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Presenting oneself on a resume or in a job
interview involves a lot of impression management.
As one job candidate recently told his interviewer: "Each
of us is a walking advertisement that we
have to constantly tweak to make sure we're
being perceived the right way."
But in the process of putting your best
foot forward it's critical not to step over
the line into exaggeration or outright lies
- lies that claim educational or work experience
you don't have, for example, or lies of
omission, which seek to hide key facts about
your background. Any lie can be deadly to
one's career.
"My feeling is that if you can't be trusted
about smaller things then you can't be trusted
with larger things," said Westaff Vice
President and Director of Human Resources
Joe Coute. "If you're going to lie about
something like taking credit for a project
you didn't do, then how can we trust you to
lead a team or represent the company?"
Managers have similar feelings about educational
claims. A recent survey conducted by Jude
M. Werra & Associates, LLC, concluded
that 95% of responding employers would drop
a candidate who lied about earning a college
degree.
"I tell people to never, ever lie on
your resume or application because liars have
to have excellent memories," added Coute,
who teaches a course on resume writing and
interviewing. "Very often you're going
to get tripped up - and if they catch you,
they may not let you know, but they're certainly
not going to take you."
Ethics aside, from a practical point of
view, lying is just too much work, said
Phillip Maltin, an attorney specializing
in employment and business litigation with
the Davis·Maltin Law Firm in Santa Monica,
California.
"You will always have to make up another
lie to support the first lie and then another
to support that one and then remember all
of them," Maltin said. "It's just
too hard, it takes too much time to cover
your tracks, and it distracts from what you're
supposed to do. Honesty is just more functional."
Lying one's way into a job can also
mean ending up in a position for which
you're unqualified. That can have implications
not only for you, but for others.
"If a person acquires a leadership or
management position by misrepresenting their
actual experience and competencies, they could
not only destroy their own careers, but do
serious harm to others in the organization
who are affected by their potentially misguided
decisions," said Daniel R. Fisher, a
psychologist who heads the assessment practice
for Worklab Consulting LLC, a New York-based
management. "Even more serious, if an
inadequately trained medical professional,
for example, misrepresents their actual qualifications
in a job interview and are placed in a position
where they must make treatment decisions they
are not qualified to make, the result could
be that the patient is put in mortal danger."
Finally, if one is caught in a lie,
it can mean a ruined reputation not
only with one company, but with an entire
industry as word gets around.
Some misrepresentations occur because a
candidate has an inflated sense of
their own accomplishments. "I
often come across individuals who describe
themselves as being highly effective in one
aspect of the job or another, but may have
a distorted sense of their actual abilities
and effectiveness," Fisher said.
So, think carefully about what you
claim for yourself. Remember that
in order to be honest on your resume
and in an interview, you need to start
by being honest with yourself.
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A CEO is forced to step down for failing to disclose
he had been fired as president of another company.
A high profile college football coach resigns five
days after being hired, admitting he lied about
his academic and athletic background. Several top
Enron executives are indicted on criminal charges,
including conspiracy, fraud and insider trading.
It's difficult to gauge whether lying in business
settings is on the rise, but it's certainly been
in the news. It's also of increasing concern to
human resources and other managers. In the wake
of high profile scandals, managers are loathe to
hire a dishonest employee whose misconduct could
become the focus of a public or investor relations
nightmare.
"The attorneys' fees alone are going to
kill you if someone in
the organization is caught doing something highly dishonest that harms others
- unless the case is settled immediately," said Phillip Maltin, an attorney
specializing in employment and business litigation with the Davis·Maltin
Law Firm in Santa Monica, California.
Lying, of course, isn't confined to executives.
Several recent studies peg the rate of lying on
resumes or in job interviews at 20 to 44 percent.
That includes lies about past degrees, jobs and
responsibilities.
"A lot of HR managers are recognizing that lying is pervasive," said
Westaff Vice President and Director of Human Resources Joe Coute. "For too
many candidates, the desire to get ahead at all costs is more important than
honesty. Because of that, interviewers can find themselves focusing on what might
be wrong with what someone's saying rather than what might be right. They figure
that if a candidate will lie during the interview, then they are going to lie
once they're in the door."
To help job seekers fabricate impressive backgrounds,
a $200 million industry has grown up to provide
diplomas for any degree anywhere. A quick Google
search on "purchase a fake diploma," for example, yields more than 7,000 listings.
But while a lie on a resume about a college degree
may be relatively easy to ferret out by simply
calling the college or university, it's extremely
difficult to tell whether someone is actually lying
during an interview, many experts say.
"A lot of us assume that when people are lying they will fidget, stutter
and avoid eye contact," said Daniel R. Fisher, a psychologist who heads
the assessment practice for Worklab Consulting LLC, a New York-based management
consulting firm. "But in fact really good liars often behave in the opposite
way. They appear unnaturally calm and make fewer gestures with their bodies.
People who are lying often slow down to think about their answers and maintain
eye contact as they concentrate on putting together a plausible falsehood."
In fact, you have about a 50-50 chance of being
right about spotting a lie - the same chance as
in a coin toss. "Research shows that people are not very
good at identifying liars," Maltin said. "Often, people observe entirely
honest behavior and misidentify it as dishonest."
For one thing, job applicants are naturally nervous.
Then, if an applicant gets the impression that
an interviewer thinks they may be lying (even when
they're not), that will make them even more nervous.
Interviewers can also misconstrue cultural signals.
They can take failure to maintain eye contact, for example,
as a sign of having something to hide. Yet in some
cultures, looking down or away during a conversation
is merely a sign of deference.
Still, there are several techniques a manager
can use that could help weed out dishonest candidates.
For example, during the interview itself, start
by putting the person you're interviewing at ease
right away, asking questions about which the person
has no interest in lying such as, "How was the drive over?" Try to gauge
their basic level of ease or nervousness so that you can later try and identify
any "hot spots" or points at which their nervousness seems to peak
as the interview progresses.
Look for a constellation of behavior, including
body language, pitch, tone and words used to find
those "hot spots." Then try to discover the reason
for them using discreet, follow-up questions that seek more information.
"You don't want to challenge a possible lie directly," Maltin said. "You
want to nibble around its edges."
At all times, remember that signs of greater
nervousness may or may not indicate a lie.
You can also ask the candidate to describe a
work experience they have had that is related to
a specific job-related skill you're evaluating.
Drill down and probe for detailed information when
they respond, taking copious notes. Then follow
up on any inconsistencies or contradictions, asking
them to clarify any parts of the picture that don't
make sense to you. At the end, inform the candidate
that you will need to verify the information, and
ask for a relevant contact.
"Note any expressions of fear or anxiety or offers to provide a more accurate
re-telling of the job experience," Fisher said.
Background checks can also be helpful, especially
for employees who handle money, review personal
data or deal with sensitive workplace equipment.
They may also be important or in some cases even
legally required for sensitive positions that involve
working with children or other vulnerable segments
of the population such as the elderly or disabled.
As for the future of lying in business settings?
It may well taper off as the economy gets better,
some experts predict.
"A person's desperation for a job is one factor that will push them towards
lying or away from lying," Fisher said. "So as the job market improves
and as candidates feel more secure about getting a job somewhere, we might expect
to see a decline in bold faced lies. They may feel that they don't need to resort
to such drastic measures."
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