quick thoughts on job interviews
I read Kapwing detailing their interview process with someone that used AI to embellish their resume and practice lying about their experiences, and I had some thoughts about it.
Mind you, I have no horses in this race - I am in a permanent position in the public sector and haven’t had to apply to a job in years. When I applied to my current job, I had also applied to two others and got them all and was able to choose (oooh! flex!) and my job interviews don’t involve tests, portfolios, take-home exercises or anything like that (flex instantly destroyed). Never had to lie on my resume and as you can gather from other parts of this blog, I’m currently busting my ass getting the qualifications I want and need. I’ll have no reason to lie and my desired field isn’t even competitive enough to require lying or embellishing. My fiancée has been struggling with job interviews for months though, so I am at least somewhat plugged in to what’s been happening.
When I read it, I was surprised that this was made out to be a big deal, and that AI seemed to be in the foreground of this. Does it really make it easier to lie? I’m not sure. It just seems like this was common before AI too.
This is now anecdotal, bits-and-pieces-of-relatives-and-friends, read-online kind of pervasive fact you know that you can’t trace to a source or specific being, but: I was under the impression that embellishing and lying on your resume is relatively normal, depending on the industry and situation. Is it not? Is that not the top advice you get by friends and family or job advice spaces? I feel like every now and then you come across stories from both retired people, Gen Xers and millennials alike that they got their best job by lying or by having connections. They knew the liars got the job, so they lied too and learned on the job. They didn’t have the qualifications, but a family member or friend got them in and they learned the missing stuff on the job. Or they needed the position to pad out their CV to get a different job, so they did what was needed to attain it.
And honestly, why not? If all jobs in your field ask for experience but no one is willing to give you that, what are you supposed to do? What if for all other jobs, you’re either overqualified or too deeply underqualified? Are we mad that people lie to get a job when we tie survival, social standing and in some cases healthcare to it? In some cases, you’re literally deciding if someone’s gonna be able to get their insulin or not.
And let’s not pretend every company asks for reasonable qualifications. 6 years of diverse experience for miserable pay, or longer experience with a software than it was on the market, huge prior experience in the field for a job that people can learn how to do in a few weeks that is totally mundane. It’s ridiculous at times.
I promise you, you already have liars on the team and they’re probably doing a great job because they learned quick and made up for the gap and acted convincingly until they had it down. People you look up to in your field or work probably embellished and made shit up on the spot to get ahead. Does that diminish their work?
I get that Kapwing didn’t continue with the interview - broken trust is hard to overcome. You don’t want someone that bullshits their actual work, too. But if the listed experience was real, just the depth of it was embellished, and it was initially a great fit, it sounds like someone who just needed the additional edge and polish to get the job in the first place to then quickly learn to make up for the gap between reality and job application and get back into the groove of things. Sounds reasonable to me and what tons of people do daily.
The people that get caught are called fraudsters and liars. The people that don’t get caught are your boss and your grandpa and your neighbor. I am so serious! That’s the stuff people drop over a few beers with you.
Let me close it with something from my actual surroundings. I had a kick-off meeting with the people that started the same data protection law cert class as me and we were supposed to introduce ourselves and talk about our background and reason for doing this. I kid you not, one person was already hired as some data protection role at their job, but could do nothing of what they were hired to do because they have no experience or knowledge in that field so they decided to enroll. I gasped!
So when I read the Kapwing thing, it was such a contrast to that. Seems like in one place, you can get hired and then take a class for 1.5 years to learn, but elsewhere, the right experience and education isn’t enough if your involvement with the project wasn’t as deep as your resume said. Wow!
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Published 08 Apr, 2025