The problem is not that people lie Everyone embellishes in interviews. Everyone. The candidate who says they "led" a project might have been one of four people on it. The one who claims they "built the sales process" might have tweaked a spreadsheet someone else made. This is not the problem. The problem is when the embellishment covers something that will actually break the role. And most people running their own thing cannot tell the difference until three months in, when the damage is done. I have sat through hiring conversations where the business owner spent forty minutes asking clever behavioural questions, only to miss the one thing that mattered: the candidate had never actually done the core task of the job. Not once. They had watched someone do it. They had opinions about how it should be done. But their hands had never touched the work. What lies look like in practice Last year I worked with someone in London who had hired a "Head of Operations" for their growing team. The candidate had all the right language. Talked about systems. Mentioned Notion, Asana, process mapping. Sounded credible. Six weeks in, the business owner realised the new hire had never actually built a system from scratch. They had inherited systems. Maintained them. Complained about them in meetings. But when faced with a blank page and a broken process, they froze. The lie was not in what was said. It was in what was implied. "I know systems" does not mean "I can build one for you." This is the pattern I see most often. Not outright fabrication. Implication without substance. The questions that catch it Forget "tell me about a time when" for a moment. Those questions are fine, but candidates prepare for them. They have rehearsed stories polished to a shine. What works better is asking for specifics that a liar cannot invent on the spot. If they say they managed a budget, ask: "What was the exact figure you controlled, and who signed off on anything above that?" If they say they grew revenue, ask: "What was the number when you started, and what was it when you left?" If they say they built a team, ask: "What was the first hire you made, and what did you pay them?" Real experience produces real numbers. Fabricated experience produces vague ranges and qualifications. I once asked a candidate who claimed to have "managed client relationships" how many clients they had at any one time. The answer was four. That is not client management. That is having clients. The distinction matters. The 72% problem There is a study from a few years back suggesting that 72% of candidates embellish something on their CV. That number feels about right to me. But here is the thing: most of those embellishments are harmless. Someone rounds up their tenure by a month. Someone calls themselves a "Senior" when they were really a "Junior" with extra responsibilities. The dangerous lies are the 15 to 20% that concern core competencies. The ones where someone claims they can do the exact thing you are hiring them to do, and they cannot. Your job is not to catch every lie. It is to catch the ones that will cost you six months and £30,000 in wasted salary, recruitment fees, and lost momentum. The reference call nobody does properly Most reference calls are useless. You ring someone, they confirm dates of employment, they say something neutral, you hang up. Here is how to make them useful: ask the reference the same specific questions you asked the candidate. If the candidate said they managed a budget of £200,000, ask the reference: "Can you tell me roughly what budget they controlled?" If the numbers match, good. If the reference hesitates or gives a different figure, you have something to dig into. The other question that works: "If you were hiring for this exact role, would you hire them?" Not "would you work with them again" because people are polite. But "would you hire them for this specific job" forces a real answer. What scammers teach us about trust There has been a rise in fake recruitment scams targeting job seekers, particularly younger candidates. People receive what looks like a legitimate job offer, download an app to "complete onboarding," and lose their savings. It is grim. But it illustrates something useful for the other side of the table. Scammers succeed because they create urgency and mimic legitimacy. Candidates who lie in interviews do the same thing, just subtly. They use the right vocabulary. They reference familiar tools and frameworks. They create confidence through fluency. Fluency is not competence. Someone who can talk about systems is not someone who can build them. Someone who knows the language of your industry is not someone who has done the work. The lie that does not matter Some lies are just nerves. Someone says they are "proficient" in Excel when they are really intermediate. Someone claims they are "comfortable" with public speaking when they are terrified but willing. These lies come from insecurity, not deception. And often, the candidate will grow into the claim if you give them the chance. The distinction is this: are they lying about effort they are willing to make, or are they lying about experience they do not have? The first is forgivable. The second is expensive. What to do this week Pull out the job description for your next hire and identify the one task that, if the candidate cannot do it, the role fails. Write three questions that test whether they have actually done that task, with specific numbers attached. For your next reference call, prepare two questions that mirror what the candidate told you. If they claimed a specific achievement, ask the reference to describe it in their own words. If you are unsure how to structure your thinking on a hiring decision, the Decision Matrix at alira.london can help you weigh what actually matters against what just sounds good. Sometimes writing it out reveals what you already know.