Even the well educated lie sometimes

'Lying Doctor' (BBC news)

I am starting a new research project. Basically it is about people that lie during the recruitment process.

This has all started because after years of interviewing I have finalised realised that the elephant in the room is that people lie and can trick the interviewers.

As evidence I shall offer the following. Recently I have interviewed some people who always tell the honest truth (basically cannot lie), I have asked a simple question where the answer is obvious to any reasonable individual, it asks you what you would do in the situation. There is a text book / right interview answer but in real life there is probably some considerations and thoughts before you do the right thing. The people I interview give me the answer as it runs through their brain not the definitive / decisive answer they should be giving in a formal interview situation.

They are being brutally honest in a way. To quote another well used scenario if given the choice of taking an action that kills one person or 100 people you should say you would kill the one and save the many. Now the people I have been interviewing cant actually lie (or are totally honest depending on your point of view), so they talk about the difficulties they would have in making the decision etc.

However, if you really wanted the job (knowing that the situation probably wouldn't come up that often), you have done the research for the role, you know the answer to the question and regardless of your personal thoughts you would say "I would kill the one person and save the many". So at a very primitive level you have lied to get the job because faced with the decision in real life you have not stated what you would do.

Now pull that back into the mundane and what these candidates have shown me is that in all probability interviews reward good definitive liars. So if we could somehow spot or challenge potential liars then getting the right person into the right job would be easier.

More thoughts on this will follow. For now I am going to start clipping articles off the net and collecting them here on my blog.

First up, a Doctor that lied on his CV. Even those with brains who clearly understand the consequences will still take a big risk in being caught out.