How to Recruit a Liar
You would think that unintentionally or intentionally hiring liars as employees would be easier than hiring a professional liar to lie for you so that you can snag a job.
As every recruiter knows, job seekers lie all the time—on a scale that ranges from trifling fibs, through white-to-gray lies, to outlandish whoppers. However, being hired because you’ve successfully lied and gotten away with it is not the same thing as being hired as a liar. Indeed, there are companies that actually prefer to hire liars and seek them out, e.g., boiler-room stock brokerages.
If you are, as a recruiter, really strict about truth-telling, and categorize concealment of information, e.g., previous job dismissals, real level of interest in the job applied for, actual acceptable salary, or miserable grade-point averages, as a kind of lying, viz., the evasions of prevarication, recruiting liars should be as easy as reciting pi (3.1459…), for those good at math.
But, if you are a job seeker, finding professional liars who will help you get that job you want? Where do you find them?
In any case, how do you recruit a liar, when that’s what you are looking for —when you are a job seeker or a recruiter who wants to hire a liar? If you’re a recruiter, there are tips for you, below.
On the other hand, if you are job hunting and need a pro to lie for you, here’s the good news.
Believe it or not, now there’s a company whose slogan could be “leave the lying to us!” If you are job hunting and need some help exaggerating, deceptively tweaking, blatantly distorting or outrageously falsifying information in your application, for $54 per month, you can get Paladin Deception Services of Forest Lake, Michigan to lie for you.
A July 17, 2013 Money.CNN.com story titled “For Hire: Professional Liars for Job Seekers” provides an overview of the business created by PDS CEO, Tim Green, a 59-year-old former private detective, whose website, www.paladindeception.com, proclaims, “We’re the Leader in Covert Disinformation!”
No joke. Green says customers span the spectrum from unfaithful spouses looking for alibis to untruthful truant employees. However, he adds, the bulk of his business comes from job seekers, who represent more than 60% of his 250 to 300 subscribing clients.
As an illustration of PDS services, currently skewed to clients in their 40s and 50s looking for high-level management positions, the company website says, “We can replace a supervisor with a fictitious one, alter your work history, provide you with a positive employment reputation, and give you the glowing reference that you need.”
As for companies that might want to recruit Green or other gifted liars, such businesses are plentiful; as mentioned above, some businesses will favor or hire only liars or those willing to become liar-trainees, e.g. online scammers, some door-to-door sales operations, various brokerages and hedge funds, political parties, spy agencies, tobacco companies and certain GMO (genetically modified organism, e.g. soy beans) producers.
So how can such companies—the ones favoring and screening to hire liars—interview them without being duped by the same liar-skills they are looking for? This agenda can pose some serious challenges. For example, suppose the liar candidate lies about how effective a liar (s)he is.
Or what if cited references in support of superior mendacity are bogus? Worse, what happens if the hired liar lies about starting work on Monday or never shows up for the job? Or, consider the possibility that the liar candidate hires a professional liar to help out.
How can a liar-recruiting company (i.e., a company that recruits liars, without itself necessarily lying in the process) be sure it is hiring the “real deal”—a fully-qualified liar who provides only truthful application and interview information?
The “Cannibal-at-the-Crossroads” Truth-Detecting Interview Format
There is at least one way to ensure that you get the factually correct information you are seeking:Use a “cannibal-at-the-crossroads” interview format.
A missionary finds himself at a crossroads leading to two African villages, with one native guard on each of the two roads. He knows that one village is home to a tribe of liars—100%. Not only are all of the villagers liars; not only do they lie about everything, but also they are cannibals.
He also knows that the inhabitants of the other village are all and always completely, absolutely honest and friendly. That’s the village he wants to go to, but isn’t sure whether it is the one to the right or to the left. So he wants to ask, without knowing which one is the cannibal, while knowing that the liar cannibal will lie about everything and that the other guard will never lie.
What’s the one question he should ask either of them to assure he will get the truth and make the safe choice? (I pause here to allow you to think.)
Answer: Questioning either one of the guards, he should ask (while pointing at the other guard and either one of the roads), “If I ask him whether this road leads to the cannibal village, what will he say?” That is all it takes to get the truth—even from the liar.
Here’s why: Obviously, if he asks the honest guard, who knows the other is a lying cannibal, while pointing at what in fact is, unbeknownst to the missionary, the safe road, “Is this the safe road to the honest village?”, the honest guard will reply, “He will say ‘no’.”
If the road pointed to is in fact the dangerous, cannibal road, the honest village guard will say of the cannibal guard, “He will say ‘yes.’” That means the missionary should take “yes” as marking the route to the cannibal village and “no” as indicating it is the route to the safe village.
What happens if this gets reversed and the missionary asks the voracious mendacious cannibal the same question? If the road pointed to is actually the safe one, the cannibal, lying, will say of the honest guard, “He will say ‘no’”—since the truth-telling villager would say “yes”.
On the other hand, if the road is the wrong, deadly path, the liar cannibal will say of the honest guard, “He will say ‘yes’.” Again, the result is that if the missionary hears “yes”, it means “no, that is not the safe road”.
This means that however hard the liar tries to lie, to hide the truth and lure the missionary into a cooking pot, and despite the fact that the missionary doesn’t know which one is the liar, the cannibal’s lies and the non-cannibal’s truths will of necessity provide the vital information sought.
Of course, you are unlikely to go so far, geographically, culturally and logistically speaking, to recruit liars. Setting up the cannibal-at-the-crossroads format as presented would require a 3-person interview, with some significant logistical complications. Nonetheless, it is a feasible approach, if you can manage the logistics.
However, there is a simple way to identify lying liars in a job interview. Just as a single question suffices in the cannibal crossroads situation, one yes-no question will indisputably demonstrate that the liar applicant has lied at least once during the interview or is otherwise not up to the mental demands of the job.
“Would you be lying in this interview, if you said, in response to this question, ‘I don’t understand this question’?”
Note: Before engaging any “liar-for-hire” service or even lying yourself, consult a legal expert, if not your conscience or ethics, in your jurisdiction, to determine whether there may be civil or criminal consequences under tort or criminal law. This suggestion is offered as common sense, not as expert legal advice.
Reporting and mention of Paladin Deception Services, www.paladindeception.com or of “liar-for-hire” services in general is not to be construed as an endorsement.