Most Canadian hiring managers say job seekers’ resumes don’t match their actual skills at least some of the time, according to a new survey from Express Employment Professionals and Harris Poll.
Eighty-two percent of hiring managers say candidates’ resumes don’t align with their real-world abilities at least sometimes. Nearly one in three hiring managers report it happens all the time or often.
By contrast, only 22 percent of job seekers admit to listing skills they don’t actually have.
AI making exaggeration easier
A large majority of hiring managers, 84 percent, believe AI makes it too easy to embellish resumes. Thirty-five percent strongly agree AI is becoming a serious hiring risk.
The survey was conducted online in Canada by Harris Poll on behalf of Express Employment Professionals from Nov. 3 to 19, 2025, among 504 Canadian hiring decision-makers. A separate job seeker survey was conducted from Nov. 7 to 21, 2025, among 502 adults ages 18 and older.
Examples of resume misrepresentation
Hiring managers reported examples of candidate misrepresentation, according to the survey results. One candidate claimed to have graduated from a prestigious university at the top of his class, but admitted under questioning from a hiring manager who attended the same university that he was never a student there.
Another candidate claimed to be bilingual in English and French but was not, resulting in lost sales for the company. One candidate applying for a VP role listed 10 years of experience but was not old enough to have worked that long.
A job applicant claimed to have years of experience with children, but on her first day started yelling at toddlers and didn’t notice when kids left the room unattended.
Common exaggerations
Job seekers admitted to several forms of resume embellishment in the survey. Examples included listing advanced computer programming skills they did not have, changing previous job titles to ones they think are more attractive to employers, saying they left an employer on good terms when the opposite was true, and adding time to the duration of positions they held.
“In today’s market, you don’t need a perfect resume; you need a truthful one,” said Bob Funk Jr., CEO, president and chairman of Express Employment International. “When job seekers exaggerate their abilities, they set themselves up for stress, failure and lost opportunities. But when they’re transparent about what they know and eager to learn what they don’t, employers take notice.”
Express Employment Professionals is an international staffing company with franchise locations across the U.S., Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.
