It may not be a bold-faced lie, but researchers say we’re all likely to fudge the facts just enough to try and get a job.
And ‘we’ really does mean we, because a study out of the University of Guelph found that 100 per cent of us are willing to bend the truth in job interviews.
The deception ranges from white lies to exaggerating scenarios to outright hiding negative information, like being fired.
Researchers used two scenarios to try and get to the truth: one where there are a lot of applications and a lot of jobs; the other where the pool of people applying is small and so is the number of positions.
It turns out that competition between people breeds more lies. The smaller the pool and the fewer people that will be hired, the more likely people are to fib.
Managers can minimize lies by lying themselves.
The best way to keep people honest is to tell them that there isn’t much competition for the job, and then run them through exercises to test the applicant’s skills.
This research was done through an online survey at the University of Guelph and was traded for part of a course credit—so how do we know that the liars weren’t lying on the survey?
The supervising professor says we’ll never know.
With reporting from Max Wark
