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I Got Catfished by a Candidate

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Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#601

Post by mnm1 »

chickenfries wrote: post #123

> However, I am glad that I caught it early before we hired him. If we had hired him, tough to say what could have happened. Maybe he would have been great and our best performing AE. Maybe he wouldn’t have even known how to log into Salesforce. When you make it to the top by lying, you're considered a winner: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-goldman-gary-cohn-got-to-... > "I lied to him all the way to the airport,…

Them: "What level are you at with Javascript?" Me: "Intermediate to advanced." Reality: Hadn't written a single line of Javascript at the time Reality 1 week after hire: Best JS programmer there (to be fair, standards were intentionally very low and 2 weeks is plenty of time to pick up a new language) Reality After a Year: Employee of the year

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#602

Post by e40 »

tomcooks wrote: post #397
lvillani wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His knowledge is solid, sure, but would you really want to work with someone who has such a strong inclination to cheat and deceive? I certainly wouldn't.

He adapted to an unfavourable situation, studied hard, did his research well and passed multiple tests - I'd gladly work with someone like that

You are either trolling or incredibly naive. Nothing good will come of working with someone like this.

EDIT: someone that spends that much effort lying has a good chance of being a sociopath.

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#603

Post by magduf »

phyller wrote: post #465
eeZah7Ux wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[citation needed] Usually that's not the case. Plenty of people lie, often unnecessarily, about tiny things like making excuses for being late but would not lie to cover up anything that has serious ethical implications.

The first person people lie to is themselves. For a person that doesn't have a personal commitment to integrity, when they are placed in a position where they are incentivized to lie, they will first convince themselves that this lie is either harmless (we are going to lose the account anyway, what is the point of getting everyone mad at me) or the lie is for a good cause. Once that is done, usually unconsciously, th…

So exactly how do you think your friend should have handled it? Tell his employer he was checking out a potential new job? How do you think that would have gone? You think someone of "integrity" needs to ruin their current employment every time they even think about finding a new job?

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#604

Post by magduf »

nocman wrote: post #520
glastra wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion, answering with "thank you for making it" should be equivalent in everyone else's brains to "well, that wasn't very good". Social consequences will ensue regardless of you stating it or not. In this situation, as in many others, a lack of positive reaction is considered a negative reaction. It all boils down to ego and believing others don't have a reason to look down at you just because you didn't dire…

Maybe something is being lost in the lack of tone, but I don't in any way believe that anwsering "thank you for making it" could be construed as being selfish. And it has absolutely nothing to do with ego, it's about being kind to others.

It's not selfish at all, however anyone who isn't a complete idiot will realize that it's a dodge to answering the question of whether you liked the food. You risk an uncomfortable exchange and negative social consequences with a move like this. It's much easier to just lie and tell granny that her crappy food was good and move on to another topic. And really, saying "it was good" isn't a complete lie: it could have been worse, much worse (assuming the food didn't give you food poisoning or kill you outright), and "good" is a relative term.

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#605

Post by chickenfries »

tokyodude wrote: post #330
mixmastamyk wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t lie either, but rarely get job offers, so I should probably start.

I get plenty but I'm willing to believe much of that was luck early in my career when I had no "job" experience. Met the right people. Was at the right place at the right time. Got lucky my parents supported my hobby. Etc. On the other hand I made tons of personal projects in junior high and high school so I had plenty to show during my first interviews.

Junior high? No wonder you didn't have problems getting a break, you'd been working towards it since childhood.

The fact that you get plenty of offers probably means you're not in the situation where someone would consider lying to get a job.

Edit: Not trying to criticize you, I'm just trying to point out why you might be an exceptional candidate. But I guess your original point was just that "not everyone" lies, so I suppose I'm just saying that I agree with what you're saying. It's true that not literally everyone lies, but many many people exaggerate, even if they don't tell outright lies.

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#606

Post by PurpleBoxDragon »

drdeadringer wrote: post #219
justherefortart wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone lies, because the interviewing process itself is a fucking joke, ESPECIALLY in the Bay Area. If the person can answer all my questions and they have a good attitude, I honestly don't give a shit what got them to that point. If someone doesn't work out, you can fire them. Yes it's "exhausting", maybe if it's so difficult to manage or run a business you should find a different role for yourself. I really enjoy…

> Everyone lies I am clueless about certain things and perhaps this is one of them... but really? Outright lies of pure red-handed snake-oil fiction? Surely there must be a line between the "HR speak" most must sing along to and reality that does not qualify as pure uncut straight-up lies. Help me understand what you mean.

They are both lies, but they are different since they aren't equal violation of the social contract. When an interviewer wants to know my biggest weakness, they don't actually want to know my biggest weakness, they want to know how I handle answering a political question where too much honesty is a bad thing. They want me to lie, but only so much. Saying something like 'I work too hard' is too big a lie. Bringing up something that is a real but minor workplace weakness and what I do to avoid it is the lie they want, and bringing up a real weakness is being too truthful.

But when I say I worked at $place and did $thing with $technology, they want to me to mostly truthful. They understand there is some embellishing or generalizing, but an outright falsehood is a major violation of expectations.

HR speak is about giving the desired answer, regardless if it is true, mostly true, or a straight up lie. In some way it is seen as an justifiable reason to lie where as most other lying is not considered justifiable.

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#607

Post by tigershark »

magduf wrote: post #588
tigershark wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sure someone that lies to me in the face has not the right attitude. I honestly cannot understand how you can trust someone that lies to get a job. And I can definitely say that you are completely wrong if you think that everyone lies. I never lied to an interview and frankly I can’t imagine why I should do it. It’s a really sad world if lying to get a job seems normal.

It seems normal to me. If someone asks you "why did you leave this job?" for a place where things didn't go very well (suppose you had a terrible manager there), are you going to be completely honest and slam your former employer, or are you going to just say something about how "I wasn't being challenged enough" or something like that and found something better? You do realize that candidates who trash former employ…

You can let the new employer know that you didn’t feel comfortable with the previous manager. And if he asks for the reason you can explain why. It happened to me in the past.

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#608

Post by jacquesm »

mrbill wrote: post #470
jacquesm wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only loosely related to your comment but the freemason bit reminded me of this Monty Python sketch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2PyeXRwhCE

I rather like this Hale and Pace bit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBnzp4OkDD4

Hehe. Don't screw with the masons (or their daughters).

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#609

Post by magduf »

extra88 wrote: post #315
learc83 wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asking people who weren't listed as references can cause all kinds of trouble. In this case the candidate said they left on good terms, but given the author's willingness to go beyond what is "considered kosher" says to me that they likely do this all the time. Even if you're not asking people at a candidate's current employer, if you start poking around asking all of your contacts about someone and it gets back to t…

> asking all of your contacts about someone That escalated quickly. Checking references is one of the last things we do and insist that one be their a current manager so being "outed" by someone else isn't an issue. If I talk to a non-reference who I think is in a position to know about a candidate's performance, I would make it clear that discretion is called for; that's no guarantee but again, reference checks are…

Just because you've gotten the the point of checking references doesn't mean the candidate is definitely going to accept your offer.

If you called my manager and got me fired from my job in an interview process, I'd most likely hire a lawyer and sue you.

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#610

Post by mrbill »

pc86 wrote: post #579
swozey wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And on the flip side bear in mind that some of us were 10-15yo on IRC back in the day. Don't fault those of us too hard.

I'm still friends with a handful of IRC folks. Some were older, some were younger. I think I was 12-14 during my heyday, but I was around for a few years prior.

A bunch of us eventually got tired of EFNet politics and started a tiny server network of our own that's run for almost .. 16 years now? Running /lusers shows 22 users on the network across 3 servers, with 5 total channels. Overkill, but it's "home" to us.
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