HR PROFESSIONALS can improve the recruitment results of their organisations by becoming human polygraphs, or lie detectors, according to an international expert in the field
HR PROFESSIONALS can improve the recruitment results of their organisations by becoming human polygraphs, or lie detectors, according to an international expert in the field.
Speaking at a recent event hosted by HR consulting group Beilby, Steve Van Aperen of Australian Polygraph Services said candidates will generally only tell interviewers what they want them to know.
“If you don’t ask the right questions you won’t get the right answers,” he said. “Make sure your questions are clear and concise and that there’s no room for manipulation by deceptive people.”
Some candidates lie throughout the recruitment process, Aperen said. A recent UK study, for example, found that a third of respondents admitted to deceiving on their CVs. The most common porky pies were lying about leisure pursuits (47 per cent) and salaries (28 per cent).
Because some of the most common methods used to deceive were lying by omission or evasion, employment interviews need to be well structured as a result, Aperen said.
“What a candidate doesn’t say is sometimes more important that what they do,” he said. “People will often deceive to promote themselves.”
A recent Beilby survey also found 68 per cent of candidates misrepresent themselves in some way.
“Most companies need to be much more diligent if they want to reduce the risks of poor recruitment,” Beilby chief executive, Martin Nicholls said. The risk associated with all recruitment “makes it critical for businesses to design thorough recruitment processes and make sure people adhere to them.”
Caliper Human Strategies has identified six main pitfalls in the recruitment and interviewing process including: the myth of experience; hiring in our own image; being overly impressed by education; and placing too much emphasis on the interview performance.
“A mixture of these areas takes the form of the hiring manager ‘falling in love’ with the candidate. They are impressed by their social skills et cetera and really want them in their business,”said Caliper Human Strategies managing director Patrick Farrell.
And, as love can often be blind, recruiters need to take a step back. Errors can be avoided by “a rigorous process of identifying the competencies required in a role, exploring the evidence for those competencies, undertaking objective assessment and checking that all the pieces fit together”, Farrell said.
A critical, almost clinical approach, by HR professionals can be the deciding factor. “We look and listen but don’t really observe people [through the recruitment process],” Aperen said. This means becoming an analyst of human behaviour and looking for clues.
These include: paralinguistic changes such as volume and speed; verbal cues such as mixed use of first and second person, past and present tense and non-verbal or body language.
“Look for clusters of behaviour, not one offs. Loss of eye contact, for example, is not always indicative of deception but of recall,” Aperen said.
However, before becoming too jaded and suspicious it’s good to remember that it’s very difficult for the average person to lie.
“Not only does it require a good memory but communicating a lie is not as easy as inventing it. Body language tends to give the game away,” he said.
