Tips for recruiters: how to check a candidate for honesty

That's why it's very important to assess their qualities from this perspective when hiring an employee. In addition to integrity, even a banal lie is also a very important and negative factor. If a person lies to you at the interview, you can only imagine what they will lie about later on.

First of all, let's focus on the points where candidates most often like to lie a little or "change" information about themselves. In their opinion, there is nothing particularly wrong with this, because it is just a small inaccuracy. This is especially common in cases where a full-time remote job is at stake.

Candidates know this principle as well as you do - "He worked for several months, so he is restless, unstable. He won't last long with us either, so there's no point in considering him." This is the way most recruiters and HRs think, and it's no secret. The logic here is quite simple: frequent job changes may indicate high expectations of the candidate or, for example, problems with teamwork skills.

But it can also be circumstances beyond the employee's control, which are even more common: the unit was closed, the startup did not raise a round, toxic leadership, a mandatory move to the office and the person's unpreparedness for it, etc. So, if you catch a person lying about the duration of work, but the candidate is interesting from a technical point of view, talk about the reasons for leaving, they may be quite logical and adequate, and the person lied to get around possible prejudices.

Some employers, when looking for high-level specialists, consider candidates from certain companies, knowing that they hire people with strong skills only. Accordingly, the presence of work experience in such companies in a CV is perceived as a "senior level candidate". Such people are sought after and they meet them halfway (they offer a higher salary, are ready to discuss financial support, a package of benefits)."

First of all, of course, you need to check the data declared by the candidate, but it may take some time, and they will not always want to tell you this data. That's why it's important for a recruiter to understand the peculiarities of working in certain market-leading companies, to know the inherent features and principles of work of those particular teams. If you are "in the know," you can easily check whether the candidate is lying to you in this regard.

This is also a very common phenomenon. For example, a candidate needs remote employment for programmers. He searches for suitable vacancies, and here it is - the job and the company of his dreams, but there are requirements for mastery of certain tools, for example, experience with Angular, which he does not have.

And so our candidate thinks: "But I've worked alongside 'name of experienced colleague', I've seen all his actions, what's the big deal, I can handle that tool", and indicates the knowledge of something he has never actually worked with.

Another common lie is to claim that a person has worked in a higher position than they actually did, explaining to themselves that there is nothing complicated about performing basic tasks, such as lead generation: task decomposition, deadline estimation, communication within the team (1-on-1, meetings, support, development), hiring, etc. Candidates usually consider all of these separately, but not as a comprehensive role and the skills to use tools to solve specific business problems. And if the candidate also stayed in charge when the leader went on holiday, then he or she is definitely confident in himself or herself and, of course, in the commercial experience of managing a team.All this should be revealed by control questions and, accordingly, possible lies should be detected.

Of course, you have seen many times in the resume of candidates that they are stress-resistant. This is a common requirement for everyone, especially for those who have to work in a team or whose job requires them to be patient (for example, a tech support specialist). Nowadays, many job seekers often declare these "common" qualities to get past the initial application filter.

Of course, all of this also needs to be verified, for example, with personality tests or certain control questions. There are plenty of such methods, and every recruiter has their favourites. Stress tolerance is tested very often, and now this type of test is used even in places where it was not previously practiced.

Now let's look at a few methods that help identify obvious lies that are either invented by the candidate during your conversation or, although written in advance, are not thorough.

This way you can kill two birds with one stone. Firstly, you will find out whether the candidate is stress-resistant or whether he or she will immediately become irritated. And secondly, you can compare the answers given by a person over a period of time.

And if they tried to lie to you, the answers may be slightly different - for example, at the beginning of the interview, they will tell you that they left their previous job due to toxicity in August, and later August will be changed to July. Another good technique is to ask essentially the same question, but rephrase it slightly.

Often you can find the phrase "I left because I didn't see any development prospects." Ask the candidate to elaborate on what exactly became an obstacle to development using fixed examples, i.e. what was wrong, how the situation developed, what kind of development was denied. That is, you need to detail the situation, and the lie (if any) will be immediately noticeable.

The same applies to the claimed skill in owning certain programs, etc. Ask a few very specific questions and you will immediately understand whether the person has worked with this software or just entered them "for beauty."

This is a good way to check the overall level of honesty of the candidate. For example, ask the candidate if they are ready to sign an important document instead of their boss in case of their absence from the workplace. If the person agrees, this is a bad sign, as it means that such an employee is prone to fraud and forgery.

4. Check references and work experience before the interview

For example, a candidate has indicated that he has references from certain people who hold high positions in such and such companies, and that he worked as a Senior Developer in Company X.

It will be very useful to contact those who gave references before talking to the candidate and collect their opinion about him. Even if the candidate hasn't lied, they may not tell you something about themselves, and it's not necessarily negative. An outsider's opinion is always important and should not be neglected. Of course, the same applies to work experience checks.

5. Projective and behavioural questions

Projective questions are those where you ask the candidate about something important, but not directly, but as if about other people. For example: "Why do you think some people allow overtime", or "Is it acceptable to steal something at the workplace for yourself". People usually answer such questions honestly because they are not directly related to them, while projecting their own beliefs or boundaries of what is acceptable on this particular situation.

With regard to behavioural questions, you will be catching lies on details. For example, the candidate said that he or she did some work alone, although this usually requires colleagues, each of whom is responsible for a certain area. You start asking in detail about how the development or design process went, and the more detailed the candidate's story is, the more likely it is that something will come to light that they "forgot" or did not want to mention in their CV - for example, how they were let down by the same colleague who, according to the candidate's previous information, was not involved in the project.

In fact, not always, or at least not everywhere. For example, if people need remote work for IT specialists, then if they are beginners, they start passing off their pet projects as commercial ones. When this is done very clumsily, it can certainly be detected quickly.

But if, for example, the project was not done for money, but simply to gain experience for some familiar business, etc., it is almost impossible to detect a lie here. The customer is a conditional name, you will not know the amount of the order, it will be long or impractical to break through such a person and the fact of cooperation. Therefore, it is better to ask the candidate about the actual "product" questions, and this way you will understand whether it was a project that later went into a distant drawer, or whether it was a real development with end users, even if they lied to you about the cost, etc.

It is almost impossible to make a long misleading statement without raising suspicion that it is a lie. Listen carefully, and people will always tell you exactly what you need to know. If you think someone is lying, try to quickly change the subject.

The liar will eagerly repeat what you say and relax, because they want to change the subject as well. The truthful person will likely look a little confused by the sudden change of topics and may later return to the previous topic if it was not completed. Learn to "dig deeper" when a candidate displays disturbing behaviour when answering questions and use silence to uncover any hidden truths. In general, remember - if you listen carefully, people's words will always give them away.

Yep, I'm a candidate, I read all this and now I know how to lie in an interview!

A final word for candidates. If you suddenly read this text, it is better to take the main recommendation from it for yourself - do not lie about key things, and then a high-paying work from home job and a flexible work schedule will become quite real. After all, all your competencies and experience are relatively easy to verify, and you never know who you'll be dealing with.

Nowadays, recruiters and HR are very often people with previous professional experience in companies, and they can perfectly understand the technical issues that you are trying to lie about and thus increase your chances of a good offer. That's why it's better to focus on your real strengths.