Signs That People Are Lying

Find a Job - How to Spot a Fake at a Job Interview

When trying to find a job, candidates will obviously stress their strengths and gloss over their weaknesses, but it’s useful to be able to tell the difference between an exaggeration and a lie, for both the interviewer and the intervieweee. After all employers sometimes tell porky pies too.

So how do you spot a liar? The following tips may help.

According to behavioural psychologists and body language experts, liars tend to limit their arm and hand movements and the movements that they do make will be toward themselves. They also avoid making eye contact. Any expressions and gestures will not correspond to what they say — for example saying "I am a good team player" while frowning would indicate a lie.

They will also change the subject as quickly as possible if they are not comfortable with what they are saying and limit their facial expressions to just mouth movements when they are trying to fake emotions.

According to eye movement experts Brandler and Grinder, if you want to know whether a person is telling the truth, follow their eyes. There is a difference between creating an image in the mind and remembering an image. From your viewpoint a 'normally organised' right-handed person looks up and to the left in the first case and to the right and up in the second case. They will glance left when ‘creating a sound’, and glance right when remembering an actual audio. So when asked if he/she is a team player, if the interviewee says "I am a good team player" while looking to left this would indicate that the answer was made up, as their eyes show that they are constructing an image or sound. If they look right this would indicate they are telling the truth as they are 'remembering' a voice or an image.

It is worth remembering that these techniques can be used by both parties, as it is not unknown for recruiters to make all sorts of promises they have no intention of fulfilling . So remember you are interviewing them at the same time as they are interviewing you and you may wish to scrutinize them closely.