Nothing but the truth

Greg Wyatt • October 3, 2024

I came across a post about lying in recruitment today, and most of the respondents indicated it’s a dealbreaker and a sign of human awfulness.

Which reminded me of this article, written last year, as a counterpoint to my sister’s then recently published book.

She really liked my suggestion of ‘Nothing but the truth’ as its name, but told me her agent vetoed it on the grounds that negative titles don’t sell. Sounds true, yet maybe she was just protecting my feelings.

Truth is an interesting concept. Can you tell a lie, by only telling truths?

Does having an ideal require that you lie to uphold it?

Is lying morally permissible if it only benefits others, and not yourself?

Anyway, reading it back, it’s quite good, and you might enjoy it too:

At the end of her speech, my sister made a simple request:

“Put your hand in the air if you’ve lied today.”

Only one person didn’t put their hand up – me.

Lying’s not in my nature, except in a couple of specific situations where no harm is caused.

You can believe that or not, up to you.

The earlier part of the speech touched on all those little moments in our lives where we tell a little lie, either to ourselves or someone else.

Sometimes it’s to protect feelings. Sometimes to protect ourselves.

Sometimes it’s to keep up the narrative of how we are perceived because we don’t want to share our secret selves.

It was a great launch for a book on how society doesn’t just put up with lies to function, it may even rely on them.

She interviewed a wide range of experts on lying including spies and toddler scientists, showed how the face can lie, and talked about her amnesia and what it was like to be in the closet.

She didn’t interview me about recruitment, so I’m putting that right today.

Lies are rampant everywhere you look in recruitment.

In a survey last year, 51% of respondents admitted to lying on their CVs.

I expect the true number to be higher, considering some won’t even admit a lie to themselves.

It’s common to extrapolate behaviour from what we experience. One lie may lead to more, and that may be the only reason you need to reject a candidate.

Not all lies are born equal.

Broadly I differentiate them between lies of impact, lies to protect, and lies of inconsequence.

A lie of impact is one which leads to a decision based on that lie.

Here an example would be John Andrewes , who lied about his experience and qualifications to land a top NHS job.

He was jailed for 2 years and required to pay £100k, the remainder of his assets.

Fraud.

Or lying about reasons for departure – they say redundancy, they meant gross misconduct.

Misrepresenting capability and qualifications.

Mispresenting a role to make it more appealing.

£Competitive salary, when you meant lowball to get a deal.

The lies we should find and cull at the earliest opportunity.

A lie to protect can be many things.

I remember an HR candidate early in my career who changed her name twice. It was highly suspicious to me at the time.

“Apunanwu Oluwayo” became “Apunanwu Roberts” became “Judith Roberts”.

This first change suggested a marriage or divorce. The second I couldn’t fathom.

What a liar, 2005 Greg thought.

Of course, now I know better.

It’s likely she changed her name to a British one because she suffered from namism – one report indicates candidates are 60% less likely to receive a callback with a foreign-sounding name.

Despite my ignorance, I gave Judith the benefit of the doubt and invited her to interview.

You can see why blind CVs are a fair measure to prevent this happen, although I wonder if it’s better to treat the illness rather than rely on palliative measures.

How about not disclosing identifiable education for the same reasons?

What about disability and neurodivergence?

If a condition requires an accommodation to fulfil a role, is non-disclosure a lie by omission?

Another could be lying about reasons for departure – they said ‘left to focus on a job search’, they meant they couldn’t put up with a harmful environment any longer.

A lie of protection, which isn’t one of impact, should be clarified but, in my opinion, not penalised without investigation.

The lie above is one of protection – I changed the names to protect the individual, one of the situations in which I will lie deliberately, with good reason.

How about a lie of inconsequence?

By this I mean a lie that doesn’t impact employability, reflect capability or have any bearing on what that person is like to work with.

Examples here might be fudging employment dates to prevent the question “Why were you unemployed for 2 days in 2012?”

Or perhaps they might say People Business Partner on their CV, which they fulfilled functionally, yet had a misrepresentative job title of Operations Manager.

Sometimes what seem to be lies of impact, might be lies of inconsequence:

I once had a candidate withdraw from an interview.

Aladdin said his father had passed away, and he had decided to suspend his job search.

I spoke to the hiring manager, Jaffar, and said “This smacks of lying” principally because of a change in behaviour that didn’t seem related to grief, and the very high mortality rate candidates sometimes experience throughout recruitment.

It was a tough vacancy to fill, so we made a plan. Jaffar would contact him directly a couple of weeks after, to check in and see if he fancied a pint.

We put our suspicion aside, while also considering how he might have perceived his relationship with me.

Long story short Aladdin took the job and was there for eight years. He gave me a lovely recommendation too.

I’m pleased to say his father made a full recovery.

While this appears to be a lie of impact, it’s actually one of inconsequence.

He lied because he didn’t feel safe telling me he was having second thoughts. That’s on me, because it is my job to create a safe space for candidates so that they trust me and tell me inconvenient truths.

It’s not dissimilar to the hilariously high rate of car breakdowns in recruitment.

Have we considered our part in that lie?

These three types of lies are a gross simplification to paint the picture.

Our perception of lying is highly subjective, and there is no one right answer.

I think it’s understandable to feel a lie is a dealbreaker.

For lies of impact, this should be the case.

For other lies though, perhaps a judgment call is better than an assumption. Why did that person lie? Could it even be something we did?

Does that lie really matter?

And if it does matter – how many times have you lied in the same way today?

The next eminently-an-epistole is on technical debt in recruitment, and why we should consider the long-term impact of a short-term compromise.

Regards,

Greg

P.s. if you’re interested in Kathleen’s book, you can read about it here:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Social-Superpower-Truth-About-Little-ebook/dp/B09MDWNL44

Jump the shark. A Recruitment AiDE, pt 13

By Greg Wyatt • January 29, 2026
May 2023 You’ve heard the phrase, I take it – “jump the shark”? It’s the moment when one surprising or absurd experience can indicate a rapid descent into rubbishness and obscurity. When it’s time to get off the bus. Typically in media. Jumping the Shark comes from an episode of Happy Days in which the Fonz does a water ski jump over a shark. 👈 Aaaaay. 👉 A sign creators have run out of ideas, or can’t be bothered to come up with fresh ones. In movies, sequelitis is a good example of this – an unnecessary sequel done to make some cash, in the hope the audience doesn’t care about its quality. Sometimes they become dead horses to flog, such as the missteps that are any Terminator film after 2. It’s an issue that can lead to consumers abandoning what they were doing, with such a precipitous drop in engagement that the thing itself is then cancelled. Partly because of breaking trust in what was expected to happen next. And because it’s a sign that the disbelief that was temporarily suspended has come crashing down. If you don’t believe that your current poor experience will lead to further, better experiences, why would you bother? Once you’ve had your fingers burnt, how hard is it to find that trust in similar experiences? It doesn’t have to be a single vein of experience for all to be affected. Watch one dodgy superhero movie and how does it whet your appetite for the next? You didn’t see The Eternals? Lucky you. Or how about that time we had really bad service at Café Rouge, a sign of new management that didn’t care, and we never went again? Just me? Did they sauter par-dessus le requin? Here’s the rub – it matters less that these experiences have jumped the shark. It matters more what the experience means for expectation. So it is in candidate experience. It’s not just the experience you provide that tempers expectations – it’s the cumulated experience of other processes that creates an assumption of what might be expected of yours. If you’re starting from a low trust point, what will it take for your process to ‘jump the shark’ and lose, not just an engaged audience, but those brilliant candidates that might only have considered talking to you if their experience hadn’t been off-putting? Not fair, is it, that the experience provided by other poor recruitment processes might affect what people expect of yours? Their experiences aren’t in your control, the experience you provide is. Of my 700 or so calls with exec job seekers, since The Pandemic: Lockdown Pt 1, many described the candidate experience touchpoints that led to them deciding not to proceed with an application. These were calls that were purely about job search strategy, and not people I could place. However, one benefit for me is that they are the Gemba , and I get to hear their direct experiences outside of my recruitment processes. Experiences such as - ‘£Competitive salary’ in an advert or DM, which they know full well means a lowball offer every time, because it happened to them once or twice, or perhaps it was just a LinkedIn post they read. Maybe it isn’t your problem at all, maybe your £competitive is upper 1% - how does their experience inform their assumptions? Or when adverts lend ambiguity to generic words, what meaning do they find, no matter how far from the truth? How the arrogance of a one-sided interview process affects their interest. The apparent narcissism in many outreaches in recruitment (unamazing, isn’t it, that bad outreach can close doors, rather than open them). Those ATS ‘duplicate your CV’ data entry beasts? Fool me once… Instances that are the catalysts for them withdrawing. I’d find myself telling them to look past these experiences, because a poor process can hide a good job. It’s a common theme in my jobseeker posts, such as a recent one offering a counterpoint to the virality that is “COVER LETTERS DON’T M4TT£R agree?” Experiences that may not be meant by the employer, or even thought of as necessarily bad, yet are drivers for decisions and behaviour. I can only appeal to these job seekers through my posts and calls. What about those other jobseekers who I’m not aware of, who’ve only experienced nonsense advice? What about those people who aren’t jobseekers? What about those people who think they love their roles? What about all those great candidates who won’t put up with bad experiences? The more sceptical they are, and the further they are from the need for a new role, the less bullshit they’ll put up with. What happens when an otherwise acceptable process presents something unpalatable? Might this jumping the shark mean they go no further? Every time the experience you provide doesn’t put their needs front and centre or if it’s correlated to their bad experiences…. these can prevent otherwise willing candidates from progressing with your process, whether that’s an advert they don’t apply to, a job they don’t start, or everything in between. Decisions that may stem from false assumptions of what a bad experience will mean. Instead, look to these ‘bad experience’ touchpoints as opportunities to do better: instead of £competitive, either state a salary or a legitimate reason why you can’t disclose salary (e.g. “see below” if limited by a job board field and “we negotiate a fair salary based on the contribution of the successful candidate, and don’t want to limit compensation by a band”) instead of a 1-way interrogation… an interview instead of radio silence when there’s no news - an update to say there’s no update, and ‘How are things with you by the way?’ instead of Apply Now via our Applicant Torture Sadistificator, ‘drop me a line if you have any questions’ or ‘don’t worry if you don’t have an updated CV - we’ll sort that later’. Opportunity from adversity. And why you can look at bad experiences other processes provide as a chance to do better. With the benefit that, if you eliminate poor experience, you'll lose fewer candidates unnecessarily, including those ideal ones you never knew about. Bad experiences are the yin to good experience’s yang and both are key parts of the E that is Experience in the AIDE framework. The good is for next time. Thanks for reading.  Regards, Greg

How To Network For A Job - Jobseeker Basics XIV

By Greg Wyatt • January 26, 2026
The following is Chapter 42 in A Career Breakdown Kit (2026) . In a sense it's a microcosm of how any commercial activity can see a better return - which is to put the needs of the person you are appealing to above your own. It feels counterintuitive, especially when you have a burning need, but you can see the problem of NOT doing this simply by looking at 99% of job adverts: We are. We need. We want. What you'll do for us. What you might get in return. Capped off by the classic "don't call us, we'll call you." If you didn't need a job, how would you respond to that kind of advert? In the same vein, if you want networking to pay off, how will your contact's life improve by your contact? What's in it for them? 42 - How to network for a job Who are the two types of people you remember at networking events? For me two types stand out. One will be the instant pitch networker. This might work if you happen to be in need right now of what they have to offer or if mutual selling is your goal. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this but it’s a selling activity pretending to be networking. If you want to sell, go and overtly sell rather than disguise it with subterfuge. Lest we mark your face and avoid you where possible in future. The second is the one who gets to know you, shows interest and tries to add to your experience. You share ideas, and there’s no push to buy something. They believe that through building the relationship when you have a problem they can solve, you’ll think to go to them. It’s a relationship built on reciprocity. One where if you always build something together there is reason to keep in touch. And where the outcome is what you need if the right elements come together: right person, right time, right message, right place, right offering, right price. Job search networking is no different. The purpose of networking in a job search is to build a network where you are seen as a go-to solution should a suitable problem come up. In this case the problem you solve is a vacancy. Either because your active network is recruiting, or because they advocate for you when someone they know is recruiting. It is always a two-way conversation you both benefit from. Knowledge sharing, sounding board, see how you’re doing - because of what the relationship brings to you both. It is not contacting someone only to ask for a job or a recommendation. A one-way conversation that relies on lucky timing. That second approach can be effective as a type of direct sales rather than networking. If you get it wrong it may even work against you. How would you feel if someone asked to network with you, when it became clear they want you to do something for them? You might get lucky and network with someone who is recruiting now - more likely is that you nurture that relationship over time. If your goal is only to ask for help each networking opportunity will have a low chance of success. While if your goal is to nurture a relationship that may produce a lead, you’ll only have constructive outcomes. This makes it sensible to start by building a network with people that already know you: Former direct colleagues and company colleagues Industry leaders and peers Recruiters you have employed or applied through Don’t forget the friends you aren’t in regular touch with - there is no shame in being out of work and it would be a shame if they didn’t think of you when aware of a suitable opening. These people are a priority because they know you, your capability and your approach and trust has already been built. Whereas networking with people you don't know requires helping them come to know and trust you. Networking with people you know is the most overlooked tactic by the exec job seekers I talk to (followed by personal branding). These are the same people who see the hidden jobs market as where their next role is, yet overlook what’s in front of them. If you are looking for a new role on the quiet - networking is a go-to approach that invites proactive contact to you. Networking with people who know people you know, then people in a similar domain, then people outside of this domain - these are in decreasing order of priority. Let's not forget the other type of networking. Talking to fellow job seekers is a great way to share your pain, take a load off your shoulders, bounce ideas off each other, and hold each other accountable. LinkedIn is the perfect platform to find the right people if you haven't kept in touch directly. Whatever you think of LinkedIn, you shouldn’t overlook its nature as a conduit to conversation. It isn’t the conversation itself. Speaking in real life is where networking shines because while you might build a facsimile of a relationship in text, it's no replacement for a fluid conversation. Whether by phone and video calls, real life meetups, business events, seminars, conferences, expos, or in my case - on dog walks and waiting outside of the school gates. Both these last two have led to friends and business for me though the latter hasn’t been available since 2021. Networking isn’t 'What can I get out of it?' Instead, ‘What’s in it for them?’ The difference is the same as those ransom list job adverts compared to the rare one that speaks to you personally. How can you build on this relationship by keeping in touch? Networking is systematic, periodic and iterative: Map out your real life career network. Revisit anyone you’ve ever worked with and where Find them on LinkedIn Get in touch ‘I was thinking about our time at xxx. Perhaps we could reconnect - would be great to catch up’ If they don’t reply, because life can be busy, diarise a follow up What could be of interest to them? A LinkedIn post might be a reason to catch up When you look up your contact’s profile look at the companies they’ve worked at. They worked there for a reason, which may be because of a common capability to you Research these companies. Are there people in relevant roles worth introducing yourself to? Maybe the company looks a fit with your aspirations - worth getting in touch with someone who may be a hiring manager or relevant recruiter? Maybe they aren’t recruiting now. Someone to keep in touch with because of mutual interests. Click on Job on their company page, then "I'm interested" - this helps for many reasons, including flagging your interest as a potential employee Keep iterating your network and find new companies as you look at new contacts. This is one way we map the market in recruitment to headhunt candidates - you can mirror this with your networking The more proactive networking you build into your job search, the luckier you might get. While you might need to nurture a sizeable network and there are no guarantees, think about the other virtues of networking - how does that compare to endless unreplied applications? I often hear from job seekers who found their next role through networking. This includes those who got the job because of their network even though hundreds of applicants were vying for it. While this may be unfair on the applicants sometimes you can make unfair work for you. It can be effective at any level.