Lies, damned lies and statistics

By Neil Patrick

We all know this saying. But it came into sharp focus last week, when I was researching what the numbers of companies recorded at Companies House actually means.  Answer - not as much as some people would have us believe.

These types of numbers are routinely quoted by politicians as evidence of the correctness of their argument or viewpoint. But politicians are rarely even numerate, let alone statistical experts.

In 2011, Ipsos MORI carried out a test to find out how good with numbers our politicians actually are.

A total of 97 MPs were asked this probability problem: If you spin a coin twice, what is the probability of getting two heads?*

According to the BBC report, among Conservative members, 47% gave the wrong answer, which is disappointing enough. But of the 44 Labour MPs who took part, 77% answered incorrectly!

*The correct answer is of course 25%.

This is truly shocking I think. Whilst MPs of all parties are quick to claim that the nation’s general standards of numeracy are not high enough, their own levels of numeracy are truly frightening. If you or I are not great with numbers, we are the main losers. When it comes to MPs, if they cannot understand numbers they will make potentially disastrous decisions that affect us all.

According to Wikipedia:

"Lies, damned lies, and statistics" is a phrase describing the persuasive power of numbers, particularly the use of statistics to bolster weak arguments. It is also sometimes colloquially used to doubt statistics used to prove an opponent's point.

The term was popularised in the United States by Mark Twain (among others), who attributed it to the 19th-century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881): "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

I never really attributed much significance to the saying. It was merely a witticism to me. But last week, after spending an inordinate amount of time trying to find some simple numbers in the website of the Office for National Statistics (ONS), I began to see deep meaning and wisdom in the saying.

Then on Friday night I sat down in my local pub with a well-earned pint and encountered a friend. I recalled he worked for the ONS as a compiler of government data.

At first as I was feeling off-duty, I merely ribbed him about how hopelessly impenetrable his employer’s website was. Instead of pushing back, he actually agreed with me.

A rather more earnest conversation ensued. What emerged was less sensational than conspiracy theorists would have us believe, but also much more illuminating than anything I had thought of.

And it boils down to this. The ONS who are the main compliers of all UK government data which is used to inform decisions made by many including the government and Bank of England, depends on millions of inputs every month from individuals and organisations. A few, (my friend suggested less than 1%), take their reporting of data very seriously. But the vast majority see it as a difficult and burdensome task and consequently give it little priority or care (there is no benefit to them in being super diligent after all).

In most cases the task gets delegated to a very junior person who also cares little about accuracy, and probably doesn’t even know for sure what the correct figures are. According to my friend, the usual outcome is that a number similar to the last one provided is simply provided. After all if a big change is reported, even if it is true, the number may get queried, creating even more unwanted work. So the default is to just put in a similar number to the last one provided, even if this bears no resemblance to the truth.

I’m not suggesting that this means all government statistics are meaningless. On the contrary, they are probably the best indicators we have. But they are not correct and will never be. However, even if they over or under report the actual figures, the inherent errors will be consistent. This means that the most important information i.e. the trends rather than absolute numbers will be broadly informative.

So next time you see a press headline which quotes an actual number rather than a change in a number, remember this number is almost certainly wrong.

And if it’s quoted by a politician, remember they almost certainly have little idea of what the number actually means.

As everyone in IT is constantly telling is, “ If c**p goes in, c**p comes out”. And this is clearly what is happening with our national statistics.

Why more and more people are dishonest on their resumes

By Neil Patrick

Are you more honest than a banker? Under what circumstances would you lie, or cheat, and what effect does your deception have on society at large?

Over the last couple of weeks, I've looked at the rise and rise of lying. Specifically on LinkedIn and then last week on resumes.

And I suggested why I thought this might be happening. But I’m not a psychologist and I wanted to understand better why people lie about themselves more and more in their professional life.

After a little more research, I think I have found some answers. And here’s what I think is going on.

Most people are mostly honest most of the time

There are very few out and out frauds and cheats. People who deliberately set out to deceive and cheat at every single opportunity. Equally, there are very few people who are scrupulously honest in every single aspect of their lives. And if you don’t believe me, think about the last time a friend or spouse asked you for feedback on something they had made or done. Are you always brutally honest?

Of course you are not…your wish to make the other person feel good (or at least not so bad) far outweighs your worries about being slightly deceitful in your response. Which brings us to the second point which is that: 

Lying is circumstantial

The situation we are presented with may increase or decrease our propensity to lie or gild the truth. And the factor which has a profound effect on this is the perceived distance between our actions and the people that our lies affect. The greater the perceived distance and noise that obscures our vision, the greater our propensity to lie.

In the job hunting situation, this is why so many lies are exposed at interviews. It’s much easier to tell a lie on LinkedIn or our resume, than it is to repeat that lie face to face when questioned about it. The evidence shows that time again, when challenged face to face, people ‘fess up.

The growth of digital media opens up our ability to communicate with more and more people. But it also creates a sense of greater separation between us and others when for example we are looking for a new job. If we see a job vacancy online, do we feel as close to the employer as we’d do if we saw a card in a shop window asking for new staff to help out? 

We try to rationalise our lies

Most people wish to think of themselves as being good and honest. But when the temptation to lie becomes too great to resist, we try to make ourselves feel better about it, through rationalization. Like, saying to ourselves, “How much harm can it really do?”, or “It’s not really anything much”.

The stakes influence our choices

In a low stakes situation, our propensity to lie is also low. But as the stakes increase, so the propensity to lie does also. And if we are desperate for any reason to get a new job, the stakes are high. So our propensity to tell lies is increased. Ironically, this fact actually supports the choice that recruiters and HR people often make to choose only from the ranks of those currently in jobs. I still don’t think it justifies such a policy, but it does have this attraction to employers.

The stakes were also high in the financial world pre the 2008 collapse. The distance between the lies and those it affected were great. The actions which we now know caused the collapse could be rationalized however spuriously. So we had a perfect set of conditions for cheating. Overlay incentives which reward the wrong behaviors and we have the perfect recipe for the 2008 meltdown.


Online job applications and Linkedin are a perfect set of conditions to encourage lies

Looked at in these ways, the epidemic of resume and Linkedin lies can be explained and understood: 

• The deception is thought of as small and therefore can be justified 
• The distance between the liar and the people it harms is seen as great 
• The rewards for getting away with it are high 

And last but not least, if we are told that everyone is doing it, then there’s a peer pressure effect which creates a vicious circle. If everyone else is cheating, then I need to as well, or I'll be disadvantaged.

What do you think? Are we headed towards an ever increasing downward spiral of lies, or is there a hope for a return to greater truthfulness? And if so, how might it be achieved in the digital age…? Do please post any thoughts below.

I'll return to this topic again after I have gathered some reactions and ideas.

Finally here’s some really insightful background from Dan Ariely, one of the world's leading authorities on human motivation and behavior, which amongst many other insights explains just why so many financial people deceived us and themselves for so long.

Why it’s time for zero tolerance on resume lies

By Neil Patrick

There's a growing and hard to spot threat to recruitment and employers' carefully developed talent acquisition programmes. It's called lying...

Back in April I posted here about the damage that lies on Linkedin cause employers and employees.

So I was really interested today to discover that CareerBuilder had completed a survey recently to look in detail at the subject of the lies people tell on their resumes.

And the findings suggest that telling lies on Linkedin is just the tip of the iceberg. I always knew that a lot of people stretch the truth on their resumes, but I was wholly unprepared to find out that resume lies are now an epidemic…

The nationwide survey, which was conducted online by Harris Poll on behalf of CareerBuilder included a sample of 2,188 hiring managers and human resource professionals across all industries and company sizes.

So the sample is large and the findings can therefore be relied upon to be representative of the current state of affairs.

58% of hiring managers said they’ve caught an outright lie on a resume. One-third of these employers have seen an increase in resume ‘embellishments’ post-recession. But these numbers don’t tell the whole story as I’ll explain shortly. For now, let’s look at some of the evidence…

Most Common Resume Lies

The first interesting finding is what people lie about.

There are some fabrications job seekers try to slip past employers more frequently than others. And it seems that what gets lied about most are the things which the applicants think (a) are most difficult to verify and (b) most likely to increase their chances of being hired. According to the survey respondents, the most common lies they catch on resumes relate to:

Embellished skill set – 57%
Embellished responsibilities – 55%
Dates of employment – 42%
Job title – 34%
Academic degree – 33%
Companies worked for – 26%
Accolades/awards – 18%

It's not really surprising that skills are the top of the table. After all, if I say I know how to use a particular piece of software, I know that you’re almost never going to test me on it. And if the day comes when I need to actually use it, I’ll have an excuse about it, like “I used the older version” or, “ I never used this particular function”.

But some of these lies are so crazy, you have to wonder what the applicant was thinking…

When asked about the most unusual lie they’ve ever caught on a resume, employers recalled: 

• Applicant included job experience that was actually his father’s. Both father and son had the same name (one was Sr., one was Jr.). 
• Applicant claimed to be the assistant to the prime minister of a foreign country that doesn’t have a prime minister. 
• Applicant claimed to have been a high school basketball free throw champion. He admitted it was a lie in the interview. 
• Applicant claimed to have been an Olympic medalist. 
• Applicant claimed to have been a construction supervisor. The interviewer learned the bulk of his experience was in the completion of a doghouse some years prior. 
• Applicant claimed to have 25 years of experience at age 32. 
• Applicant claimed to have worked for 20 years as the babysitter of known celebrities such as Tom Cruise, Madonna, etc. 
• Applicant listed three jobs over the past several years. Upon contacting the employers, the interviewer learned that the applicant had worked at one for two days, another for one day, and not at all for the third. 
• Applicant applied to a position with a company who had just terminated him. He listed the company under previous employment and indicated on his resume that he had quit. 
• Applicant applied twice for the same position and provided different work history on each application. 

Industries Most Likely to Report Catching Resume Lies

The survey found that employers in the following industries catch resume lies more frequently than average: 

Financial Services – 73%
Leisure and Hospitality – 71%
Information Technology – 63%
Health Care (More than 50 employees) – 63%
Retail – 59%

At first glance, it appears that old habits die hard in the financial sector. Despite all the extra regulation, penalties, media shame and criminal proceedings, the financial workers seem unwilling to give up their devious ways of going about things. But hang on, is it perhaps quite the opposite story here…i.e. the financial sector has had to get it’s house in order and is being a lot more vigilant today than the other sectors? I don’t know, but it’s a distinct possibility in my view.

Employers are leaving themselves wide open to exploitation

Career Builder reported that employers may be taking more time looking over individual resumes. 42% of employers said they spend more than two minutes (Wow! –Ed.) reviewing each resume, up from 33% in December.

Two minutes…I cannot imagine that the IRS would manage to uncover a financial fraud in less than two weeks, so employers are hardly giving themselves chance to catch the tricksters it seems. We all know what the excuses are; we’re too busy, we get so many applications etc.

The trouble is that like all fraud, the incidence rises in proportion to the chances of getting away with it. And right now it’s a free for all it seems.

These stats also don’t tell the whole story I suspect. If employers are asleep on their watch, there are a whole lot more lies getting past them that they never discovered and which consequently won’t appear in any of these stats.

What’s more, only half of employers (51%) said that they would automatically dismiss a candidate if they caught a lie on his/her resume, while 40% said that it would depend on what the candidate lied about. 7% said they’d be willing to overlook a lie if they liked the candidate.

With odds like these, I’m almost tempted to say telling lies on your resume is a worthwhile job search strategy. But I won’t because it does no-one any good in the long run and I hate lies, whoever tells them.

I think this is a loud alarm bell for everyone in the business of hiring. There’s a huge threat emerging to your talent acquisition programme or whatever you call it and you need to tackle it right now. Moreover, a huge prize awaits whoever can be the first to produce an effective resume verification software platform...