Liar, Liar
How do you know if a candidate is lying in his or her recorded interview?
You can always look for body language clues – e.g. interviewees shifting nervously in position, touching their face or closing eyes when asked a question.
Beyond that, here are some good ways to uncover untruths:
- Are there small inconsistencies in the candidate’s story? If so, larger ones are probably lurking.
- Ask the candidate to provide not just the years when he or she worked somewhere, but the months as well, since “2012-2103” can actually mean December 2102-January 2103 – i.e. only one month before the person was fired.
- Have you verified with former employers the specific work that the candidate did? For instance, applicants who claim to have worked on particular projects may only have been on a team that handled the project, without having done any real work themselves.
- If the candidate states how much money he or she made in the past, ask him or her to show you a W-2 form verifying this. You are not probably not going to be able to confirm this salary information with a candidate’s past employers. Companies are often loathe to disclose salary information of past employees (although employers will normally verify the dates of employment and title of former employees).
- Beware of the “candidate’s-roommate-pretending-to-be-a-reference” scam. (If the candidate’s referral answers from a college dorm room, eliminate the candidate).
- Check with the applicant’s former schools to make sure he or she actually got the degrees and had the majors and minors that he or she described. (A classic excuse is “I did all the credits but didn’t bother to graduate” – don’t believe it!)
- Do background checks, not only by checking with former employers and other references, but also by doing Google, Linked-in and other searches.
- Consider doing criminal checks.
- Ask yourself if it is worth hiring a professional company to do a full-fledged background check.