Honesty In Interviews

Author: Michelle Mamerto

I recently watched a video clip of a Recruiter on social media, telling her viewers that they should lie in their job interviews.

Her advice was to lie when asked: 

• Why are you leaving your current job?

  
  

• Why do you want to work here?

  
  

• Tell me about your future plans.

While I understand where this recruiter is coming from, there are other ways to answer interview questions that are more ethical, and don’t result in you needing to remember all the lies you’ve told, or even worse- getting caught being dishonest, and possibly losing your job.

If you really want a job because the benefits are amazing, you don’t need to mention that, but you also don’t need to spin your answer so far from the actual reason. Instead, do your homework on the company. Find other amazing things that you can mention. You can mention the company’s employee satisfaction rate, how from doing your research, their employees really seem happy, and how the company seems to care for their employees, their well-being, and work-life balance. As far as future plans, the question is about what your future plans are with the company. You should answer as if you will be with the company in the future. This is not lying. It’s being hopeful, working hard, and having a plan for your future with the company. You don’t need to talk about hoping to win the lottery, so you can quit your job, or how close you are to landing a record deal.

Here are some suggestions on staying honest in your interviews:

Keep things positive. If you were laid off, layoffs are not uncommon these days. You want to explain the context, and talk about how you can use the opportunity to grow.

Never talk negatively about your previous manager/company/co-workers. It’s okay to disagree or butt heads with someone. Make sure you focus on an example of how even with disagreements, you and your teammate were still able to work together, and how you learned from it.

• Mention your achievements, but don’t overembellish.

  
  

• Keep things professional.

• Talk about facts.

• Describe the context in your examples.

• Talk about how you learned from the person/experience.

When in doubt, research the STAR Method of interviewing, where you describe a Situation, talk about the Task in hand, the Actions you took to solve the problem, and the Results.

It’s about focusing on the positive, and emphasizing the right things- directing the conversation to a place where you are answering the question honestly, not sugar coating anything, over-embellishing accomplishments, making sure the interviewer knows that you are interested in working for the company, and have many things to offer.