Pre-employment polygraph testing. Is everyone lying?

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Pre-employment testing: Is everyone lying?
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It has been many years since I have done any pre-employment
testing in the private field. When the EPPA (the Employee
Polygraph Protection Act) was passed in 1988, it eliminated
most of the private, pre-employment work. I would like to
discuss, for now, pre-employment testing in law enforcement
agencies. Please, keep in mind that the opinions given here
are my own and I'm sure some of you will disagree with those
opinions.

I was told by an examiner a couple of years ago, who is
reliable and should know, but whose name I do not have permission
to use, that pre-employment testing in the average law
enforcement agency has an approximate split of 50/50 on tests
where a conclusion was reached. This means that about half the
people tested were truthful and the other half were deceptive.
That seemed, at the time, to be about what our agency, the
Phoenix Police Department, was showing.

I wonder if that is our fault? Do half of the people that come
here looking for a law enforcement job lie to us? Possibly they
do. Some people would say most do lie to us about something.
Again, is that our fault? Perhaps it is.

When people, especially potential recruits, come to us for a PDD
test, we stress to them that they must be truthful. They must not
hold back any information. They are told that to do so will
eliminate them from the hiring process since we don't want liars,
cheats, murderers, rapists and thieves working for our
department. Then, during the pre-test interview, we ask them a
myriad of questions pertaining to their past and force them to
remember things they had forgotten years ago. Now, they have a
dilemma. Do they tell us the things they remember and sound like
they have been holding back or not say anything and chance a
failed test? Some even think that if they tell us something they
did not tell their background investigator, they will be
automatically eliminated for not revealing the information to the
background investigator.

I think the hardest part of a pre-employment test is the pre-test
interview, and I mean before we start asking about their
background. We have to make sure that they understand that we are
looking for honest, hard working people but that no one is
perfect. Everyone makes mistakes, and we understand that. We want
to know if someone is deliberately withholding information or
saying something that is not true. I really do not care what they
don't remember since it's not important.

I really don't believe that half of the people that we test are
deliberately lying. Maybe I'm wrong, but maybe we are not doing
all we can to get good, honest, truthful people through the test.
I do believe it all comes down to our pre-test interview.

Yes, a large part of what we do is to get information out of
people, and we do that well. I believe it is also our
responsibility to get basically good truthful people through the
test with no problems which has to come in our pre-test interview.

I don't have all the answers, I don't even know if I have any of
them. I do know that I spend a lot of time and energy on my
pre-test interview before I even start to go through the
information with them. I let them know it is all right if they
remember things as we go along, but that they have to tell me
when they do so. I also tell them they cannot deliberately
withhold any information or deliberately give me any false
information, and that if they don't, they should have no problem
on the actual test.

So you all tell me, is a fifty percent failure rate too high?
I have heard of some that were closer to seventy. I seem to be at
about thirty eight percent. Maybe I'm too easy. We all know that
people do come in and deliberately lie to us, but is it really
every other one? I'm not convinced. I do think some of the
failures are due to truthful people trying to help themselves
through a test by doing what someone on the internet told them
they have to do to pass. That was discussed in a prior article.

Remember this is just my opinion so please let me know what you
think. Please, no name calling or ticking packages in my mail.
Just your opinion will be fine.

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