How to Discover a Job Candidate Is Lying

Hiring practices range across a huge span, from the small private firm that hires based on its owner’s gut instincts, to the Fortune 100 firms that utilize sophisticated, multi-layered approaches. But all firms wrestle with one thorny issue, which is the challenge of detecting a potential hire who is skilled in the art of deception.

It’s fairly easy to spot bad liars and the basically incompetent; both groups tend to trip themselves up, and even if they don’t... the downsides of hiring them are reasonably modest. But the people who can cause real harm are the ones who are best at covering their tracks and convincing you of their sincerity. Bear in mind that many cybercrimes and hacking incidents are based not on sophisticated programming, but rather on social engineering. In other words, the perpetrators convince you to trust them.

In his research paper, Active Deception Detection, Timothy R. Levine examined our ability to detect deception. “Ten years ago,” he wrote, ”The best available scientific evidence overwhelmingly supported the claim that people were invariably poor lie detectors.”

Many in the deception detection community have focused mostly on detecting verbal and non-verbal deception cues: fake smiles, over-emphasizing truthfulness, shifts in posture when a hard question is asked, lowered voice. More recently, researchers have shifted their perspective a bit. Levine observes that your odds of spotting deception increase when you combine numerous techniques and analyze multiple sources of information. He focuses specifically on the simple importance of asking questions well. This may sound simple but it’s not: It requires that you do your homework, come in prepared, and ask the hard questions in an artful but methodical way.

For example, interviewers can compare a candidate’s verbal remarks to their resume and then to the results of their background check. You could ask different questions about the same event, or return later in a conversation to a topic the candidate previously discussed. You can ask your candidate to tell their story backwards, because we often rehearse false stories in chronological order and get tripped up when asked to tell them in reverse order.

Doing this requires active listening; you have to pay close attention. Many interviewers lack this sort of focus, which is why many interview processes do not reveal candidates who are skilled at deception.

While Levine is not a fan of watching for behavioral cues, I’ve found that it’s extraordinarily helpful when you combine such cues with thorough questioning. For example, if you feel that a candidate’s demeanor is odd when explaining why they left their last job, you might switch subjects for a few minutes then return to the original topic with a different line of questioning.

Ask the candidate to tell you their job history in bits and pieces - not in chronological order - because we rehearse our words but rarely our gestures. Observe body language, but pay close attention to discrepancies between resume materials and verbal responses.

If you know someone at the company your candidate just left, let your candidate know that eventually, but not at first. Why do this? Levine points out that “when questioning a potential liar, it is better to initially withhold known evidence to see whether statements contradict the evidence.” While this conclusion is rooted in criminal investigations rather than recruitment practices, the principle holds true: the better your ability to verify that a candidate is telling the truth, the better your ability to spot deception before hiring someone.

Bear in mind that it’s possible to take deception detection too far, by rattling good people who would make excellent employees. Levine cautions, “Questions can be asked in such a way as to make honest individuals nervous and uncertain, and professionals are likely to incorrectly infer that the responses to the questions reflect dishonesty rather than a poorly designed question that is difficult for an honest person to answer convincingly.”

Here’s the bottom line:

• Don’t just trust your gut. First impressions are often wrong.
• Combine multiple interviews with reliable background checks; never rely just on one method of checking someone's background.
• Ask probing questions and not only listen closely to the answers, but also compare them systematically to written materials the candidate presents.
• Remember that a good question - asked well at the right time - can lead you to the truth, so do your homework. Never wing it.

Pamela Meyer is the CEO of Calibrate, a Washington DC based deception detection training company, and author of the book LieSpotting. Her “Top 20” TED Talk has been seen by over nine million viewers worldwide.