What to Do If You Catch a Job Candidate Lying in an Interview

Mr Biodun works as an HR in software development. As a part of his interview process, he ask a series of technical questions. In the past five years of interviewing, He has managed to catch two applicants boldface lying/cheating (by looking up the answers online) during a phone interview. The first time, he didn't say anything to the applicant and finished the interview like normal. The second time, during a short coding test he conducted, the applicant looked up the answer online and copy/pasted someone else's code. It was pretty obvious he didn't produce it but before he could call him out on it, his phone died. He discussed it with some colleagues and they suggested sending him the link to the site he copied the code from to keep him from trying to bother to reschedule an interview.

What do you or others do when you catch someone lying during an interview? Do you call them out on it? Or do you let it, and the candidate, pass?

Should you call a lying applicant out on the lie, or just quietly send a rejection?

There are two schools of thought on this, and both are legitimate:

1. Don't call the person out, but just remove them from the running. The thinking here is, why bother? You're not going to hire the person, and it's not your job to explain why or teach them a lesson.

2. Raise it. Not in an "aha, gotcha!" tone, but simply be direct about why you're questioning their answer. For instance, in the situation you described, you could say in a neutral tone, "Hmmm, it looks like that came from XYZ.com...?" When I've caught people plagiarizing on the written exercises I give when hiring, I've generally pointed it out by saying something like, "This answer appears to be taken word-for-word from XYZ.com. As a result, I won't be able to consider your candidacy further."

I generally do #2 rather than #1 because I like to err on the side of being transparent -- and frankly, I like the principle of it -- but either approach is fine. That said, keep in mind that if you go with the second approach, you should keep it matter-of-fact. Don't give into an urge to express anger or disgust; keep it professional.

By the way, I'm assuming here that you know for sure that the person cheated. If you only suspect it but aren't sure, then I think the right thing to do is to ask about it before taking the person out of the running, in case you're wrong. If that's the situation, I'd say something like, "This is awkward, but your answer seems to be based on XYZ. Can you tell me more about how you reached that answer?" Or, for a different type of possible lie, "No one at ABC is able to confirm you worked there. Do you have any insight into why?" Or so forth. Occasionally something looks like it's a lie but there's an innocent explanation, so if the picture is hazy, ask about it before drawing any definite conclusions.

In Inc by  Alison Green