is no single college dropout within them? Do those not write a CV? No. They simply found something ‘more relevant’ for the job they are applying, to fill that time gap.

Your CV is a lie. Be 100% aware of it. In fact the less true in your CV is, the more interviews you will get. You wrote it good! The readiness to face the recruiter who will call your bluff, will determine if you will get a job. A recruiter is looking at fantastic careers on CVs all day every day. What you will be asked about in the interview will far more sound like a real life than your Fantasy CV. Be prepared for a ‘reality check’. Your resume or a CV have served its purpose to get you an interview. You have done well with it. Just remember that at the interview stage the reality changes again.