Pros and Cons of using a fake address for job applications

I can't imagine that lying on a resume is ever a good idea. Are you going to maintain the lie during the interview? After you get hired? Unless you're willing (and able) to deceive your coworkers into believing that you've lived in their town all along, and possibly to maintain that lie for years, you'll eventually be found out. Not a good look.

Just take the address off.

You probably won't get in trouble, but you might cheat yourself out of a moving bonus. I was hired during a pretty tough period and still got a fairly fat relocation bonus for moving from out of state. At some companies it's automatic. Also, I just don't think it will be easy to keep up a lie like this during interviews. You'll be asked a lot of semi-personal questions and it will be hard to present a consistent story of someone who already lives in DC or NYC.

While I always try to prescribe that honesty is the best policy, theres nothing saying that you arent putting your friends' address on a resume while youre looking for work because you're hypothetically crashing with them, not necessarily a long time resident. I think the major roadblock would come if someone called you in for an immediate interview since you're "right down the road" and you would have to further the lies to explain why you can't make it in. Something like a friend's address to get you by the HR screen doesn't seem like a big deal, but in a worst case scenario, it opens the door for beginning a professional relationship based on a web of lies, that if found out, could seriously tarnish your image and mark you as untrustworthy.

I have always ONLY put my city/state, phone, and email on my resume. One reason is for safety. Another is that people can look you up and evaluate your pay based on the area you live. Another is that if you include a zip on things like Monster you can get kicked out for being too far before an employer even looks. I say include just your city/state, or just your state, or no city/state. Mostly they want to just know how to contact you so just your phone and email should suffice. If they ask where you live in an interview, tell them, and inform them that transportation or relocation is already taken care of.

You're loosing out on a potentially nice chunk of money if they're the kind of place that pays for relocation.

One thing you could do is to list two addresses: John Smith mobile phone: 111-111-1111 email: [email protected] home address: Town, CA local address: Town, MD This makes it obvious that you're not "settled" in CA and opens the door for questions, to which you say that you already spend time on the east coast and are ready to move as soon as you have a commute to plan your location around.

Here's the deal. You can get away with putting a friend's local address, and (if it comes up) telling the grey lie that you're staying there while looking for jobs if: 1) you can fly out for interviews with 36 hours notice and 2) you never make it the employers problem when you do have to move. And yes, realistically, you need to be about a 20% better candidate if you're not local, at least for most generalist-type jobs.

Alison Green of Ask A Manager does sometimes http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/outside-voices-careers/2011/08/22/how-to-conduct-a-long-distance-job-search - if you read not only her http://www.askamanager.org/2010/08/why-long-distance-job-searching-sucks.html but also the comments you'll get a sense of how people do this and how well it's worked for them. I've personally almost always been hired out-of-state, never tried to hide it, and negotiated or received moving expenses/bonuses each time (though some offers have had duration-of-stay agreements attached to the relocation pay).