Recruiter perceptions of interview faking in selection processes

Abstract

Existing literature determines that faking occurs within employment interviews but has not yet focused on patterns among faking behaviors. Furthermore, extant research has stated that recruiters, in general, are poor at detecting faking without emphasizing how they try to cope with it. Hence, we were triggered to explore both gaps. Through semi-structured interviews, we have managed to explore real-life cases, and identified four main patterns of interview faking detected by recruiters: (1) Education Boosting, (2) Work Experience Boosting, (3) Other-Intentional Motivation, and (4) Personality Adjustment. Within each of the four patterns, we found some degree of coping strategies conducted by the recruiters. However, we observed that companies generally have few strategies to cope with interview faking. For instance, our findings show that strategies to cope with three out of four faking patterns were poorly used as most cases were detected by coincidence.