How to get the lying out of hiring

Hiring processes can be thought of as a battle between candour and dishonesty. You might imagine this is a simple fight between truth-seeking firms and self-promoting candidates, and to a certain extent it is. But companies themselves are prone to bend reality out of shape in ways that are self-defeating.

Start with the obvious culprits: job applicants. The point of a CV or a LinkedIn profile is to massage reality into the most appealing shape…