The Sneaky Role of Selective Honesty in an Interview

Everything that you say about your career accomplishments, skills, and experiences during an interview (or in job search correspondence) should be an honest reflection of the truth. Honesty in an interview is expected, but how selective can you be in terms of what you share?

White lies may be excused when it comes to some of the more personal questions (that likely shouldn’t be asked in the first place). Is there a case for selective honesty amongst the core messages of the interview itself? 

When you are asked a specific question, you should give an honest answer. However, the details you choose to include in your response may not paint the complete picture. It is possible to tell career stories so that the most damaging aspects of your experience do not come to light. Honesty in an interview does not mean that you need to recount a rounded and faithful version of events. You need to be honest in what you do choose to share (and it isn’t easy to do).

This instinctively feels like the wrong kind of advice, but you can be sure that every other candidate will be doing the same. Hiring managers will expect you to sugarcoat your responses to some degree. If they want to dig deeper into a situation, they will get to the truth eventually. Why offer the whole truth immediately if some of it reflects poorly on you? They may even assume that there are other worse things that you aren’t sharing.

The trick here is to tell career stories with a mix of positive and negative elements. Just make sure that most of the negatives are not directly due to your participation. Do scatter the odd personal error in there (we all make mistakes) but ensure that the error didn’t carry a high cost to your business or those around you.

Interview honesty time

You should avoid telling shock stories that ha§ve an interviewer recoiling in horror. Even if you managed to save the day, they cannot help but think that you might not be so lucky another time. Include some bouncing back from adversity but select the tales that would not have caused significant business losses if the result had gone the other way.

That is selective honesty at work. It is an intelligent approach for any interview.

At the end of the interview, hiring managers will weigh your suitability on an imaginary set of scales. They will remember both the scale of your wins and your losses. It would be strange if you didn’t talk about the odd failure, but it is your choice which failures you choose to share. Have a good think before the interview. Which negative career experiences can you share that may serve to deflect attention from the really big mistakes?

No one wants to talk about the horrific failures from their career. 

Selective honesty in an interview might save you from that embarrassment.

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This blog is shared with Job Seeker Duetists.

Written by former recruitment ghostwriter Paul Drury (not AI).