I've been browsing the internet lately, looking for tips to improve my resumé. One sentiment that I constantly ran into was that it's a bad idea to lie on your resumé. Literally every site I visited mentioned this.
I agree that it's unethical to lie on your resumé. But is it necessarily a bad idea?
If the objective is to land a job, lying on your resumé can, sadly, be a good strategy. If you make sure the lie isn't so big that you get caught (either during a background check, or after you get the job and it is discovered you lied about your skills), then there's little downside risk. You just make yourself look a little bit better. For example, as a software engineer, you may write on your resume that you have "extensive experience with the technologies x, y, z"... as long as you know the company does not actually use those technologies, you will never be tested on it. All it does is make you look like an eager and passionate learner.
Or am I wrong?