Five Lies I've Heard From Job-Seekers

Anyone who reads my columns knows how I feel
about the broken recruiting process.
They know how I feel about predatory recruiters
who tamp down job-seekers’ expectations and
treat them like cattle.
Recruiting is in shambles. The current corporate
and institutional recruiting approach drives the
best talent away rather than reeling talent in!
Most companies recruit using horribly outdated,
fear-based systems.
When they are ready to dump their talent-
repelling recruiting approach, we hear from
them, but until then they say “We only do what
every other employer does.”
Fear and mistrust are baked into the standard
recruiting practices.
Everyone is afraid of making one bad hire,
when they should be worried about the brilliant
and capable people who wouldn’t dream of
working for them because their recruiting
process screams the message “Drop dead!” at
job-seekers at every turn.
I speak and write and draw and sing about the
need for a more human approach to recruiting.
That’s why it kills me when change-averse
leaders say “But job candidates lie, and we have
to separate the liars from the truth-tellers!”
It kills me because they are right.
You can humanize your recruiting process and I
hope you will, but there are indeed job-seekers
who lie their way through a recruiting process,
causing great disappointment to the people who
hire them or nearly hire them and then find out
they’ve been scammed.
It’s sad that this happens, but it does.
We helped a client recruit two executives. We
had an advisory role in the project. The HR VP
from the client firm sent us three resumes to
look over.
We opened the resumes. One of the three
candidates had worked with me at a past job —
or so her resume said. I focused on her name.
“This makes no sense,” I told my colleagues. “If
she had that job at that company at that time, I
should know her. Her name isn’t familiar.”
I called an ex-colleague of mine who worked in
the division where the job-seeker claimed she
also had worked. My ex-colleague said “Yeah, I
know her! She was a manager under Marco. You
remember Marco, don’t you, Liz?”
I did remember him.
The job candidate’s resume didn’t say
“Manager.” It said “VP of Marketing.”
“She was never VP of Marketing in our
company, was she?” I asked.
“No way!” said my friend. “She only stayed
about a year. She joined the company as a
manager and left it as a manager, too.
“Marco was her boss. He was a Director. Her VP
was Allan.”
“That’s why her name didn’t sound familiar,” I
said. I got off the phone.
I checked the candidate’s LinkedIn profile. Her
LinkedIn profile was a demotion from her
resume.
On LinkedIn she gave herself credit for having
had Marco’s Director job at the company where
we worked together.
I looked for Marco as a mutual connection, but
the job-seeker was not connected to her old boss
on LinkedIn.
That was a smart move on her part. Marco
might have objected to his former team
member’s theft of his title and role during the
time they worked together.
I called the HR VP and explained that although I
had worked with one of her three candidates
several years back, I was positive that her
resume details weren’t accurate.
Who would take the chance of exaggerating their
job title when they worked in a company with
thousands of employees — many of whom use
LinkedIn and many of whom might be working
in a company Ms. Retroactive Promotion might
be targeting?
Our client couldn’t care less whether a
particular candidate had been a Manager or a
VP at an ancient job ten years in the past, but
she did care about integrity, and about
judgment.
The self-promoting candidate did not get an
interview for that job. How many other
opportunities has she lost already or could she
lose in the future for the same reason?
Other candidates lie about their education.
There are a lot of icky-sticky parts to being an
HR leader, but surely one of the icky-stickiest is
to call an employee into my office and tell him
or her that they flunked their background check
— specifically, the education part.
Every college has a Registrar’s office.
Understandably, colleges don’t like it when
people claim degrees that they didn’t earn.
One time, I got a call from the chief of security
at a private college that one of our new hires
claimed he had graduated from.
Sadly, he not only hadn’t graduated but had
never even taken a course at that institution.
The new hire was out of a job less than a week
after he started. He tried to fake his way
through the meeting with me.
He had photocopied the university’s logo on a
piece of bond paper and typed up a letter that
he said came from a Trustee of the university —
dated the day of our conversation!
“Trustees don’t verify academic credentials,
particularly not in the form of a personal letter
that says that they’ve known the subject of the
investigation since he was a child,” I sadly
reported.
“Plus, the trustee who signed your letter retired
a year ago.”
The busted former employee closed his briefcase
and left my office and the building. We never
heard from him again.
Job-seekers lie about their connections inside the
company — but why?
It’s foolish. They will be found out within
moments.
People have told me “I know your CFO very well.
We’ve had lunch together several times.” Inside
I groaned and asked myself “Why? I can check
with him in two seconds!”
The CFO would say “Never heard of the guy.” I
understand that people get fearful.
They feel desperate. But why fabricate a
relationship in hopes of winning brownie
points? That is a sad and pointless tactic.
Maybe there is a company somewhere where a
job-seeker could name-drop using an executive’s
name and win points for it without having to
worry that anyone would ever ask the name-
dropped executive “Do you actually know this
fellow?”
My view has always been “If you start throwing
people’s names around, I’d be foolish not to
follow up.”
An old saying says “When a person shows you
who s/he is, believe him (or her).”
Some people lie about their functional expertise.
This came through to me most strongly when I
interviewed technical folks.
I picked up a lot of technical jargon over the
years, but I am not an engineer — not even
close. I know as much about technology as the
average avid technology user, but nothing
compared to an actual tech person.
However, when I interviewed candidates for a
job, I took the time to really understand the job.
I had to — how could I have interviewed people
for the job otherwise?
I learned about circuit design and parts
libraries, supply chains and production
processes and software design protocols.
I learned about Ohm’s Law and seven layers of
network protocols and echo cancellation. I
learned enough to be able to spot a flim-flammy
candidate trying to confuse me with garbled or
nonsensical tech terminology.
I wanted to ask these folks “Why? Why take the
chance that just because I’m an HR person,
young and female, you must inevitably be
talking over my head?”
There was no need to impress or dazzle me with
fake technical jargon, but these poor candidates
tried it anyway and put their flim-flammery on
display.
I’d walk each of these folks to his or her hiring
manager’s office, grab the manager in the
hallway for a moment and say “Quiz him on his
technical expertise, because he sounds like he is
throwing out random words and phrases.”
Inevitably the interview feedback sheet came
back marked “No Thanks.”
It is so much smarter to say “Here’s what I
understand, and here’s what I don’t” whenever
an interview takes you past your functional or
technical comfort level. There’s no shame in
that.
I have hired many people who simply said “Now
you’re talking over my head” and were honest
about what they knew and didn’t know.
There is one more lie that job-seekers often tell
during the interview process. They lie about the
recruiting process itself.
How or why this gambit originated, I can’t tell
you. All I know is that some job-seekers have
learned to call an HR person like me and say
“The VP, Angus, said he wanted to see me this
week.”
“Thanks for that information,” I would say.
“Angus is out of the country all week. Maybe
there is some confusion.”
I have to imagine that somewhere on earth
there’s a company with HR people so credulous
that they could hear a candidate say “The VP
said he wants to see me right away!” and
actually set up that meeting. I can’t picture it,
but perhaps it is true.
It’s not just other people that candidates will
quote when they make the misguided decision to
put made-up words in someone’s mouth. I’ve
had folks call my teammates in other divisions
and use my name the same way. “Your VP Liz
Ryan says I’m supposed to be interviewed
immediately!”
Everybody knew I never said that. I would never
relay a message that way, obviously. The
broken job search system is as dysfunctional as
any organizational process could ever be, but
any instinct to surmount the dysfunction
through subterfuge can only hurt you.
Great companies are out there, and you don’t
even need to submit an online application to
reach them. You only need to send a Pain Letter
to your hiring manager to get some
conversations started.
There’s no need to lie or exaggerate at any point
in the hiring process.
All that might do is get you hired by people who
wouldn’t have hired the real you — and why on
earth would you want that?