Over­heard in a super­mar­ket check­out line this past week­end, one woman to another:

“Oh my God, [Leanne] bought a pair of fake glasses and wore them to an inter­view because she felt more intel­li­gent. I mean, it’s not like they’re going to say, ‘Hire the one with glasses because she’s more intelligent.’”

It just got me to think­ing, and won­der­ing if Leanne is (a) being dis­hon­est with her prospec­tive employer, albeit in a seem­ingly benign way, or (b) cre­ative, orig­i­nal, and smart. I’m sure the inter­viewer would be able to size up pretty quickly whether she’s an air­head or the real deal, but my jury is still out on whether or not the action is duplic­i­tous. I’m choos­ing to ignore the per­cep­tion of the two women engaged in the con­ver­sa­tion (at least the one mak­ing the com­ment) because it’s pos­si­ble she just doesn’t get what’s going on. Besides, the gen­eral ques­tion is more intrigu­ing. The “lie” is obvi­ous — she’s poten­tially mak­ing the attempt at mak­ing her­self appear more intel­li­gent than she is — not to men­tion the fact that she doesn’t really wear glasses. What’s orig­i­nal and smart about it may not be read­ily apparent.

Firstly, any­one who goes into an inter­view is putting on their best face, and inter­view­ers know it. Any­one show­ing up markedly shy of this mark is auto­mat­i­cally out of the run­ning: if they don’t care about the inter­view, they aren’t likely to but much care into the job. Inter­view­ers know that you don’t always dress this way, and your hair may not always look that good. And some­times you might wear (or not wear) your con­tacts. In this sense, Leanne’s decep­tion is benign. Her rea­son for doing this caught my atten­tion though “…because she felt more intel­li­gent.” Of course she isn’t actu­ally more intel­li­gent, even she knows that. Her rea­son isn’t nec­es­sar­ily to make her appear more intel­li­gent (to which her friend wrongly reacts), but just about the way she feels dur­ing the inter­view. And I dare­say if she felt more intel­li­gent, she will exhibit more con­fi­dence, and in fact, she may thereby appear more intel­li­gent, even if that isn’t her stated goal. The end result may very well be that the glasses help the inter­view and give her a greater chance of land­ing the job.

And no, of course the hir­ing deci­sion won’t be made on the basis of the glasses. But even a trained inter­viewer is sub­ject to sub­tleties of per­cep­tion that will influ­ence the hir­ing deci­sion. I’ve con­ducted my share of inter­views, and can tell you that not every fac­tor that goes into a hir­ing deci­sion is com­pletely void of the sub­jec­tive. In fact, among a group of highly qual­i­fied can­di­dates, it’s often the sub­jec­tive that tips the bal­ance. So if Leanne’s glasses trans­late into her pro­ject­ing con­fi­dence, good on her for fig­ur­ing that out. She may actu­ally be smarter — smarter at least than her friend in the super­mar­ket check­out line.

I’m inclined to say that I’m alright with her glasses stunt, but on the other hand if I as an inter­viewer dis­cov­ered this later, I might won­der about her hon­esty in other areas. I’m clear about lying on a resume: don’t. Put down the fact and word them the best way you can of course, but stick to the facts and don’t embell­ish. When the inter­viewer says “Tell me about XYZ Indus­tries where you were the pres­i­dent for three years,” s/he isn’t going to be too keen to dis­cover that XYZ was a sum­mer lemon­ade stand with your buddy next door. But about the glasses… I still can’t decide if it was an entirely good move or not. If she gets the job it could well become appar­ent or else she’ll have to lie to cover it up. Clearly there’s some untruth in the act of wear­ing the glasses.

Maybe the ques­tion is really about where the line is between putting on your best face and out­right lying. Is there a blur between them, or is it hard-and-fast?