How much leeway do you allow with candidates embellishing their resumes? Mostly I’ve experienced applicants padding dates, but one used a high profile name of a company he did not work for (he was a contractor for a company that had contracts with the high profile org, but he did not work on those contracts). I’ve also seen some resume gurus suggest changing past titles. I understand having to get creative with the job market, but how far do you let these things slide?

There’s some nuance here. Personally my military roles and titles don’t translate cleanly to the civilian world.
For example, I held the title “S1 HR Specialist,” but my duties were closer to a generalist. Later, I still had the same title while supporting over 300 employees and doing workforce planning more aligned with an HRBP.
That’s why my resume reflects the level of work I performed, not just the title I held.
If the duties align with a role, I’m comfortable using that title. You don’t always get the chance to sit in front of a hiring manager and explain the gap.
But there’s a line. Misrepresenting time, responsibilities, or experience is an automatic disqualification.

Well ya know its not any better with your company's out there flooding the job market with lies as well, always trying to glamourize the positions like they are something technical or highly skilled, when the add for driving a j-john shit sucker truck and ya all title it
"Environmental safety maintenance technician"
Seems like a lot of you HR's out there are doing a lot more emellishong than the people loll for work and some don't recall all the exact dates from and to again leaders sayn do what we say not what we do

There is a difference between embellishing and outright lying. Candidates don't always remember exact dates, but padding to avoid explaining gaps is something I would question. To me, being a contractor is not the same as working on specific projects- I would consider that to be untruthful.

People actually lie on resumes? I have never lied or over embellished my experience. What happens when they get hired and can't do the job? I see WFH groups on FB and there are some that give you resume templates (apparently lying about experience), and they paid people to do assessments too. It blows my mind.

I look at it this way. No two companies use the same titling structure. So if someone works for a company under the title Talent Manager, but lists it on their resume as HRBP so that it makes more sense in the general population, im good with this.

However, if someone says they worked for a company that they didn't work for - that's not just embellishment. I miught have some understanding if they worked for a 3rd party firm at a client site, but listed the client's name as the employer. But in your situation that is just fraud, and i would no longer consider them for the position.

How important is honesty and integrity to you as an employer? If you accept it at interview stage you can expect it through out employment...embellishing performance, taking credit where it isn't due, not upholding codes of conduct. It's a red flag I wouldn't ignore.

A month or two leeway for hire dates. That's about it. If you lie during the application process it is grounds for dismissal.

I think there's a big difference between changing job titles to align with industry standard titles that match the duties performed (see Principal Consultant 1's comments regarding the military) and providing blatantly false information. That seems to be the case with the individual who "used a high profile name of a company he did not work for." Allow your common sense to guide you. If it feels like an out-and-out falsehood, check the facts. If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck...

I usually see employers give a few months on dates, and since flexibility is a good thing but the last example would be too much in my opinion.

First I would say resume is not an official application. The words, most perceived to be a title, do not necessarily have to be a position title. It can be descriptive in nature. Because organizations refer to different positions differently. For example I have been Business Manager but industry wise I was really the Controller. Recruiters really aren't trained to perceive some of the deliverables, especially in more technical situations, to translate it into the position that they are reviewing the resume for. For example, I have over 8 years of accounting experience in corporate accounting. But because of my title didn't say corporate accountant, the headhunter responded to me and told me they were looking for somebody who had corporate accounting experience. And I'm sitting here looking at my resume. Like all of my accounting experience is at corporations. But because they couldn't tie the companies need with the titles.I had on my resume.I was immediately declined. So I do think tailoring in this regard is highly acceptable. However claiming to work for companies never worked/contracted for is not acceptable.

A resume that does reflect the facts = lies

I don't care much about dates. People forget, or round up or down. That's pretty much to be expected.

What I am interested in is skill level. If you're lying about what you know how to do or have experience in, we've got a problem. I'm not throwing in a 2 year min experience to be cute. I'm adding it because the trainer we've got has time to take someone with a solid base and fine tune them, not build from scratch.

Title can be iffy. It might be that a previous job added so many responsibilities that their title wasn't really accurate. Or they might want to use a different title because that one has a higher wage associated with it and/or want to sponge up some prestige. At minimum, I want to know which of those two people I'm speaking to.

To me, it would depend on the intent and the scope of the deception.

For example, I literally saw a VP at a former employer come in having claimed to be a CLO of a world renown, over century old company for a short while. Found out a year later, they were never higher than a director and there were now managing three teams with 2-3x the amount of people they had any experience managing. And was nothing but a bag of fucking MBA hot air. Now, I realized they were coached to lie, and the headhunter agreed, because a former boss had come in as the CLO at the company I was working for and wanted a few "friends" that they trusted. But to me, that was straight out deception and fraud. It's one thing as the one commentator said to translate job titles/duties from industry to industry or from one culture to another - like their work in the military getting translated into standard corporate speak. But making yourself out to be a CLO at a major company, even if the hiring company is clueless or doesn't check at the request of a hiring manager with weight/pull/discretion, is complete fraud.

If an employee pads their resume by a few months to cover part of an employment gap, or perhaps pads it longer to cover up the fact that they left a company and the new one turned out to be a nightmare, I can understand since there's stigma against speaking negatively about situations/companies.

So I always start with intent and the nature of the embellishment.

I have also had the opportunity to do the screening call. With recruiters who were asking technical accounting question and because I didn't use what their company said, this specific terminology was to use for the position they weren't able to connect the dots. I have had to actually explain to recruiters that I just described what they're looking for like knowing the cost of goods sold or more cost accounting functions. Because when they ask you to tell you what you did, you never know what terminology that they're actually looking for but also, they don't always understand different technical terms, and how some of them can be used interchangeably

How far do you let them slide? You don't.