Job Interviewing Techniques in Medicine and Beyond

It would seem self-evident that an applicant for a job should be scrupulously honest. First, it is the right thing to do. Secondly, in our digital era, one’s academic record can be accessed back to kindergarten. Yet, many applicants will embellish their credentials or claim a skill level that may exceed reality. Thirty years ago, I was applying for my first job in New Jersey after completing my 2 year gastroenterology (GI) fellowship. I was not competent to perform ERCP, a complex scope examination that GI practices desperately still want to add to their practices' skill sets. Yet, I was advised by a practicing GI physician to simply claim that I could do the procedure. Otherwise, he said, they would simply pass me by. I queried the practitioner on my proposed course of action after being hired if I were summoned to perform an ERCP. Decades later, I do not recall his response. I can imagine what my new employer’s response might have been upon discovering that I had misrepresented my skills..

Should Applicants or Employers Take a Polygraph?

How honest should an interviewer be with a job applicant? On the day that I wrote this, I read of a technique where an interviewer who is meeting a job applicant at a restaurant, secretly arranges for the applicant’s meal to be messed up in some way. The justification is to see how the applicant reacts in real time to an unforeseen and unfavorable event. It reminds me of my initial interview at NYU School of Medicine, when the interviewer, among other slippery questions, asked me “what is the death rate?” The correct answer, which I luckily knew, is 100%. Perhaps, this demonstration of my nimble intellect explains why they accepted me.

I do not support subterfuge in a job interview to gauge applicants’ behaviors. It’s certainly fair game to present hypotheticals, but outright trickery should be out of bounds. And, if an interviewer is overtly dishonest, can this person be trusted after the hire? If we sanction employer legerdemain, then should we not permit the applicant to play tricks on the interviewer to gauge his or her behavior and the company’s culture?

I’ve always played it straight. It’s all I know. As for the position in New Jersey referenced above, I didn't get the job. And, so my life in Cleveland began.

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