I don't want to lie to get a job. And companies do verify. Maybe not small startups, but everyone else does. And those small startups will start verifying when they grow.
If you don’t know where to start, you could start by reviewing COSS (commercial open source software) projects that need help from contributors in exchange for payment (aka bounties) on Algora [1].
Issues typically have a dollar amount attached to them and the dollar amount is often a proxy of how much effort it would take you to complete it.
So, a $20 issue could probably take you a few mins to complete, while a $200 ticket could probably take you a few hours to a few days, if you are not familiar with the codebase/stack.
Note that competition is fierce for the “easy” tasks on Algora and many Algora regulars will open a PR (pull request) within minutes of a bounty being available publicly.
Good luck!