There is one job interview question that many hiring experts use to catch liars – and even Elon Musk has admitted to using it.
Musk, Space X founder and Tesla CEO, admitted in 2017 that he poses the same question to every candidate he interviews.
‘Tell me about some of the most difficult problems you worked on and how you solved them.’
He said at the World Government Summit in 2017 that he uses the question to weed out any liars – and research studies on interview techniques back his method up.
‘Asymmetric Information Management’ (AIM) is an interview technique designed to provide an interviewee with a clear means to demonstrate they are actually telling the truth about their experience by providing detailed information.
A study published in the Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition in December 2020 uncovered several approaches to spotting liars based on the job interviewing technique.
If an applicant is able to answer Musk’s open-ended question with a specific and detailed response, they are more than likely telling the truth.
‘Small details are the lifeblood of forensic investigations and can provide investigators with facts to check and witnesses to question,’ Cody Porter, one of the study’s authors, wrote in an article.
‘If they provide longer, more detailed statements about the event of interest, then the investigator will be better able to detect if they are telling the truth or lying,’ Porter explained. ‘In contrast, liars wish to conceal their guilt.’
‘This means they are more likely to strategically withhold information in response to the AIM method.
‘Their assumption here is that providing more information will make it easier for the investigator to detect their lie, so instead, they provide less information.’
Musk’s hiring process is unique. Instead of looking for a college – or even high school diploma, he looks for ‘evidence of exceptional ability’ when it comes to hiring new staff.
‘If there’s a track record of exceptional achievement, then it’s likely that that will continue into the future,’ he said.
This is why Musk asks each interviewee the same question – because it’s easy to lie on a CV, but harder to make up a detailed lie on the spot.