Everybody Lies

In the summer of 2006, during an extended period of insomnia, I discovered the television show House MD. I spent two nights catching up with Seasons 1 and 2, and revisiting my childhood fascination for 'erudite British humorists in serious roles' (yes, I know thats a niche, somewhat acquired taste).

Anyway, I got over the show, as its mythology got more and more absurd, but when I began working in a start up two years later, a piece of advise from the show stayed with me- "Everybody Lies"

Over the three years spent attempting to hire people for first a start up, and then a mid size company with a clear vision, I was reminded of Hugh Laurie reprimanding his interns of this diktat at every turn. Everybody I met lied- on their resumes and in their job interviews. There were the small lies, where an assistant manager chose to call himself a manager- the unnecessary lies, where people invented MENSA scores or an imaginary proficiency in French, and the ridiculous lies- where people claimed to be proficient in data modeling but struggled to add two three-digit figures!

Now those of you who have seen the show know that the venerable Dr. House counters this problem by typically breaking into his patients' house and finding out the truth for himself.

Unfortunately, we as employers, can't do that.

What we can do though, is, -'Inception' style- 'break into their minds'

Behind their rote desire to say that they are a "team player who likes challenges and loves risks and doesn't really care about money' (la-di-dah), what is it, that makes a person really tick?

Short of administering a polygraph- the best answers we've come up with after extensive tests in our labs are:

1. People lie less the 'more' we get them talk (you know the old saying about giving someone enough rope and he'll hang himself??)- hence the extensive textual answers on our portal- which give you a window into their soul.

2. Numbers and statistics lie less than humans- hence converting these textual answers and the users' behavior into measurable metrics

The journey is still a work in progress, and while we can't claim to have quite got to the whole truth, we definitely are 'closer' than we were before.

Now when someone comes into our office, we take great sadistic pleasure in first tearing their tiny resume into pieces, and then ask them to sit on a machine and start testing!

They protest occasionally- but a careful probing- typically leads to a sheepish admission or two, an interesting moment of catharsis, and we feel so much more confident when finally making the job offer to them.

They would be advised not to believe us about the 5 day work week though- because- everybody lies :)