Stretching the Truth like Silly Putty

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During recruitment interviews, HR professionals would love to give potential future employees a 100% rating, but not for the reasons one would think of.

A research study from the University of Guelph has identified that 100% of employment candidates lie, stretch the truth, or exaggerate during the employment interview process. These results should have all HR professionals asking questions like:

  • What conclusions can be drawn from this?
  • Does this mean all potential employees are liars?
  • Is a certain amount of lying acceptable?
  • Is this a systemic issue with HR’s recruitment methods?

What should be done to address this pervasive lying from potential employees? The research does not provide many answers. The study, however, does suggest that the level of competition may play a factor in the tendency for the candidate to lie, but not in the way one would think.

The research shows that if there is a fewer number of candidates competing for a job position, the tendency to lie during an interview will increase. For more details, click here to read the CBC article.

Perhaps the only way to overcome this is with direct confrontation, where recruiters can leave a copy of this research for the candidates to read at the start of an interview, and at the end of the interview, ask the candidate, “Was there at any time during this interview that you lied, stretched the truth, or exaggerated?” If the candidate answers “no,” since 100% of employment candidates lie, now you will know the “truth”!

Discussion Questions:

  1. Research how to make employment interviews more reliable and valid. Make a list of potential ideas for improvement that you find the most beneficial.
  2. Imagine you are a recruitment consultant who is making a pitch to a potential client about why your recruitment methods are better than your competitors’. Complete a 5-minute presentation to outline your methods.

Lying on Resumes

Oh, how do we lie? Let me count the ways; with a small lie, when you respond to your spouse’s question, “Do I look fat in these jeans?”; to your kids when you promise, “This needle won’t hurt a bit!”; or a giant lie, like Scott Thomson, the ex-CEO of Yahoo, who lied about having a computer science degree!

Michele Piacquadio, Thinkstock
Michele Piacquadio, Thinkstock

According to the articles listed below, we lie up to ten times a week – that is a lot of lies over a year, and over the span of a career. The HRM Online article, Six Ways to Catch Resume Lies, states that employment candidates will lie anywhere from 40% to 70% of the time on their resumes. This would mean that close to three quarters of your applicant pool has lied to you before they have even walked in the door. How can that be? What is an HR practitioner to do?

Please read the following two articles and consider some solutions that can be applied to this problem.

Click here to view article 1.

Click here to view article 2.

The ability to filter and screen resumes is a fundamental skill that all HR practitioners must master to be successful.

Discussion Questions:

  • Are all these suggestions legal? Or will some cause greater legal liability and if so what laws would it be violating?
  • How comfortable are you using these solutions?
  • What else would you do to confirm the validity of a candidates resume?
  • A bigger question to ponder, have you eliminate a great hire because their resume did not look as good as others because they DID NOT lie?