There is one question that many hiring experts use to catch liars. Even Elon Musk has admitted to using it.
Musk, founder of Space X and CEO of Tesla, admitted in 2017 that he asks the same question to every candidate he interviews.
‘Tell me about the most difficult problems you’ve worked on and how you solved them.’
He said at the World Government Summit in 2017 that he uses the question to pick out liars. Research into interview techniques confirms his method.
Asymmetric Information Management (AIM) is an interview technique designed to provide the interviewee with a clear means of demonstrating that he/she is indeed telling the truth about his/her experience by providing detailed information.
There’s one job interview question that many hiring experts use to expose liars — and even Elon Musk has admitted to using it
A study published in December 2020 in the Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition identified several approaches to spotting liars based on the job interview technique.
If an applicant can answer Musk’s open-ended question specifically and in detail, there’s a good chance he or she is telling the truth.
“Small details are the lifeblood of forensic investigations, providing investigators with facts to verify and witnesses to question,” Cody Porter, one of the study’s authors, wrote in an article.
“If they give longer, more detailed statements about the event of interest, the investigator can better determine whether they are telling the truth or lying,” Porter explained. “Liars, on the other hand, want to hide their guilt.”
This means that they are more likely to strategically withhold information in response to the AIM method.
“They assume that if they provide more information, it will be 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 degree or even a high school diploma, he looks for “evidence of exceptional ability” when it comes to hiring new employees.
“If there is a track record of exceptional performance, then there is a good chance that this will continue into the future,” he said.
That’s why Musk asks every job applicant the same question: It’s easy to lie on a resume, but harder to come up with a detailed lie on the spot.
