Your job candidates are lying on their resumes and in their job interviews.
According to a new survey from Flexjobs, 33 percent of job candidates admit to lying on a resume or cover letter. Furthermore, 19 percent said “they’ve faked enthusiasm or pretended to be passionate about a company’s mission.”
Personally, I’m shocked that so many people would lie to survey takers.
The recruiting and job hunting process, in essence, creates a situation where a company and a candidate lie to each other in an attempt to persuade the other to take action.
While I’m willing to concede that perhaps only 33 percent of job candidates lie on their resumes, I’m going to say 95 percent fake enthusiasm about a company’s mission.
Your business just isn’t that special.
Yes, some people are passionate about some things and work in those fields. They absolutely exist, but for most people? They are doing a job. They may like it, but the passion that they express in an interview is nowhere near reality.
Which is fine, because the passion the hiring manager expresses is also nowhere near their true level of passion. And frankly, sometimes passion is a bad thing. For instance, people often discuss how railroads tend to avoid hiring individuals who are passionate about trains. Why? Safety.
As Reddit commenter SlowFlashingApproach said, “The railroad wants people that can treat the job like the job it is. Safety is a huge element, and hiring people that may be easily distracted from their work by a rare engine in the distance that they want to go look at or by the US’s last semaphore signal they want to get pictures of could compromise that safety.”
After putting a dose of reality into each party’s genuine feelings about the job, it’s worth considering the lies that companies make in their job postings. In a 2024 survey, 40 percent of businesses admitted to posting ghost jobs. Just completely made up jobs. The problem is so pervasive that Canada is taking steps to outlaw ghost job postings.
And what about job postings that say “remote” and end up being hybrid or, worse, 99 percent in office?
Or job descriptions that leave out the icky parts of the job, hoping that once they hire a candidate, the new employee will feel stuck?
A 2023 survey found that nearly 40 percent of hiring managers said they lied in job interviews.
Job hunting is much harder for everyone — hiring companies and candidates alike — because of all the lying.
Here’s how to reduce this deep-rooted problem:
1. Stop lying. I know it’s tempting and I know your competitors are doing it, but it makes people angry. And you don’t want to hire someone who took the job based on false pretenses. They’ll be unhappy and start to look for a new job.
2. Do in-person interviews, even for remote jobs. Consulting firm Gartner says by 2028, one-quarter of job applicants will be fake. What’s more expensive? Accidentally hiring someone who faked their way through the internet using AI (or worse, a North Korean spy) or spending a couple thousand dollars to fly in a candidate before making an offer?
3. Focus the questions on actual skills that your employees will need. Use validated tests for hard skills. Don’t check to see if a candidate has scuffed shoes, ask if they make their bed, or make them participate in a raw egg drop. Ask them questions about the actual job. You can have them do a short project or presentation, as long as it doesn’t require more than 2 to 3 hours of work. Any more, and you should pay them a fair consulting fee.
4. Stop lying. I know this was number one, but really, stop it. Make honest job postings. Inform the candidates about the actual travel or expected overtime. Let them know if you are the type of boss who will expect an answer at 10:00 pm. If doing so makes you uncomfortable, then stop doing those behaviors.
Yes, candidates should stop lying, but until companies stop it, you don’t have the moral high ground to demand total honesty from job seekers.