Students crowd a job fair at Yonsei University in Seoul, on Sept. 5, 2019. (image: Yonsei University)
SEOUL, Sept. 26 (Korea Bizwire) — More than two thirds of job seekers have written a cover letter with a false description about themselves, according to a recent study.
Saramin, an online job search portal, conducted a survey of 1,722 job seekers, in which 76.4 percent said they had written a false description about themselves for a job application.
The respondents said that they had written false descriptions about themselves on at least 35.3 percent of all job applications they had submitted in the past.
As for the reason, 55.1 percent said that they wanted to make a better impression to their prospective employer.
Writing false or exaggerated self-introductions on a job application is seen as an act of desperation among job seekers hoping to gain whatever advantage possible to boost their odds of getting a job.
Respondents believed that there was a 47.6 percent chance of having their job application accepted if they wrote a false or exaggerated self-introduction.
In contrast, they believed that the acceptance rate would fall down to 35.8 percent if they wrote an honest, factual self-introduction.
Roughly one third of the respondents said they had been asked by a potential employer whether they had written a false or exaggerated self-introduction on their job application, which indicates that false or exaggerated self-introductions, if too extreme, may put job seekers at risk of losing job opportunities.
“Many job seekers tend to exaggerate when describing themselves as they desperately seek to impress porential employers,” said Saramin.
H. M. Kang (hmkang@koreabizwire.com)
