Career Expert Warns Workers to Lie About 5 Specific Things During a Job Interview

Papalia advises softening honest answers on five specific questions, without inventing experience on a resume. Employers want a five-year answer that signals commitment to the company itself, over personal plans like grad school or family. For a reason to leave, they respond better to ambition (“I’ve outgrown my position”); recruiter Leah Stevens says complaints about a previous employer tend to raise doubts about the candidate more than about the employer being described. Venting about a current boss or coworkers carries the same risk: it turns the interview into a complaint session, which signals risk to whoever is evaluating the candidate, especially if that interviewer might become their manager.

Hobbies should sound professional and specific enough to say something about the candidate, rather than an honest “I watch Netflix.” A job title or description can be embellished somewhat when the candidate has genuinely been doing more than their formal role covers. Papalia frames this as giving fuller context to a resume that already undersells the work.

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• On the five-year question, Papalia’s suggested answer is “I see myself here at this organization.” Personal plans like grad school or having kids read, in her framing, as a lack of commitment to the job itself.
• Recruiter Leah Stevens’ rule for why you’re leaving: never badmouth a previous employer, because it raises questions about the candidate more than about the employer being described.
• Complaints about a current boss or coworkers are the same problem in a different form, doubly so if the interviewer might become that candidate’s manager; Papalia says to acknowledge friction briefly, then pivot to what was learned from it.
• Hobbies should be “professional and interesting” rather than literally accurate, on the logic that they’re one of the few signals an interviewer gets about culture fit.
• Embellishing a job title or description is framed as filling in context that a resume’s formal title doesn’t capture, specifically when a candidate has already been doing more than the role’s job description says, without being paid or titled for it.