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Brian: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. We're going to wrap up a show today by taking your calls if you've ever lied on a job application. If so, what did you lie about and why? 212-433-WNYC. Was it small stuff like saying you worked for a company for a month longer than you did, or was it big stuff like making up a whole graduate degree or say a whole new identity? We've heard some of those stories.

One poll estimates that over 75% of job applicants lie on their resume. Do you believe that? In other words, it's more common to lie than not to lie, but here's what got us thinking about this right now. A recent New York Times article had a story about a crazy lie only possible in the Zoom era, and it got us thinking whether you, our listeners, might have some stories along similar lines that other listeners could learn from.

Here's what happened. According to reporter, Emma Goldberg, one job applicant who was applying for a remote work position got his friend to answer for him during the job interview while the actual applicant sat in front of the Zoom camera and moved his lips, ventriloquist style. Can you believe it? The hiring panel eventually realized and someone blurted out, "The person answering the questions isn't the person on camera," which prompted an audible gasp from the rest of the team. Spoiler, he did not get the job, surprised, but said he thought he could get away with it because they'd never meet him in person.

Listeners, even if it wasn't that extreme, we want to hear from you. Have you ever lied on your job application or done a fake in any way? What did you say? What did you do? Samuel in Newark, you're on WNYC. Hi Samuel.

Samuel: Hey, how's it going, Brian?

Brian: Good. What did you do?

Samuel: I pretty much have to lie on just about every job application I put in because I did not actually graduate from high school.

Brian: What do you say? What do you put down?

Samuel: I just usually put that I did.

Brian: Right and you didn't go on-- [crosstalk]

Samuel: Yes, I find that if I don't, [unintelligible 00:02:27] [crosstalk] Oh, sorry. Go ahead.

Brian: Yes, you don't get very far. Do you go further and say you went to college?

Samuel: No, I haven't gone that far. I feel that's more likely to get checked.

Brian: I guess nobody checked on your high school diploma.

Samuel: Yes, nobody bothers to look into that.

Brian: Samuel, thank you very much, Charlotte in Jersey City. You're on WNYC. Hi Charlotte.

Charlotte: Hi. I actually have two things. One I too, didn't, like your previous caller, I didn't finish college. I went to about 10 but never got a degree. I used the first college that I went to which was Kirkland College in Upstate New York which no longer exists. That was good.

Then my second one was I got into textile design and when you do back in the day, you'd have to go to mills in rural Georgia or Connecticut, whatever. You had to do mill work to make sure that everything and I had no mill work experience, but it's the catch-22. You can't get mill work experience without having mill-- I would lie and say I had mill work experience, and then the wonderful guys down at the plants would teach me what I was supposed to do. Then it became a legitimate thing on my resume. Those are my two lies. I don't feel bad about them and nobody ever caught me.

Brian: Do you think you would've gotten kicked off the top of the list if you didn't have a college degree?

Charlotte: Probably not in most of the fields that I worked in. I worked in theater production. I worked in textile design, none of them are cerebral or degree necessary. It's all work experience stuff. I would doubt that anybody would've even checked any of that stuff because I presented as a pretty articulate, smart person.

Brian: Charlotte, thank you very much. Ethan in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi Ethan.

Ethan: Hey, how's it going, Brian? I wanted to share the story. Also, I had that catch-22 needing experience to get the job and having no experience. I lied and said I was a very experienced waiter to get a summer waiting tables job while I was writing a screenplay. They threw me on the first night of the season, high season, lots of tables. I was completely incompetent, in over my head.

I went up to one table and said, "Can I get you anything else?" They said, "Yes, menu." I was giving people their own bottles of wine to open them. It was a complete disaster. I was quickly fired, begged my way back into the job and was [unintelligible 00:05:02] fired the next day again. It gave me a lifelong appreciation for waiters and what a tough job that is.

Brian: I am not opening my own bottle of wine at a table at a restaurant. I just--

Samuel: Definitely not.

Brian: It's outrageous. Ethan, thank you, good luck. Steven in the Bronx, you're on WNYC. Hi Steven.

Steven: Hi there. Good morning.

Brian: What'd you lie about?

Steven: Well, specifically my lie was more part of the interview process as opposed to being on the resume. I lied about my salary.

Brian: To make it look higher than it was in the past I presume.

Steven: Higher [crosstalk] because-- and I think, to be honest, this is something that I've shared with a lot of people in the years since because what I found was that I was apparently so underpaid that when I would go out on these interviews to seek a new job, invariably question does come up about salary during the interview process. I was disqualifying myself because as soon as I told these perspective employers how much that I made, they were aghast like me.

It seemed to be disqualifying me from the running because what I perceived was that they thought, "Well, if he's making such a low salary, he can't be worth our time." What I did was add $15,000 to my salary and lo and behold, I secured the position that I wanted at a very decent increase which for the first time in my life, I started to live a little, so there.

Brian: That is a great story. Steven, thank you for your call. I'm going to use that as an opportunity to promote something on tomorrow's show. I'm actually going to be off tomorrow, back Friday. Brigid Bergin is going to be filling in tomorrow and she's going to have a segment about the job application process related to Steven's story. It's about salary transparency.

Did you know that hiring managers are up to 25% less likely to hire a candidate if that candidate even asks about salary or benefits? According to a story, we saw because the applicants get perceived as being greedy and not a team player. Well, Brig is going to talk to the economist who conducted that study and talk about whether New York's new wage transparency law that seems to be in the works could solve that problem. That should be an interesting conversation with Bridget tomorrow about wage transparency. I'll be back on Friday.

Louis in Central Jersey, who I think has been on both the employee and employer side of this. Louis, you're on WNYC. Hi there.

Louis: Yes. Hi. How are you? Yes, I patted my resume one time to put an extra month on to make it seem like I wasn't unemployed that long. I actually had my benefits last an extra month so I put that extra month on, so a minor one. I wanted to talk about as a hiring person, I speak Spanish. I'm a native Spanish speaker. When people come into the office, you can't imagine how many people say that they speak Spanish. I can only speak about Spanish. I can't speak about any other language.

They come into the office and I'm always asked to translate, to have a conversation with this person, to make sure they actually speak Spanish. I can tell you the percentage majority do not speak Spanish at all. They cannot even put together a phrase and I can't imagine why they thought they could get away with this. [crosstalk]

Brian: This one surprises me so much because if they needed to speak Spanish on the job, they would quickly come up incompetent. If they really don't speak the language. Why do you think people lie about that?

Louis: It's a division of people. There were a couple people who studied it in school and they thought that that made them fluent. There was one guy who said to me, "I go on vacation to Costa Rica. When I get there, I'm able to speak. After a couple of weeks, I take it up really quickly." Then there was a guy who was a Latino descending guy, had a Latino look, Latino name, he had been living in the states since he was a kid. He lost his Spanish, but he thought that because his name was Rodriguez or Hernandez, whatever that this entitled him to say that he was fluent in Spanish because his mom was fluent or something.

It's a dichotomy also because when they meet me, what they call blanchito. I look white, I don't look Latino. They're like, "Who is this guy? Why is he interviewing me?" I interview them and I say to them in Spanish [Spanish language] Tell me about your Spanish. They sometimes just look at me with that deer in the headlights look.

These are by the way, these are bigger positions, this is not working in a restaurant. Not that I'm putting that down at all, please not ,but I'm talking about working in big-level corporations and big banks. That's where I work. It's just crazy.

Brian: They think they can get away with it. Louis, thank you for that story. John in Newark, you're on WNNYC. Hi John.

John: Hey, good morning, Brian. How are you today?

Brian: Good. I hear you have a present-tense story.

John: I am literally filling out an application as we speak. My situation is that I am presently on a leave of absence but somewhat as a technicality because I was terminated. The fact that I'm on leave of absence classifies me as employed so on my applications, I'm vexed whether to put my end date from when I was terminated or that I am technically presently employed if anyone did a basic background check.

Brian: Do you think the background checks are likely in your case and the jobs you're applying for?

John: My industry's pretty small and so a background check would be probably more personal but I'm also in the process of challenging the termination so it's a position in fluctuation.

Brian: Thank you very much, tricky position to be in. I think these last couple of callers I'm going to get to are also in tricky positions where a lot of people might think they're justified. Karen in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi Karen. Karen, that you, we got you. Karen in Manhattan, are you the person calling to talk about your arrest from a long, long, long time ago that you lied about?

Karen: [inaudible 00:12:00] plan on the words?

Brian: There you go. Now we got you. Sorry. We didn't hear you before. You're on now.

Karen: Hello? Me?

Brian: Hi. Hi. Yes, you.

Karen: Hi. Hi. I'll try to be as brief as possible. In 1988, 33 years ago because I'm 55, me and a friend, partner in crime literally. I was 19 when I thought it would be a great idea to go into a supermarket and take whipped cream cans and go in the back and spray them all around and inhale them, do whip-its, whatever. We got caught, we got arrested. Fast forward, I have a graduate degree. I'm a professional. I never ever in 32 years put it on my application because it was like such a long time ago and it was just [unintelligible 00:12:49]- [crosstalk]

Brian: Do they ask?

Karen: -who cares?

Brian: Some of them ask and you have to say, "No, I was never arrested."

Karen: No, they don't ask you like-- They just figure by the time you get in front of them. No one ever asked but the applications say, "Have you ever been convicted of a crime?" I was, it was obstruction of justice or something because, which is another story, maybe for tomorrow because we lied to the police about our names but anyway--

Brian: You never put it down and you never got caught and I'm going to have to end there because we're out of time. Thank you for that. Of course, there's a policy debate now about whether people who were arrested in the past and have served their time even should ever be allowed to be asked whether that happened or whether that's just another form of discrimination by today's standards.

The other one that I want to get to, Lamar and Astoria, I'm sorry we're not, lies about their age because of age discrimination in the algorithms that might knock out the application. Thanks for all your interesting stories about lying on your job applications.

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