Random Hiring Managers Share Telltale Signs When They Know Their Candidate Is Lying (29 items)

• (#1) Gracias, Next

  From Redditor u/ER10years_throwaway:

  I speak enough gringo Spanish to get by, and back in the day when I was a hiring manager, if anybody put "fluent in Spanish" on their resume, I'd walk into the interview room and introduce myself and start the interview in Spanish. The looks of panic from the kids who'd taken, like, three years of high school Spanish before college were priceless.
• (#2) He's A Big Fan Of Your Work

  From Redditor u/killersim:

  I once was interviewing a candidate for a design position who presented MY WORK in his portfolio. That flagged everything else as made up and questionable. I grilled him on it for a few minutes before I was like “do you know who’s work this is?” Ive never seen someone want to melt through the floor like that.
• (#3) Not Understanding The Job

  From Redditor u/ErecSchunn:

  Well, I was testing a potential welder once. He showed up in shorts, muscle shirt, and flip flops... To do a weld test. And interview. I turned him away citing safety concerns about his wardrobe, and never rescheduled. Figured he was too dumb for me to deal with.
• (#4) Big Red Flag

  From Redditor u/Amadpate:

  Sketchy job history, or several jobs in a short time span. I had a woman once that had around 10 jobs over the last 2.5 years-she claimed to have a ‘wealth of knowledge’ from all of these different ‘opportunities to learn’. She talked around most questions, and long story short, I found out that she and a friend would apply at companies as minorities, and then quit and sue for discrimination. She had sued 8 of the 10. Bullet dodged.
• (#5) We're Not Interviewing Google

  From Redditor u/Shyless21:

  One woman I interviewed literally took a pause and read the answers to the questions straight off of Google (online Skype Interview). I noticed it because they were really weird pauses and googled it myself and literally followed along like subtitles.
• (#6) Cried All The Way Home

  From Redditor u/Communist_Pants:

  We had an interview candidate who said their Excel skills were "9.5 out of 10" and they knew how to do Pivot tables.

  They literally started crying when we brought out a laptop for the skills test and asked them to make a pivot table out of sample data.
• (#7) Math Isn't Your Best Skill

  From Redditor u/PutridMeatPuppet:

  He was thirty years old but claimed to have twenty five years experience in the field...

  He claimed to have over eight years experience with a programming language which was only fours old...
• (#8) Betrayed By Your Glasses

  From Redditor u/tvb1313:

  When you're doing a video interview and you can watch them try to google stuff in the reflection of their glasses. Small props for being clever though, he was paraphrasing the question back to me as a way to use the voice assistant.
• (#9) He Was Honest, At Least

  From Redditor u/iiicantwait:

  I was a co-manager and I organized the interviews while the other co-manager gave the interviews. I brought a candidate to the office and left him with the co-manager for the interview. 5 minutes later, I see the candidate walk out the door. I think to myself, “Jeez, what the hell happened?”. The co-manager comes up to me and he says:

  “That was one for the books. I asked him what responsibilities he had at the most recent employer he had listed on his resume (UPS). He said, ‘I don’t work at UPS.’ Then I asked him about a position he had a couple of years ago and he said he never heard of the company that was listed on his resume. Finally I just asked him if he made all of this up. He apologized, said yes, and got up and left.”
• (#10) His Son Wasn't Interested

  From Redditor u/FreshAppleJuice:

  At our software company we first screen potential candidates through a phone call with technical recruiters. One applicant did exceptionally well on the phone interview answering all questions with apparent ease so we decided to interview in person.

  The in person interview went shockingly horrible. The candidate was unable to answer even the most basic questions. After a few attempts to simplify questions I finally decided to ask him what was going on. Turns out we had interviewed his computer scientist son on the phone, and he was simply hoping to skirt by the in person interview with 20 years of experience in construction (lost his job)...

  I tried to hire his son but he wasn't interested.
• (#11) Evil Twin?

  From Redditor u/CantfindanameARGH:

  I had one guy who listed himself as XXX Manager at YYY Company at ZZZ location from 2007 to 2011.

  The thing is, that was my position and title and location.

  He worked with my husband at a different division of the same company. I doubt he thought his resume would cross my desk. He was a known a**hole so of course I made sure everyone saw it, you know, to pass around his resume for any open jobs.
• (#12) Basic Questions

  From Redditor u/jekka31088:

  We had someone come in and interview for a call center position. Their resume claimed they had 3 years working in a call center in town. When she arrived, she was very lethargic, and couldn't answer basic interview questions. When asked what she did at Call Center A, she literally just said "call center rep." When asked to elaborate on her duties, she repeated the same thing. No details were given. She even claimed that she has never been asked such hard and detailed questions during a job interview before. We didn't make it past 3 very basic questions. We have concluded she lied about working at Call Center A, or at least she certainly didn't work anywhere near 3 years there.
• (#13) No Gordon Ramsey Impressions

  From Redditor u/smokeywokeypokey:

  i've been running kitchens for a long time, and anytime i get an interview who's talking like gordon ramsey or postulating about how good they are and how inspired by michellin starred chefs they are, it's a massive red flag that this idiot's cooking experience has been 90% youtube videos, 8% home cooking and 2% standing around looking at his phone on the line.

  Raging passion for the food industry is carved into you and it shows in your people skills, cooking skills and work ethic. It doesn't come from calling your coworkers idiots and pretending you know better than your head chef.
• (#14) Check Your Sources

  From Redditor u/Laxice7:

  I work at an architecture firm and I kid you not, a candidate attached one of our projects in her portfolio. Exactly same 3d rendering. It wasn’t even listed on the company website, how she got it is still baffling. The hiring manager just played along
• (#15) You Can't Just Make That Up

  From Redditor u/BaconReceptacle:

  As someone who has hired many technicians in IT positions, I'm amazed at how many people would fake highly technical knowledge. I remember I needed a telecom engineer with very specific knowledge of a very specific voice system. I was getting suspicious of this one candidate so I started asking about the exact syntax of command lines and this guy was actually throwing out made up commands! I was both fascinated and annoyed.
• (#16) Oof!

  From Redditor u/leicanthrope:

  The one that really stands out for me, was a candidate that was reapplying for his old job, and claimed on his resume that he had done my job.
• (#17) Let Me Email You A Powerpoint

  From Redditor u/Communist_Pants:

  We've had an astonishing number of people rate themselves a "9" or "10" in proficiency for PowerPoint and then when asked what they used PowerPoint for at their previous job they reply something wild.

  Top answers have been:

  Emailing with staff

  Writing reports

  Organizing meetings with clients
• (#18) I Really Like Calculus!

  From Redditor u/anooblol:

  Not a hiring manager but I covered my boss for an interview (for whatever reason he had).

  The guy I interviewed had a degree in math, and the field I work in needs close to 0% of what you learn in a mathematics degree. I would know... because I have a degree in math. I interviewed for the job because I had networking connections tied to the field. But I was super confused as to how someone else like me landed at the same place as me.

  So I asked him about it.

  Turns out that asking basic questions about a field you actually know about is very revealing.

  “What was your favorite subject in math?”

  Oh, I really liked calculus!

  “Well calculus is very broad. What specifically did you like? Something in analysis?”

  *Visually scrambling* Yeah, I meant analysis.

  “Complex analysis? Real analysis? Functional analysis?”

  Oh well, you know. I mainly focused on applied math, so I didn’t really take those classes.

  “You wouldn’t take real analysis in an applied math track? That sounds odd...”

  I had a bunch of interesting questions I wanted to ask him, but I decided to cut almost every question I prepared out the window.

  Also, if you put some bullsh** “I know how to code in X language”, when you know damn-well that you’re not going to need it in the field you applied. You better be sure you can answer basic questions about it.
• (#19) You Can't Know Everything

  From Redditor u/dgran73:

  Maybe more of an answer about general competence but in my observation the smartest people are comfortable saying they don't know something or acknowledge limitations in their knowledge or experience. Naive or bluffing candidates want to project an air of knowing everything, which is implausible.

  Another signal is how eager they are to go into depth. I interview programmers and technical staff, so I like to ask them about the project they are most proud of. I listen carefully and ask a few questions about how they worked through some thorny tech aspects. I understand that software is a team effort, but the legitimate contributors are eager to talk about technical details of what they built. The ones who just attended meetings and rarely contributed much struggle to say anything of substance. That is quite telling in my view.
• (#20) Dead Fish Eye Face

  From Redditor u/DarthMurdok:

  Not knowing their resume is always the biggest tip-off. "It says here you know apache, can you give more insight into what you did?" and then I get that dead fish eye face like I just asked them to kill my grandma. I'll even help them out a bit and give them file names and ask if they edited them and if I continue to get a space cadet I'll just revert to generic questions to pad out the rest of the interview and hit the 30 minute mark.
• (#21) We All Make Mistakes

  From Redditor u/touchytypist:

  For non-entry level positions ask them about a failure related to their field of experience. What's the biggest mistake you've made working with X (project, people, systems, etc.), and how did you handle it?

  If they say they've never made a mistake they're either not being honest or don't have much experience. Also, helps find people that won't cover up their mistakes. If the candidate answers they handled it by also informing their manager or executive team, they are usually more transparent and better communicators.
• (#22) 17? I Could Do 100-150

  From Redditor u/modoken1:

  If they try to downplay a task that you know is actually difficult. For example, I worked at a hotel and whenever we had people apply to be housekeepers and claimed to have experience, but when you tell them how many rooms they would have to clean a day they would go “17? I could do 20-25 easy” but never ask how big the rooms were. Just basic stuff where they talk a big game, and overplay their hand.
• (#23) An Avid Editor

  From Redditor u/TVrefugee:

  I was interviewing prospects for a video editor position quite a few years ago. I asked him if the was an Avid editor (Avid is a video editing software). He said (and I am not making this up), "Yes, very avid. I love to edit!"

  Technically, he wasn't lying.

  Didn't get hired, tho.
• (#24) STAR Questions

  From Redditor u/iujohn3:

  STAR questions (Situation-Task-Action-Result) are designed to root out people that don't have real experience. Or if they do have experience the questions will expose their level of skill and work personality.

  If I ask "Can you handle underperforming reps,?" you can bullsh*t a vague answer easily. But if I say "Tell me about a time when you had to coach an underperforming rep - what was the scenario, what actions did you take, and what was the result?", that's much harder to bullsh*t your way through.

  If you are making things up the only way to get through those questions is to be vague, which is why you will see vagueness as a big tell in most of these comments.
• (#25) The Royal We

  From Redditor u/NoFunHere:

  When you ask them about something on their resume and they use the term "we" in their answer without ever saying what he/she actually did.

  "It says here that you increased market share by 15% on your last product. What did you do to contribute you that market share?"

  "Well, we increased training and did this and that and the other thing."

  "My question was what you, as an individual contributor, did to increase your market share."

  "Well, we worked as a team."

  "But what did you do?"

  Good interview answers discuss what the team did and what the individual contributed. If the individual can't articulate what they contributed, they likely contributed little to nothing. Likewise if they take all the credit then they are also likely full of sh**.
• (#26) The Worst

  From Redditor u/EmbraceTheDepth:

  Shows up to interview in sweatpants...
• (#27) Communication Over Internets

  From Redditor u/-1z-:

  I was interviewing candidates for level 1 technical help desk. The most ridiculous candidate had a b&w print out of an MBA from a Panama university that didnt exist from a google search.

  I asked him how he would guide a user to troubleshoot their internet connection and and replied "The tcp/ip protocol is used for communication over internets..."
• (#28) Hope They Don't Notice

  From Redditor u/NewYorkGiantsFan1:

  1] They ramble and the answers make absolutely no sense.

  2] They never answer the question asked. They talk about something they are comfortable with in the hopes I don't notice that they didn't answer.

  3] Give them an easy test. One that, if you knew your skill you should pass easily and within 5 minutes. If it takes longer, you either lied on your resume or suck at what you say you are good at.
• (#29) Interviewers Talk

  From Redditor u/Crazeeeyez:

  Agree with many of the comments here. My own view :

  no examples just vague conversation or talking points

  avoids or can’t answer follow up questions

  multiple interviewers hear a different Story and take away. I had one person tell me they lived and breathes operations and another interviewer they never worked in operations before. Do you think we don’t talk before making a decision??

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