Yet, thinking about summer is equally chilling. For many of us, summer means that important internship or job we need to secure our future.

Thinking about that job is sometimes all I can do to write this column.,”

It's hard not to hibernate in this weather. Thinking about summer is sometimes all I can do to get off my couch.

Yet, thinking about summer is equally chilling. For many of us, summer means that important internship or job we need to secure our future.

Thinking about that job is sometimes all I can do to write this column.

Getting that job often entails a full out self-marketing campaign including anything from updating the privacy settings on Facebook to developing the perfect résumé.

Résumés often contain as much truth as the weight on a woman's driver's license: it wouldn't even get you a point in horseshoes.

Common résumé writing advice holds that only pertinent information be listed. Common practice tells me most college students are creative enough to still list anything.

For example, if you made payroll at daddy's office playing solitaire for eight, scratch that, four hours a day, you:

Handled multiple phone lines.

Multitasked various clerical duties.

Typed at 80 wpm.

Proficient in numerous computer programs.

Nevermind that those phone calls came from your cell and the only computer program you used, or typed that fast in was Instant Messenger. Write it off as experience.

And the givens, so banal you only notice them when someone doesn't list them:

Motivated.

Goal-oriented.

People person.

Excellent communication skills.

Which is true, in the context of challenging your friend to see who can get more free drinks or phone numbers. But on a résumé it reads, "Utterly predictable and boring." All right, so maybe it'll get you an engineering co-op.

And then there's the experience we wish we could list:

Berated by elderly customers on a daily basis.

Multitasked other people's work and a volatile hangover.

Held back the tears when ordered to find "someone who knows what's going on."

Ability to sit there and take it for $6/hr.

Never followed through on threats to maim/bludgeon that customer/co-worker.

If you've ever worked at a restaurant or in customer service you know exactly what I'm talking about. Most will agree that it's a job everyone should be required to work at some point. Truly invaluable experience.

I've been tempted to list it verbatim so many times, but watered it down to "received and resolved issues and complaints," which totally sounds like I was having a great time; leisurely chatting it up with the ever-satisfied retail shopper. Yeah right.

According to a survey released by CareerBuilder.com in October, 57 percent of hiring managers have caught lies on candidates' résumés.

My co-workers found this atrocious. But while I prize honesty over, well, everything, I understand that not everyone is that comfortable with the hard reality. Who wants to tell an employer, "Yeah, I'm not really that qualified" or "It really couldn't get much worse"?

Strangely enough though, of those hiring managers, 93 percent did not hire the red-handed candidate – meaning 7 percent did. I don't know what those lies are, but I feel comfortable assuming that 7 percent of managers, disappointed as they may have been, remembered the game.

It's a game we all play, and no one wants to be the first to bow out. Knowing that everyone else is probably embellishing even just a teensy bit piles on the pressure to do the same. No one wants to be the only one who didn't get the memo.

Oh and by the way, don't say your biggest flaw is that you're a perfectionist. Who are you kidding?

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