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Comment by gwbas1c | Hacker News Reader

Some people think it's perfectly normal to stretch the truth on a resume, and to lie in an interview. Other people think an interview is just a matter of finding the "magic words" to get the job.

What I don't understand is, what did the candidate do with AI? Did they use the AI as a coach? Did they use it to suggest edits to the resume?

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I once interviewed a candidate who was given my questions in advance. (I should point out that it was quite time consuming for me to design an interview, so I couldn't just make up new questions for every candidate.)

When the candidate started taking the "schoolboy" tone of a well-rehearsed speech, I realized that they had practiced their answers, like practicing for an exam. I immediately threw in an unscripted question, got the "this wasn't supposed to be on the test" response, and ended the interview.

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The first part sounds like what I’d expect a serious candidate to do. Didn’t you look at the questions we sent you?

The second part sounds like areal curveball unless you made it clear that the questions sent out were only representative/samples of what you’d ask.

The candidate wasn't supposed to know the questions in advance.

> The second part sounds like areal curveball

That was the point. The candidate wasn't supposed to know the questions in advance. Once the candidate can practice / memorize, there's no way to evaluate the candidate.

That was not clear from your original comment. I read it as the company gave them the questions to presumably think about/prep.

I had the same impression. It sounded like he was given the questions for preparation as part of the company’s process, and then OP deliberately tricked him by asking him one that wasn’t on the official list.

The way I read it is they used ai as a coach and ai probably told them some variation of “it’s ok to exaggerate”.

However, this to me would be a red flag because they somehow try to blame Ai for misrepresenting their experience. So they can’t even take responsibility for that.

One can easily rehearse answers that sound natural. You could start with a partially wrong answer, realize midway and correct it. Easily fakeable. All the “ums”, “let me think for a second”, and even failing to answer 10% of the questions on purpose is easily doable.

I was in this situation on the candidate side :) however I started with "I had your question list beforehand and I searched wikipedia for the answers". I got the job

let me get this straight ~ someone took the time to prepare for the interview and you basically penalized them for the preparation? people are truly ridiculous

>I couldn't just make up new questions for every candidate.

Ask each candidate the same questions?

Follow up questions will vary, but the bulk of most interviews is the same for every candidate, and candidates are then judged based on a rubric that is the same for every candidate (though often tailored to the specific role).

The consistency lets interviewers compare across candidates, and avoids the cognitive pitfall of defining a rubric after-the-fact that lets us hire the candidate who appealed to our lizard brains.

Even at startups, questions are also usually tested on several existing employees before it is used on the first external candidate, for calibration. Companies put a lot of time and money trying to hire for actual competence.

Yes. It was a programming exercise that took me a few hours to create. It was not practical to re-make it for every candidate.

BTW, it's industry normal for companies to come up with a programming exercise and reuse it.

Yeah, this is the gray area we're all bumping into now

> Some people think it's perfectly normal to stretch the truth on a resume, and to lie in an interview.

So marketing works in the company's favor, and not the candidates? Its a tough pill to swallow, but bending the truth and lying seems to be the way folks get jobs now.

Perhaps not lying... But I've thought about the 1pt font white on white mega-tech-list attached to Workday resumes to get past THEIR ai-slop filters. And even had my SO get insta-rejected when whatever AI term wasn't explicitly there.

As a candidate, the market is horrific. Ghost jobs, fake jobs that gather market intelligence, scam jobs, blatantly lying candidates, AI blusters, and more. I can look at the usual places, or even HN. I've even applied to my share of HN jobs without so much as a 'no' as response.

It puts us who actually want to be honest at a pretty severe disadvantage.

Lying isn't marketing. If you lie in marketing, people can sue you.

It is one thing to frame your experiences in ways that are relevant to what the job is looking for: it is not only unethical to fabricate experiences, it is counter-productive. I will be checking references, and if their reports of the role you played on a project don't match yours I will not be hiring you. If you don't have references who can speak to the work you did, I also won't be hiring you. All you have done is waste my time and yours.

The sheer number of applications from auto-submit-to-every-job application processes have completely broken the system. There is simply no way for every recruiter to consider ever candidate, which is what they are now being asked to do. I know that is frustrating, and I am sorry you are in that place, but lying will not help.

We will eventually figure out how to defeat these candidate-spam bots. In the meantime the only hiring pipelines that are still functional are human-to-human individual networking.

That's all fun and games until a single company puts the top 3 or 5 candidates pitted against each other to see who waits the longest without a rejection and takes the lowest offer...

I heard this from friends, and despite being very comfortable where I am, I started interviewing cynically with no intention to take any job. I can confirm this is very much true and widespread. Hiring is at its worst ever.

Whenever supply and demand gets fixed, we'll see these behaviors go away.

It’s not at its worst ever. But many tech folks are coming off a period when they could waltz off one job into another in a week. That is not the norm for professional jobs. After dot-bomb the norm was lots of people left the industry forever and would you like does with that was not uncommon for many.

Completely agree with the distinction you're making: framing is fine, fabrication is a deal-breaker. It's frustrating how often people conflate "putting your best foot forward" with just making stuff up, especially when they underestimate how easily it can fall apart during reference checks or follow-ups.

> Lying isn't marketing. If you lie in marketing, people can sue you.

That's why we had our guys down in marketing come up with a new term for it. Focus groups, legal review, the works! Now we call it "puffery".

> Lying isn't marketing. If you lie in marketing, people can sue you.

That is also fungible as well. Some lies just aren't catchable, like experience with skills that you teach yourself quickly, or go through a quick online course. Not saying I should, but "fake it till ya make it" is a definite thing.

> If you don't have references who can speak to the work you did, I also won't be hiring you.

There's also a reason I'm leaving the role, and usually you don't want people near your position to know youre looking.

And also, demanding references is the old AI slop - you're only going to give glowing references. Nobody gives bad references. And the worst case is you have a friend answer, or you buy one of those reference services (yes, theres a service for that).

> know that is frustrating, and I am sorry you are in that place, but lying will not help.

I think you're missing the point of the type of 'lying' I was referring to. Workday uses an absolute terrible AI, that uses keyword search. With my resume, the human readable text is accurate and me, but to this ai-slop scanning woukd scan 1pt listicle of every keyword.

Its not lying, but it is. Play stupid AI bullshit games, get gamified AI slop solutions. And I hate it. But even having a discussion with someone would be a start.

Well, everyone tells their interpretation of the facts in a way that puts them in the best light.

For example, in 2003, I was fresh out of college and the job market was slow. I applied at a retail store so I could have some beer money. I was honest that I was looking for a job in tech and that I wasn't going to stay forever. Then I said I'd probably be there for 3-4 months.

I was there for 2 weeks, and I don't list the job on my resume.

Was I telling the truth when I said 3-4 months? I certainly gave them the longer end of the estimate in my head.

Was I telling the truth when I left the retail job off of my resume?

Leaving short-duration jobs off is common practice. The only way it might be "lying" is if you happened to, I dunno, have joined SVB just in time to commit a bunch of fraud, and then hoped no one googles your name. And even then, if it was three weeks, when your conviction comes up in the google search no one is going to think you lied leaving it off.

Similarly, it is typical that people will have a polite fiction for "why did you leave your last role?" that hints in the direction of the real reason without saying anything the company wouldn't want to be said publicly. That question is a test of your discretion as much as it is making sure the same reason doesn't apply to the new company.

However, saying you have a degree you don't, worked on a project you didn't, implemented something you didn't, led a project you only participated in, or used a technology you didn't: those are lies. Even if you get away with it, you are setting yourself up for a role you are unqualified to have. If you get caught, you will be correctly fired.

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