George O'Leary, the Notre Dame football coach who resigned after five days on the job last month because he got caught padding his resume, apparently has lots of company when it comes to exaggerating work accomplishments. A recent survey of 7,000 executive resumes involved in 500 random executive searches conducted this year by recruitment firm Christian & Timber found that about 23% of executive candidates misrepresent themselves on their resumes. And many of the offenders are seeking IT executive posts, such as CIO and chief technology officer, says Bill Trau, a VP at Christian & Timbers.

Offending execs aren't exactly picky about what they'll embellish, either. Of those who tinker with the truth, about 71% of them misrepresent the number of years they've spent in a job, 64% exaggerate their accomplishments, 60% exaggerate the size of the organizations they've managed, 52% claim their partial degrees are full degrees, 48% exaggerate their compensation, 44% exaggerate the number of jobs they've held, and 41% omit jobs they don't want people to know about.

The good news for IT recruiters is that technology execs tend to pad their resumes slightly less frequently than some other executives, mainly because it's more difficult for IT folks to fabricate certain achievements, such as education and degrees, Trau says. "Education background is critical to job specifics in IT," he says. "If you can't code, how can you have that master in programming?" What IT execs tend to fabricate most frequently is the significance of their job accomplishments, such as the impact and success of an IT project, he says. "That's sometimes harder to verify," Trau says. "It takes more digging."

Trau says exaggeration of compensation is common among all types of execs. "I'll start out a conversation and ask a candidate what he's currently making," he says. "Later, I'll ask him again and I'll say, 'Send me your tax returns or pay stub,' and more than half the time, the answer is different from the first response." But when Trau discovers a fabrication related to education, he'll drop the candidate from consideration.