7 ms·

Recently I interviewed a candidate for a fairly niche but high demand field. I generally liked him - he had skills that would have been useful to the team, and

by rm999 14y ago

Recently I interviewed a candidate for a fairly niche but high demand field. I generally liked him - he had skills that would have been useful to the team, and he was a very bright person. But a couple of us felt he exaggerated aspects of his resume by sprinkling in a couple of bullet points he knew we were interested in (from the posting) but didn't understand well. He would have fit well on our team, but ultimately we decided we couldn't trust him. If he lied about being "proficient" in skill #2, how did we know he wasn't lying about certain achievements or even jobs from the past? I realize his lie was less severe than making up an education (and ironically much easier to catch), but it's a good example of how small lies can do a lot of damage.

learc83 14y ago
Would you have interviewed him if he'd left off all those relevant bullet points?
- rm999 14y ago
  Great question, that's something I specifically thought about. We probably would have interviewed him if he had said "some knowledge of" etc for those bullet points (which would have been truthful). He actually had quite an impressive resume without the fibs.
  - toomuchcoffee 14y ago
    We probably would have interviewed him if he had said "some knowledge of"... But as everyone "knows", you just can't use weak language on your resume. And if it just so happens that you were let go of from your last job for some petty, grossly unfair reason, heavens, no one wants to hear the truth behind that! So people face a lot of pressure to burnish things up, here and there. I'm not saying there absolved of responsibility, when they get caught at having fibbed. But there is something of a Catch-22 at play, here.
pbhjpbhj 14y ago
>how did we know he wasn't lying about certain achievements or even jobs from the past // Why would it matter if he could demonstrate the right level of proficiency for the tasks you wished him to perform?
- rm999 14y ago
  It's not just that he may have lied about other stuff on his resume - he could lie on the job, which can be very destructive.
  - barrkel 14y ago
    See now, that's exactly what I'm talking about.
- illuminate 14y ago
  "Why would it matter if he could demonstrate the right level of proficiency for the tasks you wished him to perform?" Because demonstrating consistency, future performance, trust, respect for coworkers, and self-confidence is involved in the "right level" for many?
gcp 14y ago
But a couple of us felt he exaggerated aspects of his resume by sprinkling in a couple of bullet points he knew we were interested in (from the posting) but didn't understand well...and ironically much easier to catch Right. If you exaggerate on a skill the company is interested in, the chances of being caught out are nearly 100%. If anything, catching such a mistake says something about that candidates intelligence :-)
ianstallings 14y ago
You have to be careful with this line of thinking and I'll explain why - recruiters. They will take an existing resume and "fluff it up" for the exact job description.
- mason55 14y ago
  Yes I've seen recruiters change/add additional job titles to match exactly what they knew we were looking for. Then the candidates come in and have no idea what I'm talking about and everyone's time is wasted.
barrkel 14y ago
> If he lied about being "proficient" in skill #2, how did we know he wasn't lying about certain achievements or even jobs from the past? I think you can tell if someone is lying about specific job experience in technical areas; when you drill down, the detail won't be there. But there's a more general issue here (though I think you're only slightly guilty, because your leap is quite small). It's about a kind of intuition about dishonesty being an aspect of a person's character, rather than a mode of behaviour in a particular scenario. A lot of people make wild jumps from single actions to an inference about behaviour in lots of different situations. I think behaviour is heavily dependent on the situation, and much of what we think of as "character" is unwarranted. People generalize from small incidents (of honorable or dishonorable behaviour) to a character classification, and then specialize these labels back down to predictions of behaviour elsewhere. But the guy who would never cheat a shopkeeper out of mistaken change may actually be a tax fraud, not because of "character", but because of wholly different frames of reference, possibly even resentment of government. It's the same with people who judge "attention to detail" by spelling or grammar errors. I label them narrow-minded myself :)
- trefn 14y ago
  More about this very human bias: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error
- ajross 14y ago
  I'm with you 100% right up to your last point, which sounds just wrong to me. The whole idea of "attention to detail" is that it's a personality trait that allows a person to see small details and defects even in areas where they aren't expert. And most of us believe it exists. So yes: if you submit a resume with clear spelling errors (i.e. ones caught by a spel chkr) most of us would take that as evidence of a lack of attention to detail. And we'd generalize to you skipping a test case before pushing code, or making sure all your stock photos are licensed before deploying the site, or...
  - barrkel 14y ago
    I'll agree with you on spelling errors on a CV, but not when generalizing from e.g. forum posts or random emails.
nirvana 14y ago
I've had more than one situation where I was interviewed by someone to see if I was "proficiient in skill #2" where it was obvious to me that they were either incompetnat or unreasonable. For example, I listed Win32 programming on my resume back when I would do windows work... and one guy would ask me the parameters for various functions in the API. When I said I always looked those things up while programming he seemed taken aback and said "well, have you used (some specific area of the API)"... and when I said yes, he asked me to list off the parameters. Needless to say I didn't get an offer from that company, but have had trouble respecting them ever since (and am not surprised that they haven't amounted to much of anything and haven't been innovative.) Its quite possible that he told the hiring manager I'd lied because I couldn't name a single API he asked. I just sat and thought about a function I use a lot in my current programming. Cant' quite remember the name of the function itself or its parameters... because I haven't used it today. When I need it, its there, (and its autocompleted by the IDE anyway.) I think the biggest problem with companies hiring is that they often have people who have no clue how to interview doing the interviews. Seen that a lot.
- rm999 14y ago
  I'm sorry that happened to you, I've dealt with the same kinds of things. It sucks when bad interviewers block good candidates. In my case I assure you that's not what happened though. When the candidate realized he was faltering on too many questions about skill #2 (really basic questions) he started talking about how he was currently reading an introductory book on it and how he was excited to work somewhere where he can apply it. Oh yeah, and he claimed on his resume that he had been applying it at his current job.

by rm999 14y ago

learc83 14y ago

Would you have interviewed him if he'd left off all those relevant bullet points?

rm999 14y ago
Great question, that's something I specifically thought about. We probably would have interviewed him if he had said "some knowledge of" etc for those bullet points (which would have been truthful). He actually had quite an impressive resume without the fibs.
- toomuchcoffee 14y ago
  We probably would have interviewed him if he had said "some knowledge of"... But as everyone "knows", you just can't use weak language on your resume. And if it just so happens that you were let go of from your last job for some petty, grossly unfair reason, heavens, no one wants to hear the truth behind that! So people face a lot of pressure to burnish things up, here and there. I'm not saying there absolved of responsibility, when they get caught at having fibbed. But there is something of a Catch-22 at play, here.

pbhjpbhj 14y ago

>how did we know he wasn't lying about certain achievements or even jobs from the past // Why would it matter if he could demonstrate the right level of proficiency for the tasks you wished him to perform?

rm999 14y ago
It's not just that he may have lied about other stuff on his resume - he could lie on the job, which can be very destructive.
- barrkel 14y ago
  See now, that's exactly what I'm talking about.
illuminate 14y ago
"Why would it matter if he could demonstrate the right level of proficiency for the tasks you wished him to perform?" Because demonstrating consistency, future performance, trust, respect for coworkers, and self-confidence is involved in the "right level" for many?

gcp 14y ago

But a couple of us felt he exaggerated aspects of his resume by sprinkling in a couple of bullet points he knew we were interested in (from the posting) but didn't understand well...and ironically much easier to catch Right. If you exaggerate on a skill the company is interested in, the chances of being caught out are nearly 100%. If anything, catching such a mistake says something about that candidates intelligence :-)

ianstallings 14y ago

You have to be careful with this line of thinking and I'll explain why - recruiters. They will take an existing resume and "fluff it up" for the exact job description.

mason55 14y ago
Yes I've seen recruiters change/add additional job titles to match exactly what they knew we were looking for. Then the candidates come in and have no idea what I'm talking about and everyone's time is wasted.

barrkel 14y ago

> If he lied about being "proficient" in skill #2, how did we know he wasn't lying about certain achievements or even jobs from the past? I think you can tell if someone is lying about specific job experience in technical areas; when you drill down, the detail won't be there. But there's a more general issue here (though I think you're only slightly guilty, because your leap is quite small). It's about a kind of intuition about dishonesty being an aspect of a person's character, rather than a mode of behaviour in a particular scenario. A lot of people make wild jumps from single actions to an inference about behaviour in lots of different situations. I think behaviour is heavily dependent on the situation, and much of what we think of as "character" is unwarranted. People generalize from small incidents (of honorable or dishonorable behaviour) to a character classification, and then specialize these labels back down to predictions of behaviour elsewhere. But the guy who would never cheat a shopkeeper out of mistaken change may actually be a tax fraud, not because of "character", but because of wholly different frames of reference, possibly even resentment of government. It's the same with people who judge "attention to detail" by spelling or grammar errors. I label them narrow-minded myself :)

trefn 14y ago
More about this very human bias: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error
ajross 14y ago
I'm with you 100% right up to your last point, which sounds just wrong to me. The whole idea of "attention to detail" is that it's a personality trait that allows a person to see small details and defects even in areas where they aren't expert. And most of us believe it exists. So yes: if you submit a resume with clear spelling errors (i.e. ones caught by a spel chkr) most of us would take that as evidence of a lack of attention to detail. And we'd generalize to you skipping a test case before pushing code, or making sure all your stock photos are licensed before deploying the site, or...
- barrkel 14y ago
  I'll agree with you on spelling errors on a CV, but not when generalizing from e.g. forum posts or random emails.

nirvana 14y ago

I've had more than one situation where I was interviewed by someone to see if I was "proficiient in skill #2" where it was obvious to me that they were either incompetnat or unreasonable. For example, I listed Win32 programming on my resume back when I would do windows work... and one guy would ask me the parameters for various functions in the API. When I said I always looked those things up while programming he seemed taken aback and said "well, have you used (some specific area of the API)"... and when I said yes, he asked me to list off the parameters. Needless to say I didn't get an offer from that company, but have had trouble respecting them ever since (and am not surprised that they haven't amounted to much of anything and haven't been innovative.) Its quite possible that he told the hiring manager I'd lied because I couldn't name a single API he asked. I just sat and thought about a function I use a lot in my current programming. Cant' quite remember the name of the function itself or its parameters... because I haven't used it today. When I need it, its there, (and its autocompleted by the IDE anyway.) I think the biggest problem with companies hiring is that they often have people who have no clue how to interview doing the interviews. Seen that a lot.

rm999 14y ago
I'm sorry that happened to you, I've dealt with the same kinds of things. It sucks when bad interviewers block good candidates. In my case I assure you that's not what happened though. When the candidate realized he was faltering on too many questions about skill #2 (really basic questions) he started talking about how he was currently reading an introductory book on it and how he was excited to work somewhere where he can apply it. Oh yeah, and he claimed on his resume that he had been applying it at his current job.