INTERVIEW EDGE • OCT 1997

Meet the Integrity Check

Remember Bob? He was the "determined liar" who made his first appearance in last quarter's newsletter. In fact, he had a starring role in an article about the importance of checking references before hiring anyone who sounds too good to be true. There are a number of things employers can do to protect themselves from candidates like Bob - people with highly "creative" resumes and stories to match - but we think a new assessment technique called the Integrity Check Interview is especially good.

The Integrity Check Interview, developed by UCLA psychiatrist Mark Goulston, is based on the idea that it requires real concentration to tell a good lie. So much concentration, in fact, that most people can't keep their stories straight if they have to deal with questions directed to three distinct parts of the brain: action, thought, and feeling.

Knowing this, an interviewer might ask a job applicant to describe what she did in a particular situation (action); why she did it (thinking); and how she felt about doing it (feeling). Presumably, even a "determined liar" would have a hard time staying consistently convincing in all three areas. Not surprisingly, people seem to make the most mistakes when trying to describe emotional states.

Dr. Goulston has worked as a consultant to prosecutors, and his technique has been successfully used to expose liars in the courtroom. Interestingly, Goulston's approach is similar in many respects to a Behavioral Event Interview (BEI), which uses an in-depth process to discover competencies in job candidates.

We are so intrigued with Dr. Goulston's work that we are hoping to collaborate with him in order to bring our clients more detailed information about his techniques. More on this later!