Everyone Is Lying and Nothing Matters: Welcome to the Modern Job Market
Recently a study found that 40% of hiring managers admit to lying in job interviews. And that's just the ones who still have a functioning conscience. The rest? They're pretending their job descriptions don’t read like sci-fi.
Meanwhile, over in job-seeker land, it's an even bigger mess 70% of candidates lie on resumes, 76% on cover letters, and 80% lie during interviews. We're not talking minor embellishments, either. This is industrial-scale deception.
The result? A job market that functions more like a mutual gaslighting session than a hiring process. It’s a system where everyone knows the other is bluffing, but both pretend it’s not happening. A corporate gentleman’s agreement to keep the charade going. It's not about finding the best match anymore; it's about winning the role-playing contest.
What we’ve created is not a talent marketplace. It’s a closed-loop theater of nonsense. Have we not had enough?
Everyone’s Lying, and That’s the System Working as Designed
Contrary to what your college ethics professor or the HR intern running the “Values” slide on your onboarding deck might claim, lying in the job market isn’t a breakdown of the system, it is the system. We’ve engineered an ecosystem that doesn’t just tolerate deception, but quietly encourages it.
Let’s start with hiring managers. They’re not recruiting. They’re doing brand marketing. The job isn’t to explain the role accurately; it’s to make it sound just prestigious enough that people with real skills ignore their instincts and apply anyway.
A glorified admin role becomes a “cross-functional operations strategist.”
Manually updating Salesforce records turns into “owning CRM pipelines in a high-impact, data-driven environment.”
You’re not part of an overburdened team with poor retention, you’re “joining a dynamic, fast-growing startup with unicorn potential.” That’s code for: you’ll be replacing three people who quit last quarter.
And on the other side? Candidates are running the same playbook. Their resumes are less a reflection of experience and more a work of speculative fiction.
Everyone’s a “builder.”
Everyone “thrives in ambiguity.”
Everyone has that weird job title inflation, where a junior project coordinator is now a “Strategic Execution Lead.”
It’s not even lying at this point , t’s performance art. You show up, play your part, hit your marks, and hope no one asks follow-up questions. Because everyone knows: if you tell the truth (like, really tell the truth) you don’t get the job. You don’t fill the role. You don’t get past the recruiter.
So yes, everyone’s lying. And that’s not an accident. That’s the system functioning exactly as intended.
Corporate Hiring Is a Pageant, Not a Process
Let’s drop the pretense: hiring isn’t about merit. I’s about optics. It's not a talent search; it’s a talent show. Everyone smiles, nods, and carefully curates their words like they’re in a workplace-themed reality competition. America’s Next Top Employee, but with less personality.
Companies love to say they’re looking for “the right fit.” But the subtext behind every desirable quality is brutally clear:
Culture fit = Can you endure dysfunction without complaining?
Grit = Will you overwork for free?
Executive presence = Do you look vaguely like someone who wouldn’t embarrass us at a conference?
Team player = Will you smile through disappointment and say “absolutely” when asked to redo someone else’s work?
Interviews, instead of assessing competence, become performance reviews for a job you don’t have yet. It’s about polish over substance. Say the right lines, show the right enthusiasm, and for the love of god, don’t admit you’re just trying to pay rent.
Hiring managers, of course, are not innocent bystanders in this charade. They’re out here pitching roles like tech startups pitch pre-revenue business models. The language is lofty, the promises vague, and the fine print nonexistent.
“Strong culture of feedback” = No one gives feedback unless it’s behind your back.
“Financially stable” = Until our Series D collapses next Thursday.
“Growth opportunities” = We’ve lost three people and no one wants to be team lead.
At this point, job descriptions might as well just be honest: “Seeking emotionally durable optimist with a high tolerance for BS. Ping-pong experience a plus.”
Candidates Are Just Better at Lying Because They Have to Be
Candidates aren’t victims here. They’re active participants in the pantomime. But let’s also be fair: they’re lying because the system demands it. If you tell the truth you don’t get a call back. You get filtered out by an algorithm trained to punish honesty and reward spin.
Lying on a resume is a survival skill. Saying “I was unemployed for six months and depressed” gets you ghosted. Saying “I spent a year consulting independently on cross-sector growth strategies” gets you an interview. See the difference?
And while companies lie to sell you a fantasy, candidates lie to pay rent. The moral calculus isn’t symmetrical. One side is protecting quarterly KPIs. The other is trying to afford groceries.
High earners and degree-laden professionals lie more, not less, because they’ve learned the brutal truth: hiring doesn’t reward authenticity, it rewards narrative control. The job doesn’t go to the most qualified, it goes to the best character actor. You need a LinkedIn bio, a TEDx-worthy origin story, and at least one well-rehearsed anecdote about “leading through ambiguity.”
Resume padding has simply been rebranded as “executive storytelling.” Lies are now dressed up as “impact summaries.” And job titles have evolved from factual descriptions into aspirational branding exercises. A customer support rep is now a “Client Experience Advocate.” An intern becomes a “Junior Strategic Analyst.” It’s not about what you did, it’s about how convincing you sound when you describe it.
This isn’t fraud. It’s career marketing. And in the current system, not playing along means unemployed.
The Whole System Is a Slow-Motion Collapse of Trust
What happens when both sides walk into the hiring process already assuming the other is lying? You get this. The modern job market: a carefully staged standoff where everyone’s smiling, nodding, and spinning half-truths.
Employers lie because they think if they don’t wrap the job in enough buzzwords, no one decent will apply. Candidates lie because if they don’t polish their experience into a gleaming fiction, they’ll be filtered out by the ATS or ghosted before the second round. Nobody’s telling the truth because nobody trusts the other side can handle the truth, and they’re probably right.
So what we end up with is a kind of workplace uncanny valley: candidates who are a little too polished for what the role needs, working for companies that are a little too vague about what the job actually is. Everyone’s slightly underqualified, slightly overpromised, and slowly realizing it in real time.
This is more a long, awkward relationship based on mutual deception than a hiring process. The role isn’t what you thought. The employee isn’t who they claimed to be. And somewhere between the onboarding slideshow and the first Monday stand-up, everyone silently agrees to just pretend it’s fine.
And over time, all language in the job market degrades into euphemism.
“Mission-driven” = We hope the cause will distract you from the pay.
“Fast-paced” = You’ll never pee on schedule again.
“We value transparency” = We’ve mastered the art of withholding the truth in extremely professional ways.
It’s a trust economy where trust has gone bankrupt. And yet, the show must go on
Everyone knows the hiring process is a scripted performance, yet plays along like it's a legitimate meritocracy. Candidates, recruiters, hiring managers, all locked in a weird, unspoken agreement to act like this charade is normal. It isn’t. But it’s ours.
We fake enthusiasm. We rehearse our “weaknesses” into strengths. We pretend job descriptions were written by someone who’s actually met the team. And we do it all knowing it’s a game we didn’t design, can’t escape, and desperately hope to beat.
What’s wild is that everyone involved knows it’s broken. Candidates know they’re embellishing. Recruiters know the job’s been rebranded four times. Hiring managers know “culture fit” is just made up or at worse, bias But no one can afford to stop pretending. The stakes: rent, food, dignity, are too high.
Could we demand better? Of course. But so long as employers treat hiring like PR and candidates treat resumes like fiction pitches, the dysfunction remains baked in.
So rehearse your talking points. Update your “About” section. Smile like your career depends on it, because it kind of does.