Over one-third of hiring managers admit to lying to candidates. It’s creating a trust issue with HR and damaging company reputations

Employers and their HR teams know all too well the consequences of a candidate lying about their qualifications during the hiring process—hiring teams waste time and money recruiting and onboarding a candidate only to rescind the job offer or fire them after finding out about the deception. But how often is it the employers that do the lying? 

Around 36% of hiring managers admit they’ve lied to candidates about the role or the company, according to 1,060 hiring managers recently polled by Resume Builder. Of hiring managers who admit to lying, around 75% say they lie during the interview, 52% in the job description, and 24% in the offer letter. 

The result of these falsehoods creates distrust between job seekers and the organization. It also often leaves HR teams scrambling to refill the role yet again as candidates quickly leave after discovering the truth about their new job.

“It’s quite short-sighted,” says Stacie Haller, chief career advisor at Resume Builder. “Companies get reputations. People talk about their experiences, and they write it up on the internet. So the effect of doing that is not helpful to an organization.”

Some reasons hiring managers gave for lying include protecting sensitive company information, covering up negative company information, exaggerating benefits to attract job seekers, and generally making the job sound more attractive to find better candidates. What these managers falsify also varies—the most common lies are about the job’s responsibilities, growth and career development opportunities at the company, and company culture. 

But these managers don’t seem to be worried about any consequences. In fact, 80% say that lying is “very acceptable” or “somewhat acceptable” at their company. And the lying seems to be widespread. While 25% say they don’t lie often, 24% say they lie most of the time, and 6% say they lie all the time.  

But deceitful hiring managers do notice the impact on employee retention. While 92% of hiring managers say that a candidate they’ve lied to accepted the position, around 55% also say that the employee eventually quit after discovering they were lied to. In some cases, the duped employee’s exit was quick: 14% of hiring managers say the worker quit within a week, and another 35% reported they left within one month. This creates an undue burden on recruiting teams, who already spend 44 days on average trying to fill open positions in a tight labor market in the first place, and have to repeat the process all over again.

“Turnover costs the company a lot of money. It costs a lot of money to hire people, and of course, a lot of money to onboard them and train them. And then when they walk out, you lose all that money and you’re back at ground zero,” says Haller. Other employees may also notice their new colleague quickly quitting or posting about being lied to online, potentially hurting productivity and morale in the general employee population.

She adds that it’s important for HR leaders to get to the core of the issue, and address why hiring managers are lying to candidates.

“I would get underneath it and talk to those managers and say, ‘Well, what do we need to fix…so you don’t have to lie to people to get them hired?’” says Haller. “Do we need to tighten up our job descriptions? Do we need more realistic career growth plans? How do we make our organization better, so we can attract the right talent without lying about it?”

Paige McGlauflin
paige.mcglauflin@fortune.com
@paidion

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