a candidate used my experience as hers, when I was on the interview panel

A reader writes:

This happened a few years ago, but I would appreciate knowing how I should have handled it in the moment as all my supervisor training was patchy and on the fly and definitely had gaps.

We had an internal promotion opportunity and two candidates: Abby and Bella. Both were in the same support role where Bella had more experience, but Abby had natural aptitude. The new position was much more technical in nature, needing a lot of spreadsheet and database work, instead of document formatting and people skills. We were all surprised when Bella applied, as none of this role played to her strengths or interests, but we interviewed both. She could have been taking extra training we were not aware of yet.

Abby’s education, skillset, and reputation made her the strong choice before the interview. Her personality makes interviewing harder, especially with a panel of three colleagues, but she made it through okay.

Bella’s education, skillset, and reputation did not make her an obvious choice, but she interviews very well. But here’s the issue: She gave an example that perfectly highlighted the skills for this position — identifying issues in an existing database and reports, working with IT to fix the reports, and rolling out the changes and training staff. The other two panel members were impressed, as they know this report and remember how clumsy it was and how good it is now.

However: That was my work. I supervised both Bella and Abby, and I made that entire process change and I taught it to Bella. I honestly couldn’t tell in the moment if she was blatantly lying, or if she’d Dunning-Krugered herself into thinking she spearheaded the entire process rather than sitting through my training for the new system at the end.

At the time, I didn’t deep-dive, as we were already fairly decided on Abby, so I simply said, “Yes, I remember that entire process very well …” and left it hanging for a while. When we debriefed afterwards, I clarified for my panel peers. It cemented our decision that Abby was the right person for the promotion.

What was the right path in the moment of the interview, and afterwards?

It can be really hard to know how to react correctly in the moment in a situation like that — it’s natural to be stunned that the person is flagrantly lying (and in front of you, someone they should know will know the truth!), and often the conversation has already moved on by the time you’ve collected your thoughts and are confident of how to respond. Sometimes, too, you might not trust yourself to get the response right in the moment and you want some time to think about it before you speak up so you don’t get it wrong. So it’s very normal and understandable that you didn’t say anything in the moment.

That said … you absolutely can say something in the moment when something like this happens. The easiest way to do it is to just articulate very plainly your own understanding of the situation and then ask for clarification. Your tone shouldn’t be accusatory but rather more “maybe I’m misunderstanding.”

For example: “You probably remember that I was heavily involved in the X work — I led the change process and trained you and the other staff on it at the end. My recollection was that your involvement came at the end, when you were trained on the new system rather than spearheading the work, so I wonder if you can you speak more to what your role was.”

And if you missed the chance to say it in the moment, it also would have been okay to go back to it later in the conversation, saying something like, “I want to go back to something we talked about a littler earlier” and then using the language above.

Bella probably wouldn’t have responded by confessing that yes, in fact she had completely misrepresented her work; more likely, she would have tried to bluff her way through a response by puffing up whatever her limited involvement was. At that point, you could have simply moved on — but you wouldn’t have let a flagrant lie go unremarked upon, and who knows, maybe you’d have learned that she did have more involvement than you realized (probably not, but it’s good to allow for that possibility, or maybe she just had a fundamental misunderstanding of how much work was actually involved in that project because she’d been so uninvolved).

Personally, I nearly always come down on the side of “say the thing” rather than letting this stuff pass — partly on principle but mostly because since you’re going to factor it into your decision you should give the person the chance to clarify any miscommunication first — but other people come down on the side of “eh, we’re not going to hire her for other reasons, or this itself is so prohibitive that there’s no point in even getting into it with her,” and that’s legitimate too. But all else being equal, I believe it’s better to say the thing.

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