[stefanos82]

It's not a lie, because this advice came from a number of HRs I interacted with for a number of years; it was suggested as their personal advice and not their professional one.

One of them even codenamed it "the cloth of protection" lol.

[rimunroe]

How does an HR person saying something isn’t a lie make it not a lie? If you’re saying something happened which didn’t happen, that’s a lie. A HR person saying it’s okay might indicate that it’s not a lie people would look askance at, but it doesn’t mean it isn’t a lie.

As others have said, the correct thing to do here is to just not even list the job on the resume in the first place. No reasonable person expects every single short stint be listed on a resume. I’ve heard three and six months suggested as guidelines for the minimum lengths of jobs one should list. Anything shorter than that probably isn’t worth going into, as you’re still onboarding at that point. Also, people get sick, have sudden illnesses in the family, or otherwise can’t work for a couple months for loads of reasons.