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Liar, liar, résumé on fire

REBECCA DUBE

From Monday's Globe and Mail

Latest comment posted at 12:00 AM EDT 23/04/08

Industrial psychologists are borrowing techniques from criminal profilers to weed out liars during the hiring process ...Read the full article

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  1. Better to light a small candle than to sit and curse the darkness from Canada writes: We use headlines to determine whether to read an article.
    Liar, liar, résumé on fire could be improved.
    How about: Should you admit your criminal past?
    Only one more word and it is closer to the gist of the article.
  2. eric keuper from Guelph, Canada writes: Seems to me that even with the "tools" discussed in the article it's pretty much a crap shoot in terms of hiring a "suitable' candidate for any posting. I wonder if the same analyses go into the hiring of senior management staff -- you know the ones with all the access to all the $$.
  3. J Kooman from Canada writes:

    Screening of potential candidates become more and more difficult. Grade inflation (or generosity of professors) is part of the problem.

    When the class average for a 4th year civil engineering class of UofWaterloo is A, looking at the grade points of their students become a waste of time.

    Thus a letter of recommendation from those professors becomes worthless too; unfortunately.

    Simliar problem happens at Harvard, as reported by G&M a while ago. Sooner or later, other universities will have to participate / compete in this grade inflation game.

    That is the sad part of our society. Liars prevail.

    ...
  4. Kim Philby from Ottawa, Canada writes: As bad as outright lying on your CV may be, what I find irksome is the trend in people larding their CV's with "strong team player", "solution-oriented" (or its cousins "results-oriented" and "goal-oriented"), "strongly motivated", "able to work independently", and other such psychobabble which I suspect usually serves to disguise a pretty thin resume.

    After reading through a stack of these, I wonder, "Geez, with all those wonderful attributes, how come they aren't all CEO's of major corporations?"
  5. Dan Thomas from Canada writes: Some places only interview after you complete an online questionaire. Questions like "would you be happy to fire an employee if they stole pens from work?" strongly agree, agree, diagree, strongly disagree...Well, don't think just answer strongly agree, would you be happy? doesn't matter, the answer is you would fire them 100% strongest agree. I hate those becase if I caught an employee stealing, yes I would fire them but no I would not be happy to fire them, but there is no room to justify or elaborate.
  6. Globular Cluster from United States writes: I think interviewing is the way to go. Background checks are stupid and a gross invasion of privacy, particularly the way they are conducted in the US.
    The sad thing is that Canada more and more is in collusion and enable the US system. As a Canadian, I had to provide a consent to a Canadian police check to my US employer to get hired for a job in the US. Would they conduct a similar background check on someone from e.g. China? Lord knows tonnes of people from other countries get the type of job that I have but they find it convenient to bully the Canadian because they can. As if the US immigration wouldn't have kept me out if I really were a threat. How much did this process of background checks cost, I wonder. It's a terrible waste: they not only check, they triple-check.
  7. John E. Boy from Canada writes: It might be of interest if a similar study was done into how many employers lie to the applicant during the interview process. It has been the experience of both me and numerous former colleages that misrepresentations are often made over wages, benefits, hours of work, job responsibilities and future opportunities within the company. Getting these details in writing does not always mean they are cast in stone when companies project themselves as being more successful than they are and later admit lower-than-expected sources of revenue. By the time a new employee realizes they've been had, the only choice they have is to quit and go through the entire job search process anew. So there are two sides to every coin and it is not always the employee who may lie in an interview.
  8. Sue W from Canada writes: Kim Philby from Ottawa, Canada writes: .... After reading through a stack of these, I wonder, "Geez, with all those wonderful attributes, how come they aren't all CEO's of major corporations....

    Probably because the CEOs are just bigger & better liars!
  9. Placido Durango from Here to Eternity, Canada writes: "Or maybe, Mr. Isaacson says, that 30 per cent represents people who have criminal tendencies, or have committed crimes in the past, but simply haven't been caught yet."

    ==============================

    !!!!!!!!

    Apparently he regards it as impossible that they may have impulsive personalities but have not committed any crimes.

    This guy's attitude is scary!
  10. L.B. MURRAY from Canada L.B. MURRAY from Canada from Canada writes: -
    There was a report last year about some test being given to people aspiring to high positions, just below CEO, in large American corporations and the tests results showed a majority of those people had psychopathic tendancies...

    That wouldn't be surprising at all... if you want to get to the very top, at least in some ultra-competitive field, you probably need to bully and push people into the ditch....

    There's also the IBM Hiring Test somewhere, easily found on the internet, and it shows your profile... if it's Neutral or Balanced, you should be an excellent candidate...

    Oh well, I'm retired, not hiring, not firing, not being hired or fired...LOL

    -
  11. brokeback mountain from toronto, Canada writes: sometimes, you just need to lie to survive or advance, welcome to the real world
  12. Phil H from Canada writes: It bothers me personally to do these tests because I find the ridiculous. (It's generally pretty obvious what the answer is "supposed" to be, so unless the obvious answer is a "plant" to weed out dishonest people, the test seems pretty pointless.)

    But I see a far greater danger here than my petty preoccupations. What the researchers are advocating is guilt by association: you share a personality trait with people who are criminals, so you must be one too. It's really no different than not hiring someone because they have a relative who committed a crime, (assuming a study could be done indicating an increased chance of being a criminal existed in this case.) Perhaps a study like this would find that not all of a criminal's relatives are generally criminals themselves. Then again, perhaps they just haven't been caught yet.
  13. Joseph Whistle from Canada writes: I always scratch my head of Chinese and other far away place resumes. All kinds of stuff they did and all these credentials.
    I say, use it to get an impression what they claim they know, and create a custom test to see if they can do what they say they can do.
    This also helps highlight the creative individuals that never made it through school. Heck, Einstein flunked even. Hire him to research nuclear science - absolutely.
    I'd make them do an IQ test with a few categories and based on which category they're good at they can be fit in somewhere.
  14. Sue City from Ottawa, Canada writes: "I am often told I do wild and somewhat unsafe things." Who would answer "yes" to that on a job application? Should be, "I often do really stupid things without thinking."
  15. Scott Weiland from STP from North Tanawanda, Canada writes: If you have had an idiot manager or boss, look no further than this article. Liars get far, and then they cause problems.

    In the end, they fail.
  16. L.B. MURRAY from Canada L.B. MURRAY from Canada from Canada writes: Joseph W writes : Heck, Einstein flunked even. Hire him to research nuclear science - absolutely.
    I'd make them do an IQ test with a few categories and based on which category they're good at they can be fit in somewhere.
    ________________________________

    Great idea, Joseph. Some IQ test with provisions for finding which category an individual would best fit in... That's what my dad did, without an IQ test, but putting his employees in the place where they would thrive and be happy...

    i.e. a friendly, people loving person out front, receiving customers, solving their problems...

    another geek type person, very quiet but excellent at his job, in the background, all by himself, doing excellent work...

    And so on... Every person doing what they love and what their personality allows.... Unfortunately, with so many plants closing and manufacturing jobs, hi-tech jobs, low-tech jobs and a gazillion jobs being ''OUTSOURCED'' to China, India, wherever... it seems our North American workforce will be mostly unemployed and the only place to go will be the Army....

    -
  17. The Wight from Canada writes: The problem is the over reliance on the personality test.

    As part of my first degree, I studied the MMPI extensively in order to make a similar personality test. When I interviewed for a job in Ontario, they used a subset of that as part of hiring. I warned the tester that I had extensive prior experience with the test and my results couldn't possibly be accurate. She made me take it anyway.

    I got the job, but the manager saw my results in the top 1% on the test and was immediately suspicious and gave me grief for it from that day forward, to the point of openly accusing me of cheating on the test at least a half a dozen times, but always outside of work. He made my life a living hell endlessly trying to trip me up. In the end, he let me go 1 day shy of the 90 day trial period, which was honestly a relief by that point.
  18. Mike H from Grande Prairie, Alberta, Canada writes: J Kooman from Canada writes:

    Screening of potential candidates become more and more difficult. Grade inflation (or generosity of professors) is part of the problem.

    When the class average for a 4th year civil engineering class of UofWaterloo is A, looking at the grade points of their students become a waste of time. "

    J Kooman, but should anyone really be hired because of their marks? Getting a good grade in a class doesn't have a direct correlation to whether you will be a good employee or not. It doesn't even mean you're smart. Maybe you just have really good memory retention for 24 hours and you crammed the night before.

    Personally, I would only ever look at grades if I had it narrowed down to 2 or 3 candidates who were "equal" in every other sense. then I might consider who had the higher marks as a tiebreaker. Give me an employee with a personality and common sense but average marks over an "A" student any day.

    That's just me though.
  19. Theodore Majority from Ottawa, Canada writes: The Wight - how can you "cheat" on a personality test? I mean, if you do, do you get rated as having a really, really sparkling personality? It always tickles me when people try to quantify things like personality or holiness or whatever. "Hey, buddy - that's the third-holiest site in Islam. You have to have a personality in the top 4% to get in there."
  20. The Wight from Canada writes: Theodore Majority:

    "The Wight - how can you "cheat" on a personality test?"

    There are control questions designed specifically to trip up someone attempting to be dishonest inserted in with the general questions. They are worded as such that no reasonable person could answer them except for one way.

    Example: Have you ever lied?

    Everyone has, of course, and so most people answering the questionnaire honestly will say agree with that statement. If you don't, you get a flag. Go through the whole test and you have too many flags from the control questions ... out goes your results as suspect.

    I scored very highly on the questionnaire, but DIDN'T hit any of the control questions because I know them by heart. No matter how honest or dishonest I am, my results will never trigger the tester to toss them as suspect.
  21. Da Puma from Stab City, Canada writes:
    I'll stop lying on my résumé (and during interviews) when employers stop lying in their job postings (and during interviews).
  22. The Work Farce from Canada writes: The most honest way to avoid lying on a resume is to burn it. And if your references start smoking, hey, the only civilized thing is to smoke with them. If anybody bothers you, tell them you were just bar b queing it. Then ask them to pass the relish. If anybody asks for your "volunteer experience" tell them you've been smoking your "career objectives" since the Stone Age.
  23. Emma Hawthorne from Canada writes: It is also possible that the other 30% are entrpreneurs, creative, brilliant or a little manic which is sometimes helpful in business and creative arts. The research should be tested against the above groups and more.
  24. Free Spirit from Canada writes: Hopefully we can eliminate human workers completely someday and replace them with robots which are 100% honest, 100% reliable, 100% productive and 100% odorless.
  25. Nassar Ben Houdja from Canada writes: Not lies, verbal tuurds picked up by the clean end.
  26. George BrownIII from Christmas Island writes: I wonder how Ken Lay would do on such a test.
  27. Mike Sumners from Toronto, Canada writes: Corporations don't want risk takers, they just need drones. If you have no imagination, no dreams and no self confidence then you're a perfect candidate for Cube City.
  28. Mike Sumners from Toronto, Canada writes: I found this quote in a bio of Richard Branson, founder of Virgin and multimillionaire businessman:

    "Branson the Risk Taker

    Since 1985, Branson has pursued world record-breaking as a favorite past time. He has set several records, including:..."

    It goes on to list his balloon trips around the world, crossing the English Channel in an amphibious car, etc, etc.

    Give successful entrepreneur Richard Branson one of these silly Psych 101 tests that HR departments use and see how he does! "Sorry, not corporate material." ;^)
  29. John Aitken from Canada writes: Are you a liar? Are you a total imbecile?
  30. Bob Macdonald from Liverpool, United Kingdom writes: Considering the lying, cheating credit-destroying tools they hire with these processes, I am not impressed. Why don't they try and hire peope who are of good character and want to work hard, rather than punish people for past attempts to better themselves in bad economies? In the end, you should always judge a person on their performance in the job, and not fall back on pieces of paper they have. Many an MBA grad from an ivy league university has burned cash and deceived people.
  31. Dr. Winston O'Boogie from London, United Kingdom writes: I think this story says something about the quality of people in HR (or whomever it is that is doing the hiring). If you have to rely on this crap to pick an employee, then you don’t understand the position you are picking the person to fill.
  32. bob the builder from Brampton., Canada writes: HR = Human Remains
  33. D K from Canada writes: "The remaining 30 per cent, who failed the personality test but passed the background check, may have just been unlucky, Mr. Isaacson says"

    Or maybe your test fails a third of the time. Nice rationalization.
  34. The Majordomo of Baie Comeau from Canada writes: Half of the people are below average.
  35. mr obvious from nowhere, Canada writes: I hate personality tests...I am not at work to make friends, socialize, make connections, I am here to get a job done...maybe rather than spending time on personality tests, looking for risk takers, liars, etc...they should put you in front of the task you are being hired to do...the person who does it the best in the shortest time gets the freakin job...that way, if i dont get the job i know why...there are plenty of people I have had to work with in my life that have rubbed me the wrong way, but I wouldnt think they shouldnt have their job...people are obsessed with workers getting along....with teamwork, with leadership skills, with personality traits...what it boils down to is "can i get the job done"...i think its a time waster to have people getting along all the time....I find more challenge and intellectual growth comes from having to work with people I dont like or just have nothing in common with...cuts down on prying small talk about personal lives and gets the work talk going sooner... I am a difficult person to get along with myself, but i do my best and if im not done at the end of the day, i work late or take it home with me and make sure its done....I have ADD and therefore I am impulsive with some things,...so according to these tests i shouldnt have a job? Ridiculous....
  36. Patrick Michiel from Dawson Creek, Canada writes: Quoting Stephen Jay Gould... “The invalid assumption that correlation implies cause is probably among the two or three most serious and common errors of human reasoning.&8221; The media is full of news stories that ignore this basic scientific principle.

    Causality is the important factor. Clearly, talented people who are not criminal types will not be recruited because of some coincidental factor that may not be at all valid.
  37. Mungo Mungo from Canada writes: Joseph Whistle from Canada writes: Heck, Einstein flunked even.

    This is common for people to say, but it's simply not true. Einstein never failed any courses nor did he flunk out of school.

    This is said to help "creative individuals that never made it through school" not to feel so stupid.

    I suppose it was suppose to be inspirational, but it's an outright lie.
  38. Ryan Lemay from Gatineau, Canada writes: These personality tests don't mean anything. George Bush is the most powerful man on earth. Bush probably failed them all, and you know what he got elected. These 'afirmation' tests are a waste of time.

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