# Story 2: Career catfishing and office ghosting

- **Episode:** [172](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/172.md) (2025-02-18)
- **Type:** news-roundup
- **Tags:** career-catfishing, office-ghosting, hiring, recruitment
- **Time:** 8:54–13:55 (start 534s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/172?t=534](https://truthliesandwork.com/172?t=534)

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[8:54] Al Elliott: Okay, Leanne, I've got a new term for you. I know you normally do the terms, but I'm doing the term this time. So yeah, career catfishing. What have you heard of it? What does it mean?
[9:02] Leanne Elliott: I've not heard of it. I've heard of catfishing, which is when you like pretend to be fake online to get people to either fall in love with you or give you money. Sometimes potentially both
[9:11] Al Elliott: Yeah, absolutely. Catfishing, in case you haven't heard of it, catfishing is generally like Leanne says, when someone pretends to be like a 25-year-old fitness instructor on Tinder but then turns out to be a 45-year-old accountant who lives with their mum. Career catfishing is basically the same thing but for jobs. It's about embellishing your CV, or resume if you're outside the UK, or outright lying about your skills and qualifications. According to this new report, which is from Owl Labs, OWL, owl as in hoot woo, not owl as in me. And I'm going to quote, 45% of Gen Z workers have reported increasing stress, and the data shows that many of them are seeking better compensation and benefits, better work-life balance, and more career growth opportunities. When their needs are not met, they find creative ways like career fishing and office ghosting— come back to that in a second— to push back. Now, I think for the slightly older people like me, that sounds very naughty. You're lying on your, on your resume. Um, but aren't employers Guilty of doing the same? Like, job descriptions often make the job sound really good, but when someone shows up for their first day, things can be very different. Now, this is the bit where I think you're gonna like. Gen Z has taken this to a whole new level. That term I just talked about there, office ghosting, well, they're actually doing that, ghosting recruiters. So they're accepting jobs and then just not showing up. So I don't know whether, the report doesn't say whether it's actually they're doing it sort of out of spite because they feel like the job has got some stuff in it which is not true
[10:36] Leanne Elliott: Yeah
[10:38] Al Elliott: Or whether they're just like, yeah, yeah, I'll have the job and just not bothering. Um, so before anyone starts tutting, there's actually a fairly good reason for this. Because as we said before, the data shows that 45% of Gen Z workers are feeling more stressed. And rather than just like putting up with it, like maybe the older people like me would've done, they are pushing back. They're setting boundaries. Uh, the report also says, I think it was 20% or 21% are flat out refusing to answer work messages outside of hours. Um, so they're clearly setting these boundaries
[11:06] Leanne Elliott: Yeah
[11:06] Al Elliott: So if they do discover their job is not quite as great as the recruiters made out, maybe they'll just not bother going, or they'll go for day 1 and just not bother day 2. Of course, we also know that Gen Z are much more likely to air their work complaints on social media. This same report— it was quite a big report— found that 48% of Gen Z employees have posted about their jobs or employers negatively on social media. So Lee, is this just like the youths of today being rebellious, or is this actually the new way of work. Is this a new way of recruiting? Both recruiter and recrutee— is that the right word?
[11:39] Leanne Elliott: So what you're basically saying is career catfishing is people lying on their CV to get a job
[11:44] Al Elliott: Lying on their CV to get, to get a job. Um, or yeah, or when they go to interview, just saying they can do something. Like, for example, there is a— there's, there's this app that if you're doing a coding interview, for example, that you can essentially— it'll listen to the interview and it'll show you the solution so that while you're in interview You can go, oh, well, I would do it this way, and it'll actually show you on screen how to do it
[12:04] Leanne Elliott: People have been lying on their CVs for decades. And I know because I have maybe elaborated on my CV a little bit at times early on
[12:12] Al Elliott: Oh, there's a Jamie Dimon moment
[12:14] Leanne Elliott: But lots of people do
[12:16] Al Elliott: And why?
[12:16] Leanne Elliott: It's because there's so many, and it's so ridiculous, entry-level roles asking for X number of years of experience or this type of experience that young people in their career or people early in their career won't Have that experience. Recruitment is fundamentally flawed because we're asking for experience when we should be assessing for potential. And for me, and this is a big, big idea really elaborated on beautifully by Adam Grant in his book Hidden Potential, but the idea basically being that if we actually put more effort into assessing people's potential in the interview process, we do a much better job of selecting people who are going to be strong performers in their, in their future roles, because experience isn't really a great predictor of future performance. Behaviour is better, but experience in terms of X number of years isn't particularly effective. And equally, if you're using that app in an interview, if that's the right answer and that's how you'd want it to be done, then cool, because if you don't know, you're going to go and find the answer, aren't you? You're not just going to assume that you know how to do it because that's how you've always done it. So actually, I don't think that this is that much of a problem. I think it's been done for a long time. I think it's just been talked about a little bit. A little bit more in the public arena. Um, the office ghosting though, that seems a little bit uncool. That's wasting a lot of people's time and energy, that, isn't it?
[13:29] Al Elliott: I don't know. I don't know. Maybe it's just the way this world's going to be. Everyone's lying. And, you know, it's like if you look back at dating, you put your best photo online, don't you? If I had to go back dating, I would just take a picture of me sitting on the sofa watching telly. They'll be like, well, that's what I look like. So if you hate that, then you're going to hate me when you meet me. Why am I putting on a beautiful AI picture of myself when I don't look like that? Anyway, wait, I digress. Leanne, what else have you seen this week?