It's an employer's market now with hundreds of applicants vying for every position available. So if you were fired for performance issues, are unsuccessful finding work and your finances are quickly depleting, what are you to do?

If you tell the truth, you could very well be unemployable. So when you finally get an interview, you lie, perhaps stating you resigned. You pray that no reference check is done and the new employer doesn't learn of your perfidy. They don't. You get the job with a good base salary and a bonus. You perform marvellously. Everyone wins.

That is, until someone in your former company makes a snide remark about you to someone in the new one. Your lie unravels. Your new employer fires you, stating, if the company had known the truth, you never would have been hired.

"Doctor" Richard Clark applied to join Coopers Lybrand's consulting practice in Ottawa to head its management section. Coopers required professionals to have university degrees. In a resume provided to the firm and later sent out to potential clients, Clark purported to hold a BSc, MSc and PhD.

Two years later, Coopers Lybrand learned he held none of these degrees and immediately fired him. He sued for wrongful dismissal. Not only did he lose the case, which proceeded to the Ontario Court of Appeal, but he had to reimburse the firm $47,000 for lost work when clients discovered Clark was not who he said he was.

Employees beware. If you mislead an employer to obtain a position, you risk losing the job and even some of its perquisites if the employer ever learns of it, even if they were happy with you in the interim.

Howard Levitt, Counsel to Lang Michener LLP, practises employment law in eight provinces and is author of The Law Of Dismissal For Human Resources Professionals.