George Santos has entered the chat...

if outright lies bother you, consider telling the truth in a way that gets you past automated screening/quick recruiter scans.

for example: I dropped out of a masters program, but I still put it under education with (unfinished) near it and the years I attended university. I get calls back for jobs that 'require' a masters, and by the time I'm talking to the actual hiring manager or potential peer in an interview they have never once asked about it.

with your particular question, consider telling the truth more or less as you described it at the top if it comes up deep in an interview process. It can be a good way to sus out whether the team you'd join will be transphobic or not.

that doesn't mean you can't lie on the resume either, I don't think it's mutually exclusive and you gotta go with what you're comfortable with

It really depends on which companies you apply to

Every company I've gotten an offer for a coding role did a 3rd party background check for education+ criminal + employment

BUT, I have heard specifically for Amazon entry level roles, they don't do employment or even education check, only criminal

I don't think my situation quite compares since I've never been unemployed for long periods of time - my time while unemployed was usually interspersed with brief periods of employment that I usually quit or got fired from. However to cover up periods of unemployment I would extend whatever job I had forwards or backwards in time to cover up my unemployment. If you really have zero employment for the past 4 years, you could also use volunteer work. Again stretch it out, make it seem more important than it actually might've been. I at one point had a period where I was involved with food not bombs on my resume as volunteering for a big food bank in my city that most people had heard of. It might not be employment, but it would be something to talk about - although employers would prefer to see employment, they know sometimes people are looking for jobs (esp. after college), but they do like to see something.

I usually try to have my lies based in some fact, but if you have no volunteer experience either, you might be able to make something up. But also, the fact that you graduated relatively recently helps, since as I say many people don't get a job right after college. Many people travel - you could say you did some traveling, a bougie company would love to hear that. Also 4 years ago - did you graduate 2020? I think Covid would be a good enough excuse for why you didn't have a job. Say it was the middle of the pandemic, couldn't really find anything, but instead you chose to work on personal development in the form of personal software projects. Also the internship would be a perfect thing to stretch out (unless it was during college, in which case it might be a little tough).

As someone brought up, the big fear with lying is that companies might check. Large companies are most likely to check, but you can usually request a company not to contact someone. Usually you need 2-3 references. I've been lucky in the past I've had enough coworkers to use for references (of course sometimes they request that at least one reference is a supervisor - I usually pass off one of my coworkers as being one level above me). Sometimes you need to get creative with references. Friends also work to lie, though I don't have experience with this.

Also definitely play up your skills. Not so much that they think you're able to do things that you're not of course, but do make them seem a bit more impressive than they might be.

Everything and anything. That internship? Its a job now. Also you're not unemployed you're self employed and all those data projects are samples. If you don't feel confident throw in remote work of something simple and easy to lie on like data entry/rating. If they do personality testing study UNICRU. I have gaps of 4-7yrs and that's what I do.

Most companies for entry lvl don't check I was told the rule of thumb for checking is above 50k or so as well as sensitive work, but jobs like that physically aren't going to hire me in rural chudland just by looking at me.

You can claim self employment, contract work, jobs with companies that have gone bust, and/or expand your claimed experience within a job and say you signed an NDA (eg Military), and there's practically no way for a company to prove or disprove it.

My personal rule is that I never lie about being able to do something I cannot. When I say I'll work with something, I might not have all the experience I claim, but I know I can do the work.

the only time i have experience with this is at one point i lied about having a masters degree when I didn't even have a bachelors, they didn't even check but it didn't even help much with hiring tbh and I ended up removing it from the resume and put real stuff and got hired with that. that said, I would say mostly don't lie and for the things you do lie about, not only convince yourself its true but also run through a few toy projects and google/chatgpt common interview questions for that thing and all the other things you are supposed to know and rehearse your shit. i actually am doing that for stuff that I have experience with too because I'm forgetting stuff I knew 2 years ago, for example. that said, I can't lie, I've been super tempted to start lying about the EXTENT of my experience with things lately, I feel like I'm being too honest and noone else is......

I assume you’re still entry level? In most cases, they’re not going to grill you on technical shit unless you’re applying for Google or something.

Just look up interview questions on YouTube (try to avoid the larger clickbaity ones. A lot of smaller people who seem more realistic about the scope). After that, mention your side projects, but also lie/exaggerate about side projects related to your job. Most entry level jobs will ask you hypothetical situations and how you would solve the issues - I don’t think I’ve had any entry IT interviews asking me about TCP/IP layers or how Kerberos works. But obviously, your entry level job may be different.

For example, a few years back, I was looking to set up a simulated network to manage Active Directory and basic pentesting. I got lazy and didn’t really do many thing beyond skipping around in tutorials and reading basic explanations. I included it on my resume anyway when I applied to an IT position at a warehouse. The most important part is thinking of reasonable hypotheticals and coming up with reasonable answers. It’s okay not to know something - I admitted that I was still “working out some quirks with my setup and understand the concepts” even though I haven’t used windows for like 2 years let alone Active Directory.

Another example is that I had an informal, impromptu “internship” in high school that was basically just me talking to people and watching them work and going home. But they also showed me some of their software and servers and I ran with that shit. “Reconfigured outdated hardware to maintain compatibility with [company’s] products”; “Assisted with the testing of software”; “Provided customer service to clients”.

You probably don’t wanna lie as a senior candidate unless you understand the concepts but lack the experience. I don’t know what you’re applying for, but just lie about something simple and don’t elaborate unless they ask. NEVER elaborate on stuff you lie about unless they ask, because you’ll show your ass because they might become interested and ask beyond what you prepared.

Beyond resume, lie your ass off about previous salaries (keep it believable), and always counter an offer by informing them that it's lower than the other offers you have on the table, keep those believable too. Depending on your level of experience and industry averages you can at least get a few more thousand out of them.

Say you were a full time caretaker for a family member. You'll look responsible and kind.

My rule is do not lie about anything you don’t think you could actually pull off if push comes to shove. That might sound like a limiting factor but once you realize most jobs are not as hard as they want you to believe it really does open the doors to anything you wanna do. Obviously don’t lie about being a nuclear scientist or something, but for most work this one has always served me right. It’s all about framing and picking the right words to make you stand out.

All of them if you can pull it in the interview