By Liz Ryan

Fans of the late, beloved children's author Dr. Seuss will recall Marco, the protagonist in And to Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street. Marco is an embellisher: In his imagination, a horse-drawn wagon becomes a full-out circus parade. The wagon becomes a sleigh, then a chariot. The horses turn into elephants, all products of Marco's invention.

Someone like Marco would find instant trouble in today's job market, where embellishing details about job history and experience can lose you an opportunity -- or get you fired.

FUDGE FACTOR.  Which raises a question: How much poetic license can you use to market your talents when preparing your resume and cover letter? The answer is some, but tread carefully.

Here's a guide to where you can use some license, where you must not, and how to put your best foot forward without crossing the line between reasonable puffery and the dreaded realm of resume falsification.

Education
You don't mess around in this department. Simply list each degree you've earned, which school granted it, and when you graduated. If you've completed every graduation requirement except one class, and you'll be taking it this summer, you don't have a degree.

Or let's say you're all done with school, but you've got some outstanding library fees and so haven't received your diploma. Ditto -- that school won't confirm you as a graduate if asked by a prospective employer.

If you interviewed brilliantly with my company and I background-check you, and your diplomas don't check out, your "thanks anyway" letter is in the mail.

Also, don't list executive education courses or company training in the education section of your resume. Those are training programs, not degree courses. However, if you attended three colleges before graduating from State U., you don't need to list those schools on your resume.

The bottom line is that you earned your sheepskin. The fact that you transferred credits from other institutions is immaterial and unlikely to help you. So leave it out.

Job History
Can you enhance your job history? Not much, but maybe a little. If you did temp or contract work at a company before coming on full-time, you can add those roles when calculating your tenure at that outfit -- though you must specify that you went from contract work to full-time employment, and also list the dates for each assignment (otherwise, your former employer's dates won't match yours).

You can minimally alter a job title only if the title you held is confusing or silly. For instance, if you were called "wizard of influential services" in a dot-com startup, I give you license to make that "channel marketing manager" or some other well-understood designation. You cannot promote yourself after the fact or move your job to a more attractive department.

You cannot, of course, mess with your employment dates. However, you need not include every job you've ever held, especially short-term assignments you would just as soon forget. If you don't mind being held accountable for the gap in your employment dates, there's no law (statutory or ethical) that says you have to include the in-and-out assignment.

If the topic comes up in an interview or after you have been hired, say: "I leave that job off my resume. It was such a short assignment, and it takes longer than an interview schedule allows to explain what the job was, why I went there, and why it didn't work out."

Skills
This is the tricky one: In your eloquent cover letter, can you mention skills you sort of possess, or the ones that you are working on? And what to say about the functional areas you've been exposed to? Just that: You can say you have been exposed to X, Y, and Z. Anything you say about yourself will have to be backed up in a job interview (or two, or three, or four). What good will it do you to get in the door on the strength of your fictional trade-show management expertise if you can't walk the talk when face to face with the vice-president of marketing?

Here's an example of one paragraph of a cover letter that touches on areas of strength, areas of some exposure, and some potentially appealing areas that you've just barely touched:

In my position as Supply Chain Manager with XYZ Corp., I had extensive experience negotiating large ($100-million-plus) contracts with suppliers on four continents; worked closely with our engineering and production teams on next-generation JIT inventory processes; and was beginning to work on the implementation of a multiplant GPS-aided inventory management system. I am very comfortable in both the human and technical aspects of supply chain and inventory management.

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