Why People Lie During a Job Interview
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Here's your Money Briefing for Tuesday, January 19th. I'm J.R. Whelan for The Wall Street Journal. Let's say you're ready to move on from your current job or you've been out of work and you've applied for a new position, a job you really want. Well, when it comes time for the interview, psychologists say there's likely to be some lying or maybe some bending of the truth.
So there's kind of two kinds of lies. One is more about yourself, boasting about yourself. I do the crossword puzzle in pen. Or you might, you know, lie about, I don't know, the varsity sport you played in high school. You know, something to kind of make yourself seem cooler or better than you are.
Why do people commonly lie or embellish during job interviews?
And then the other way that we lie is about other people. So your haircut looks great, you know, something to kind of flatter other people.
So does lawing actually help candidates land jobs? We'll discuss the research that's been done on the topic with our work and life columnist, Rachel Feinzig, as well as the author of the book, The Psychology of Job Interviews. That's after the break.
There are few things in life more nerve-wracking than a job interview. Under the pressure, job seekers often lie or embellish the truth. In a moment, we'll speak with Nicholas Rulon, an associate professor of industrial and organizational psychology, about the specific things that job candidates lie about. But first, let's bring in our work and life columnist, Rachel Feinzig. She's been looking into this. Rachel, thanks for taking the time to be with us.
Thanks so much for having me.
So, Rachel, there's so much at stake when somebody is trying to land a job. Does an interview actually, you know, encourage lying or some truth bending?
I think so. I mean, it's almost like designed to encourage it in a way, right? I mean, the person really wants the job, needs employment, and the interviewer is trying to sell the job, too. So it's kind of coming from both sides.
Okay, so let's try to get inside a job seeker's head. How does the job candidate's confidence in getting a job affect the way that they might mislead a hiring manager?
That's a good question. I mean, I think personality does have something to do with this. I mean, the research shows that folks that have sort of this dark triad of personality traits, things like narcissism, for example, Machiavellianism, tend to lie more often. So I think some of it does depend on your personality. But this is also just ubiquitous. I mean, obviously, this is all on a spectrum. Some of the lies might be more nefarious than other little white lies. But at the end of the day, everyone is prone, it seems, you know, according to the research, everyone is prone to at least some kind of exaggeration in a job interview.
And, you know, sometimes I guess lies or exaggerations can roll off your tongue when you're in conversation. But what about mistruths on your resume?
you know, on your resume. Obviously, if you're doing things like inventing a degree, inventing an award, I mean that, A, like, you know, it probably will come back to bite you at some point. But even if no one figures it out and you just get this job that you're not a fit for and you disappoint everyone or, you know, you don't excel at it, you're not happy, it's really, you know, researchers told me this is really just a lose-lose situation, especially dropping big lies like that. There are instances on a resume where it might make sense to not disclose things. You know, things like the year that you graduated from school, where you live, if you're open and dedicated to moving to a new city. You know, there are things that you put on your resume that might open you up to various kinds of discrimination.
And the folks I talked to said it's fair game to just leave some of those items off.
All right, let's find out more about why people lie during a job interview and whether it actually works. Nicholas Rulon is here with us now. He's an associate professor of industrial and organizational psychology at St. Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
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