'Nobody knew him': Job interview candidate gets caught in lie about prior job experience when he interviews with the wrong person

Author image for Remy Millisky
Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Nov 7, 2024 11:00 AM EST

This job interviewer is used to seeing people with padded resumes, but even they were caught off guard by this candidate's blatant lie. It's one thing to lie about small stuff, like maybe you claim to have more experience with Excel than you actually do, or perhaps you fudge your daily responsibilities to make it seem like you were a big shot at your old job. 

Maybe this works for some people, and for others it totally backfires. It depends on how well HR is willing to vet their candidates. It also depends on how comfortable the person is with spinning a web of half-truths! If they get caught and immediately freeze up, it's going to be a quick giveaway to that hiring manager. 

You can check out this person's wild story of what happened during one of their scheduled phone screenings that went completely wrong. As they explained, they doubted themself for a moment and started wondering if they were misremembering. It was certainly a lesson learned for both parties… but who knows if the candidate will keep trying that trick again during his next interview! 

Up next, these people shared the immediate red flags they saw upon walking into someone's house for the first time, like one person who dislikes seeing bare mattresses on the floor. 

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    Cheezburger Image 10425531392
    via Ahmet Kurt For Unsplash+

    This image is for illustration only, and the subjects are models; the image does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • 02
    Interviewed someone that claimed to have done my job, at my former employer, when I worked there nine years ago Was repeatedly encouraged to cross-post this here, so if you have seen it, I apologize.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 03
    I work for an IT consulting firm. A minor part of my job is to perform "phone screens" on perspective hires. I have a long background in IT, so I am used to "resume padding." I try to judge a persons actual technical ability, their ability to fit into our company, how they would do as a consultant, and try and get a gauge of their character. We have a wide spread of technical prowess on staff, so I focus on on the person. After years in IT, I
    via u/[deleted]
  • 04
    think can do this pretty well. Last week the owner sent a resume and called me to do a phone screen of a prospective employee. I happily agreed, not having read the resume. I finished my evening and went to bed. The next day I read the resume.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 05
    This guy claimed to have worked at my former employer (a university). Nine years ago when I worked there. Doing my job. As a student worker working to gain two masters degrees in two years.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 06
    Before you start laughing, keep in mind this will mess with you. You don't expect this level of dishonesty on a resume. I started asking myself when I actually worked at the former employer, what I may have missed, what could have happened. I actually reached out to former co-workers about this person. I managed a lot of the student workers, but not all of them, so I thought maybe I was forgetting someone.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 07
    Nobody knew him. It was suggested that perhaps the resume had formatting errors or he was talking about the wrong university; there is another school in town with a VERY similar name, so this is not unheard of.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 08
    I decided to give the candidate the benefit of the doubt, but I wanted to be sure about my former workplace. I called the registrar's office to verify the degrees. After much checking, we could find no record that he even attended the school.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 09
    I should have called off the interview, but at this point, I was still trying to give the benefit of the doubt. I called him on time, and started the interview as normal. I explained the position, told him this would be a technical interview, and answered his first questions.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 10
    We started going through his resume, and I asked a technical question relating to his claimed experience. That is when I first heard the mechanical keyboard. I can not be certain (no video) but I am fairly confident that he was Googling the answers to
    via u/[deleted]
  • 11
    questions I was asking. I adjusted and started asking follow up questions that would be hard to quickly search for. He was unable to answer those. After a few minutes, we got to my former employer. I asked who his supervisor was.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 12
    I have never heard of the person he claimed. I let him know I worked there at the same time he was claiming. In the IT department, like he was claiming. He responded with "Oh, II
    via u/[deleted]
  • 13
    I explained (briefly) that I was the person that would have been his boss, and that he was claiming to have done my job. He tried to tell me that he worked in a different building.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 14
    This is when I got mad. I told him that there was only one IT department for this rather small school. I had to stop myself from calling out all the instead, I just ended the interview. I wasted 45 minutes of my life. Well, he wasted it.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 15
    I called the employment agency that recommended him and told them everything, including the bogus degrees. I then called several other agencies and gave them the scoop, complete with his LinkedIn account and resume that showed the same false information.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 16
    The odds of me interviewing this j were insane. I find this both ridiculously funny and infuriating.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 17
    try-catch-finally i've had the same lie surface twice, but one was while i was interviewING and one was while I was the interviewER. Out of college, I worked for a spin-off company of a larger one. I did a very specific library that was used by all the applications in the company.
    via u/try-catch-finally
  • 18
    Sometime later, at a different company, I was the interviewER, a candidate had worked at this first company, but a year or so after I left. I mentioned that I had worked there earlier, and he asked "what did you write" - I told him, and he shook his head and said "no, it had YYY name on it" - A guy I had known from college to be a class 5 a hole. I told him that, no -
    via u/try-catch-finally
  • 19
    I had written it while I was a paid intern in college, before he even started. A few years later, I was applying for a position, and a different guy said that he had worked there, and asked what I did - he too said "no - IYYY did that" - I told him that I knew YYY, but that he must have just changed the headers.
    via u/try-catch-finally
  • 20
    I did not get the job, because it appeared that I was padding my resume on something very inconsequential, yet I had actually done the work, and YYY had just stolen the credit after I had left.
    via u/try-catch-finally
  • 21
    Rysona This is hilarious and sad.
    via u/Rysona
  • 22
    madjarov42 I wasted 45 minutes of my life But isn't the satisfaction of calling him out worth it?
    via u/madjarov42
  • 23
    StrongLeading4... So was this a stellar candidate? Seems like you did A LOT of research to then let them waste "your" time. You plowed through all the red flags!
    via u/StrongLeading4344

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