Job Search Expert Shares The 3 Things You Should Never Lie About In A Job Interview — 'You WILL Get Caught'
No one's saying you have to be an angel. But these are three areas to tell the truth.
fizkes | Shutterstock Bending the truth is pretty much inherent to the job search process, at least most of the time. Few among us are actually "passionate" about spreadsheets and accounts payable. Why do I want this job? For a paycheck. Lies are just part of the territory if you want to get hired!
Embellishing the details of our resumes is often part of the territory, too. But one job search expert says there needs to be some hard limits to our subterfuge if we don't want our schemes to backfire in a major way.
A veteran recruiter shared the 3 things you should never lie about in a job interview.
It's become almost fashionable to advise people to simply lie their way into a job. Given the absolute absurdity of today's job market and the search process, it's hard not to feel like it's good advice, especially since we all know utterly incompetent people who've failed their way to the top.
But Bonnie Dilber, a veteran recruiter in the tech field and a job search expert, says we might be getting a bit too free-wheeling with our truth-bending these days. "Honestly, you can take whatever risks you want to in your job search process," she said in a recent TikTok, "but I do wanna tell you three things you're not gonna wanna lie about because you WILL get caught." Yikes.
1. Anything that can be fact-checked via a background check.
If you're like most of us, you read that and immediately said, "Well, I've never committed any crimes, so I'm good." But that is only one of a very, very long list of information about you that appears on a typical background check.
A lot of those details could very easily reveal your interview lies, like information about your previous employers. "Your education is always going to show up on the background check," too, Dilber said, so lying about your degree status or your years of attendance at school is a huge no-no.
2. Having other job offers.
This one kinda hurts, because this is one of the few major bargaining chips many workers have. You say you have another offer for more money, or that your current employer has given you a counteroffer, and suddenly the place you're interviewing views you as an even hotter commodity and throws more money at you.
Dilber said this is dangerous territory, however. Professionals talk, for starters, and you never know who your interviewer or their colleague knows at your current place of employment.
But you can also drive too hard a bargain and push the company to just move on to the next person. You can also inadvertently give them the impression that their job is nothing more than a second-choice consolation prize to you.
"You have to remember that that company has options too," Dilber said, "and so if they feel like they can't win you, they're gonna say 'great, let's just move on.'" While it's fine to "present yourself as more desirable by letting them know that you're in other processes and things are going well," she warned that "if it's clear to them that they are not your top choice, they're going to act accordingly."
3. Made-up references.
Most of us have tried this one once or twice: A prospective employer asks for your references, you make up three or four dummy email addresses tied to fake references you made up, and then you reply to the emails yourself, making you sound like a total shoo-in. Let the bucks start rolling in, right?
Well, not so fast: Dilber said companies have long since been hip to this particular gambit. "Guess what? The company knows this because their systems track IP addresses," she said. "They can see if the candidate's the one that filled it out or if the same person filled it out multiple times." Busted.
Nobody, Dilber included, is saying you have to be a blameless angel without guile in the job search process — that's sadly a one-way ticket to the unemployment line in today's unscrupulous economy. But she warned that when it comes to these three specific areas, "the risk is probably greater than the potential pay-off." Don't learn that lesson the hard way!
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.
