Résumés are designed to present job applicants in the best possible light, but polished descriptions can sometimes make it difficult for an interviewer to determine how much responsibility a candidate actually had for an achievement.
Elon Musk has described a relatively simple way of getting past that problem: ask candidates to explain, in detail, the most difficult problems they have personally solved.
Musk laid out the approach in a 2014 Auto Bild interview. Asked what he looks for when hiring, Musk said he searches for “evidence of exceptional ability,” particularly whether someone has encountered very difficult problems and successfully overcome them.
He also said academic credentials are not his primary concern. A degree from a prestigious university may indicate that someone is capable of significant achievement, Musk said, but it does not necessarily prove it. He pointed to prominent technology entrepreneurs who did not graduate from college and said an established record of exceptional achievement was more meaningful to him.
Musk looks for the details behind an achievement
In the same Auto Bild interview, Musk explained that when an applicant claims responsibility for an important accomplishment, he wants to determine whether that person actually did the work.
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His method is to ask increasingly detailed questions about the problem and how it was overcome. Someone who genuinely struggled with a difficult problem, Musk said, normally understands it deeply and remembers the details. Someone who was not actually responsible for the accomplishment is less likely to be able to explain those details convincingly.
Musk returned to the idea several years later.
During an appearance at the 2017 World Government Summit in Dubai, Musk was asked how he chooses members of his team. He said his interviews generally include two broad questions: candidates are asked to describe the story of their lives and the decisions they made along the way, and then to explain some of the most difficult problems they worked on and how they solved them.
Musk said the second question is particularly important because people who genuinely solved a problem generally know precisely how they solved it, including “the little details.” Those who only pretend to have solved it may be able to answer initial questions, he said, but eventually reach a point where they can no longer provide specifics.
The approach therefore focuses less on whether an answer sounds impressive and more on whether the candidate can reconstruct the actual process: What went wrong? What options were considered? What did the person personally do? Why was one solution chosen over another?
Research finds details can help distinguish truth from deception
Musk’s interview method was developed independently of academic research on deception, but its emphasis on detailed accounts bears similarities to a technique studied by psychologists.
A 2020 peer-reviewed study published in the Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition examined a lie-detection approach known as the Asymmetric Information Management (AIM) technique. Conducted by Cody Porter, Ed Morrison, Ryan J. Fitzgerald, Rachel Taylor, and Adam Charles Harvey, the study explored whether encouraging interviewees to provide more detailed accounts could make it easier to distinguish truth-tellers from liars.
The researchers started from a strategic difference between truth-tellers and liars. Someone telling the truth may benefit from providing more information because those details can demonstrate knowledge of an event. A person fabricating an account, however, may see additional information as dangerous because every extra detail creates another opportunity for the story to be challenged or contradicted.
The AIM technique attempts to amplify that difference.
Rather than simply asking participants to provide as much information as possible, researchers told those in the AIM condition that detailed statements make it easier for investigators to distinguish genuine accounts from fabricated ones. The idea was that this information would give truth-tellers an incentive to provide more detail while giving liars an incentive to hold information back.
What the experiment actually found
The study involved 104 participants, including 52 assigned as truth-tellers and 52 assigned as liars. Participants carried out one of two experimental missions before being questioned. Half were interviewed under the AIM condition and half under a control condition.
The results showed the predicted divergence. Truth-tellers exposed to the AIM instructions provided more information than truth-tellers in the control condition, while liars under AIM withheld more information than liars in the control group. That increased the difference between truthful and fabricated accounts.
In the researchers’ statistical classification analysis, overall accuracy reached 81 percent in the AIM condition, compared with 48 percent in the control condition. A subsequent account of the research likewise reported the increase from 48 percent to 81 percent.
That result requires an important qualification. The experiment did not show that a hiring manager using Musk’s question will detect résumé lies with 81 percent accuracy. The study concerned a controlled investigative-interview scenario, and the 81 percent figure came from classification based on the experimental data. The researchers were not testing Musk, Tesla, SpaceX, or employment interviews.
Later research has continued to test AIM in other settings. For example, a 2023 study of virtual interviewing reported classification accuracy of 72 percent with AIM versus 59 percent in the control condition, suggesting that the size of the effect can vary depending on the circumstances.
What Musk’s question can reveal in a job interview
The academic findings therefore should not be treated as scientific proof of Musk’s hiring technique. They do, however, illustrate why asking for detailed accounts can provide information that broad résumé claims do not.
A candidate can prepare statements such as “I led the project,” “I solved the problem,” or “I increased sales.” It is considerably harder to prepare for every follow-up question about what happened, what obstacles arose, who made which decisions and why a particular solution worked.
Musk’s own explanation has remained remarkably consistent. In both his 2014 Auto Bild interview and his 2017 World Government Summit appearance, he emphasized difficult problems, personal responsibility and detailed knowledge rather than prestigious credentials or polished answers.
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