This has been bothering me for the last 6 years! When I was testing novice, I was given sagely advice by many of my well wishers that it is almost impossible to get a job without adding fake experience on my CV so I should just add it. I have nothing against them as they truly meant to help me and gave the best advice they could. What I am against is the fact that people feel compelled to add such fake experience in the fist place.
I have been observing the trends in my own little way on this issue. I have been approached many times by people requesting a help in getting their career kick started. The requests for help varied from CV review to putting in a good word with hiring managers that I know of. The requests were varied, people were from varied backgrounds but unfortunately one constant was that almost all of them had some fake experience on their CVs. I should add here that many of these people have actually managed to get jobs with such CVs.
In my opinion, what this reflects is the sad state of hiring processes within our industry. Some of the important questions I see here are:
- Why do potential candidates feel compelled to add fake experience on their CVs?
- Why aren’t there many jobs for novice testers?
- How do candidates with fake experience manage to sail through interviews and land jobs?
- Are there any portals(for the lack of better word, my brain has frozen) where newcomers can get advice on such matters? If not, maybe we need to come up with some!
Update:
After having read a few of the comments, I think it is time for a disclaimer 🙂
Disclaimer: This is purely based on my limited experience and is in no way a reflection of wider testing community. The purpose of this post is to see how relevant the problem is and what we can do to improve the situation.
raji 
This problem is not just for Testers, but for anyone in Software Industry. I know this post is old but let me tell you having spent sometime in job market in last couple of years, whatever you said is true and is in fact rampant. Reason is very simple, poor hiring process and just have a look at the job descriptions in any job portal. Most of them are overwhelming.
Even hiring managers in many cases do not know what exactly they want and end up asking for all skills in the world which they claim to be “using in near future” in their projects.
To be honest only skill or talent that is required for any IT professional according to me is …ability to learn new things and how fast they can learn new things. That is all matters. And also good understanding of the basics of their respective field.
These hiring managers leave no option for job seekers to fake their CVs.
Having said that i never faked through out my 16yr career and i don’t have many of those fancy tools in my CV as well..i consider myself lucky thats all.
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