There are many reasons not to hire someone, but if the candidate admits to lying and stealing in the interview, they shouldn’t be surprised not to get the job.
When digging in to the technical skills of a recent candidate, they were proud to tell me about their awesome home setup for which they stole a high-speed internet connection. When talking about teamwork, he told me how he refused to tell teammates how he did things, lied about what he did, and that he enjoyed hacking into his coworkers’ machines.
Double fail. Both that he was stealing services, lying to his coworkers and generally being difficult to work with, and because he was dumb enough to let that be known in an interview.
Ah, but his honesty saved you from making a bad hire.
Completely right Jennifer – though he didn’t think he was being truthful; he thought he was bragging to a like-minded individual. I say this as I had to dig to get this out of him, and it only came out when I didn’t react negatively to his sharing of small indiscretions. Led to him telling me about the bigger ones. Chalk one up to playing the cards close to the vest!