(Read: “Lies during the recruitment process (I) – Who lies?“)

Whatever your choice, you need to know that the goal for an interviewer during a recruitment process is to select the candidate who best suits a certain position, and that means verifying all sorts of information that the candidate has included on their CV or stated during an interview.

Here are a few things to bear in mind before telling a lie:

Further investigation of answers. In certain situations, the interviewer analyses/verifies the truthfulness of what the candidate is saying in depth, unsatisfied with the assessments made by the candidate about themselves, which – as you can imagine – are always very positive. The interviewer must assess “facts” and facts have names and surnames. When a candidate says they are very good at building houses, the interviewer will surely ask about which houses they have built, when they built them, who they built them with, how long it took, etc.
Who hasn’t inflated a salary when the interviewer asks a candidate how much they are earning with their current employer? A lot of you, right? It’s very easy to say I earn €30,000 instead of €20,000, but… and what if the interviewer asks how much that is net per month? Someone who really earns that much will know the answer without having to work out the monthly amount because they see it every month on their wage slip. However, anyone who is exaggerating will find it more difficult.

Eye movements. Neurolinguistic programming discovered that our eyes move in certain directions when we are processing information (remembered or imagined). When we try to recall an event, the left side of our brain is working hard and our eyes look in that direction. However, when we are imagining something, the right side of the brain is working and our eyes move unconsciously in that direction. We could therefore deduce that, if we ask questions about the professional past of the candidate (facts), anyone who is lying will move their eyes to the right quite frequently.

Unconscious movements. When an interviewee is asked an uncomfortable question, they tend to make unconscious movements. Without realising it, they start to move a foot, move a hand or stutter, among other things.

Ramón Rodríguez Lago
HR Analytics ACCIONA S.A.