How to get the lying out of hiring
Hiring processes can be thought of as a battle between candour and dishonesty. You might imagine this is a simple fight between truth-seeking firms and self-promoting candidates, and to a certain extent it is. But companies themselves are prone to bend reality out of shape in ways that are self-defeating.
Start with the obvious culprits: job applicants. The point of a CV or a LinkedIn profile is to massage reality into the most appealing shape possible. Everyone beyond a certain level of experience is a transformational leader personally responsible for generating millions in revenue; the world economy would be about 15 times bigger than it actually is if all such claims were true. The average Briton spends four and a half hours a day watching TV and online videos. But the average job candidate uses their spare time only for worthy purposes, like volunteering in soup kitchens or teaching orphans to code.
The cover letter is so open in its insincerity (“When I saw the advertisement for this job, I almost fainted with excitement”) that people are starting not to bother with it. At the interview stage one task facing the firm’s recruiters is to winkle out the truth of what a person actually contributed to a project. Those hoary questions about a candidate’s weaknesses and failures are there for a reason; no one will bring them up unprompted. Cognitive and behavioural tests are useful in part because they are harder for applicants to game.
2023-10-30 12:57:40
Post from www.economist.com
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