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.

How to assess the risk and rewards of joining a start-up

By Neil Patrick

In my career, I have been a member of three start-up teams. Two were highly successful. One was not. How can you tell which is which before you join?

Last week I had an interesting meeting. I had a coffee with a new Linkedin friend. It was one of those getting to know you type of conversations.

It turned out that he’d been a casualty of a failed business start-up. He’d invested a lot of his time, energy, skills and money into a business which the management team had convinced themselves would make them all millionaires.

But due to a variety of reasons outside his control, the business foundered. He ended up with no job. Nothing. Not even a redundancy cheque.

His story got me thinking about how we decide to join a start-up. I’ve done it three times in my own career. And I learned something different each time.

Often we don’t take the necessary steps to actively control our careers. We just react to the opportunities as they come along and they flow over us in a somewhat unplanned fashion. And if we are not totally happy in our present role, the prospects of a start-up can be highly attractive. You’ll get out of an organisation you don’t like very much and have the opportunity to shape a new one that’s much more to your liking.

But when we leave a ‘safe’ job for a shiny new start-up, many people do it because it offers the prospect of a big pay-off in the future.

That’s a problem; we get dazzled by the prospect of that big payoff, rather than being focused on what has to be achieved hit the jackpot.

And realistically what are the prospects of surviving a start-up, let alone making the big time? That’s the really important thing you must understand before you jump ship. 

But to get back to my new connection’s story. I could see several aspects of it which have relevance to almost everyone:

If a start-up offer materializes when we are job hunting, it’s tempting to just grab it.

The events which led up to the eventual meltdown in this story were not the result a great business plan gone wrong, but rather a series of events which created the illusion of an opportunity. He had lost his job recently so was on the hunt for his next paycheck.

Then the opportunity with the start-up came along. My friend had seized it with enthusiasm, but did he do the necessary due diligence? I don’t know, but if he did, it was clearly insufficiently rigorous. I think it just happened to come along when he needed a job and it was the most accessible offer around.

We can get blinded by the temptations of massive payoffs so easily

The excitement of the prospect of a huge pay-off is an extra tempting proposition for most of us. But the job offer isn't the same thing at all. You should view it as the offer of a job which may evaporate faster than any you've had before. And leave you with nothing.

So you must be clear you are comfortable with this reality. Ask yourself questions, like ‘Will this improve my job satisfaction and my skills?’ Will it get me closer to where I really want to be five years from now? I say five years because that’s the typical horizon at which you should anticipate an exit from a start-up.

Start-up plans are always full of faulty assumptions

One thing I have learned is that unless the business plan is based on completely known assumptions from an identical business elsewhere, they will be wrong. Sometimes a little bit wrong, sometimes a million miles from anything even remotely accurate.

And the more innovative i.e. untried the business model is, the less reliable the business plan assumptions will be. So whilst I love start-ups, if you are joining one, my advice would be to make sure that you know how reliable the planning assumptions are.

It’s your future that is in jeopardy if someone else got these even a little bit wrong. One thing is for sure, no business plan survives its first real world contact without alteration.

Without the right people, a start-off is seriously disadvantaged from the off

You must pay close attention to the start-up team. If they have done it before, you can take some confidence that they know what they are doing. If not, you need to really decide whether they can be relied upon to achieve what’s required.

Often start-ups struggle to attract the best talent. They are forced to settle for who they can get. This is simply because since they have no track record, they are obliged to pick from the minority who are willing to take the risk. And unless the leadership team has a stellar record of success, these are rarely the best possible candidates.

If we are not true to ourselves, we can never do our best work

I know, I know. It’s that ‘p’ word again. Passion.

It’s become a cliché. We get asked it at interviews. What’s your passion? And we feel obliged to say something ridiculous, like, ‘My real passion is building SQL databases’. Really? 

Our true passion is what we feel compelled to do. It’s what we’d do even if no-one paid us to do it…ever.

In hindsight, only one of the three start-ups I took on really matched my passion at the time. The other two I took on because they appeared to be the best option available at the time. In hindsight therefore, two were a bad choice for me.

In the case of my friend, I am pretty certain that he wasn’t truly following his passion either.

Joining a start-up isn’t a guaranteed ticket to fabulous riches

There’s a difference to being a founder (and therefore owning a large slice of the equity) and an early joiner, in which case you will possibly be offered stock if you stick around long enough AND if the business flourishes. This isn’t to be sniffed at, but it probably won't get you into the millionaires club either.

Plus you should expect that the next five years of your life will be consumed by the business. Its needs will take precedence over you own. This is fine if it’s a commitment you are willing to make and you believe totally in the company mission and business plan and playing your part fully in ensuring it becomes a reality.

If not, you really shouldn't be there.

So how should you decide whether you should join a start-up?

This depends on you. What do you find most important? If you are looking to strike it really rich, you probably have a better shot at doing so by being a moderately successful co-founder (eg 30% of a £10m exit is £3m). As an early joiner, even with a bigger exit value, your payout will be much less (eg 0.5% of a £25m exit is £125k).

On the other hand, if you are merely looking to accelerate your career, then there’s much to be gained by finding a superstar team and joining it at the earliest possible opportunity. Whatever happens to the business in the coming years, you’ll learn lessons of huge value to your future career.

At the end of the day, the key is to know what is most important to you, have a clear appraisal of the business plan and team and be completely clear about why you are joining.

Now can I try that again please?