Message to Candidates: Cheating Works ... Sometimes!

From ERE Net | by Yves Lermusi | Aug 27, 2009, 5:32 am ET

How many applicants fake test results and assessments?
Does cheating work? Is it worthwhile?
What can you, the employer, do about it?

Personality Assessments
I have always been
suspicious of self-rated assessments, as candidates know the job they
are interviewing for and can guess what to say or not say. Many
studies, such as the one recently published in the International
Journal of Selection and Assessment (They Don't Do It Often, But They Do It Well: Exploring the relationship between applicant mental abilities and faking, Julia Levashina, Frederick P. Morgeson and Michael A. Campion), have shown that self-assessments are indeed faulty:

This research [on fake personality measures] consistently
demonstrates that candidates are able to fake personality measures by
recognizing the correct, job-related, or preferred answers, and
artificially inflate their scores.

Scary, right? Well, it depends on who is doing the cheating. Many
candidates who have gone without a job for six months or more will tell
you that it is good to know how to play the system in order to get a
job.

Biodata Assessments
Some organizations may agree
that personality tests can be faked, yet still believe in the strength
of their biodata assessment. Are they correct in doing so?

First, what is biodata? Biodata is a commonly used term in
industrial and organizational psychology for biographical data. Biodata
is defined as "... factual kinds of questions about life and work
experiences, as well as to items involving opinions, values, beliefs,
and attitudes that reflect a historical perspective." The basis of
biodata's predictive abilities is the axiom that past behavior is the
best predictor of future behavior.

Biodata has an advantage over personality or even interest
inventories, as it tells you the past behavior of a person, and from
there it can predict one's future actions ... assuming one tells the
truth!

How Many Cheat?
A newly released study from
Julia Levashina, Frederick P. Morgeson, and Michael A. Campion on real
candidates in real job application situations will give us the answer.

And this is a serious study, as 17,368 applications were analyzed
across many different job categories (general management, economic and
political analysis, public relations, etc.) with an innovative but
strong way to detect the fake. Also, it is important to note that
"candidates were warned that their responses could be verified and that
any attempts to falsify information could be used as a basis for not
employing them." Thus, it was not a laboratory experiment.

So, how many are fakes? How many among those 17,368 applicants were trying to fake their way in?

The researchers divided the applicants into three groups, which we have taken the freedom to name:

Complete liars: 173 candidates (1%)
Fakers: 1,389 candidates (8%)
Stretchers: 4,168 (24%)

In short, a third of the people you will see will pretend to have
done many more things than they actually have. In practice it could
look like this:

These examples look obvious, and are for the sake of fun and
illustrating the point, but they are probably what you can read on a
resume or hear during an interview. Some strategies can help you
uncover the hoax. We will cover them at the end. But the question still
remains: Does cheating work?

Does Cheating Work?

Statements used in the research assessments were not as obvious;
they were experiences or behaviors important to successful job
performance. These included interactions with others, adaptability,
initiative or persistence, leadership. These are less easy to fake. For
instance, when you first move into a new place, how much time do you
spend exploring your new surroundings (5 = a great deal of time; 1 =
very little time)? They were capable of cheating, but how well did that
work in favor of the fakers?

The research on this is clear: all groups of fakers "obtained higher scores on the biodata measure."

Interestingly, the research showed that people with higher levels of
mental abilities fake less often, but when they do it they get
significantly higher scores. In short, the clever fakers are the ones
benefiting the most.

So, we can safely predict that once job seekers learn that
stretching the truth on applications and interviews works in their
favor, they will continue to do it more. Thus, if today we see one in
three people stretching the truth, tomorrow we may see one in two.

Talent Acquisition Response

Of course I/O psychologists will combat these statements by saying
that they use empirical rating versus rational rating procedures. In
short, more is not always best and other techniques prevent the fakers
from winning. Incorporating other testing strategies should therefore
be the first step, but it's best to not take a chance, so I advise
complementing such techniques with the following three simple and cheap
strategies:

1. For verifiable facts (i.e. Harvard MBA) perform a
   verification (academic, employment, etc). Not only will you avoid a bad
   hire, but you'll prevent potential brand erosion and embarrassment.


2. For results or behaviors that require one to have expertise
   (i.e. "recoded and secured the whole encryption software"), if straight
   technical assessments aren't possible, make sure that a technical
   person (on your staff or outside if it is very unique) is part of the
   interview team to cross check the candidate to validate the expertise.
   At a minimum, a telephone interview or video conferencing should be
   performed if a face-to-face meeting is not possible.


3. For results or behaviors where you can learn the jargon quickly
   (i.e. manage the on-time on-budget new ATS implementation), I recommend
   colleagues rate the candidate and or perform a reference check 2.0.
   These can be used as well for the previous section if you question the
   achievement level or the personality fit of a candidate, as technical
   competence is not always synonymous with performance and integration.

Armed with these tools, the next time you have three finalists in
front of you, you will have the certainty of not picking the fake one.