Honesty is by far not the best policy

OPINION: In five years or so of interviews followed by polite rejections, I have decided the best way to get a job is to lie through your teeth, writes ALEX WALLS.

A job interview is one of the more nerve-racking experiences of life.

Given the choice of being hung upside down in a vat of warm marmalade and being interviewed for a job, most people would say, without hesitation, "Pass me the preserve."

To make matters worse, the long-time hints and tips everyone and anyone will give you tend to be less sure-fire and more sure to back-fire; the interview generally culminates in a feeling that a fate worse than death has been narrowly avoided.

This feeling could just be attributed to these misleading tips. In my experience of job searching, these techniques don't really pay off. Are the cliches because they work or is it just that society at large is clinging to outdated notions of courtesy and honour?

It seems fairly obvious that the 'don't be late or messy' guidelines apply, except when applying for jobs as a tortured muse or no- really-I-relate-to-kids type employment. But the whole idea of being honest in job interviews seems to be from a bygone era, when one stayed in a job for a decade and arranged life around employment and not vice versa.

In five years or so of interviews followed by polite rejections, it has been forcibly visited upon me, by lack of success and more cunning friends, that the way to get a job is to lie through your teeth.

As much as employers talk about wanting honesty, in most jobs lying is rewarded - a friend has lied in every single interview and has not been without a job for more than two months in his life. He tells me the company expects it and that this is how to get ahead in the employment world.

Naysayers might argue that while lying is not a good idea, employers are happy with subtle truth bending (a mendacious euphemism if ever I've seen one).

For instance, if the job description says you must be able to type 60 words per minute and you can do 30 words per minute, tell them you are more than qualified.

It can be argued that employers themselves set up fairly unrealistic interview questions and job expectations. Often, they are expecting applicants to lie. This manipulation of the truth is all part of the process. An IT specialist with 30 years of work under her belt tells me if a person fits half the points on the job description, they should assure the interviewer they are more than capable.

Thus it seems there is some subtle game that employers and applicants play where honesty is by far not the best policy in interviews. In fact, if anything interviews seem set up to test the applicant's ability to lie. Inevitably extraordinarily broad questions are asked where the applicant seems encouraged to come up with some variation on the dozen or so previous answers the employer has received. Questions are asked that no human being could answer with a straight face, questions no human could answer truthfully, questions designed to allow the possible employee to be creative and to prove their ability. Conversely, these questions can be used to catch applicants or others out.

At a recent interview I was closely questioned about a friend - an employee - and her life outside work. I was also asked what I intended to be doing at Christmas and why exactly I wanted to clean up after other people. Honesty, I decided, was not going to go down well here ["I need the money?"]. I tried to be as truthful as I could, however, and this was my downfall: when pressed, I did confess that in the next two years or so I might start looking for a job using my degree. Cue an open door and an extended boot.

Questions don't just stop at intrusive, impertinent or impractical, either. I have been asked whether I'm lucky [sure?], how a friend would describe me [poor but good for a laugh] and what three adjectives I'd pick to describe myself [hireable, employable, please-give-me-a-job- able].

I know of only one case where honesty paid off, where the employer was genuinely looking for what they had advertised. These odds beg the question: just what exactly is an employer looking for, and what is a successful applicant?

Career Services say employers are looking for a low-risk hire who fits the job description. To help with this, applicants are encouraged to show off their selling points and to make sure they are believable. It is implied on the site that the selling points are also true, but perhaps this is fitting - it is much easier saying things like "you've got to sell yourself" rather than "you've got to blatantly lie". And this is generally what it takes; not creative marketing, but downright untruth telling.

Of course, the applicant needs the basic skills to survive in the job and they, broadly, need to be able to interact with other humans once in a while. But to secure a job in the first place, it seems the only thing to do . . . if at first you don't succeed, lie and lie again.

* Alex Walls is a Graduate Diploma of Journalism student at the University of Canterbury.

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