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Technically, I have. I didn’t have to actually call them out, it was blatantly obvious. They knew they had seriously padded their resume. It is my job as an interviewer to find out just how much.I “get” the game. As a candidate you have to tweak your resume to hit on keywords and get past HR to even get to a face to face interview. So if you sort of worked on something, the temptation is to put it on the resume to make sure you show up in the keyword search. I’ve heard people even suggest that to other job seekers.Typically, I try to find the edges of a candidate’s knowledge. You say you know X. Being an “expert” is subjective, so I’ll try to discover how deep the knowledge goes. Usually it starts with an easy question: “I see, you’ve worked with <technology>, tell me more about what you did…” and then a follow up that anyone with a basic skill set would know. Assuming they can answer that, I may follow up with a much harder Level 400 answer (not trivia) that I actually don’t expect them to know. If they nail it, I move on. If they say they don’t know, or can’t answer I’ll follow up with an easier question (level 200), followed by level 300. Again it may not be a fail if they don’t know, I’m just looking for the edges - what do they really know?But when you fail ALL of the beginning basic level 100 questions on a topic you’ve claimed to be “an expert” in, there’s not much more to do. Especially when it’s six or seven things on the resume in a row.That was my candidate. A guy who was swept up in the 2008 layoffs, desperate to get a job, and seriously padded his resume. I don’t like interviews to feel like an interrogation - the candidates are nervous enough. I try to keep things light, but this guy…I’ve changed the questions into parallels, but I think you’ll get the idea…Me: “I see you drive a car to work, how long have you been driving?Candidate “Oh, several years! I’m really good at it!”Me: “Oh, great. What kind of car is it?”Candidate: “Oh, you know, just a regular car..”Me: “What kind of gas does it use?”Candidate: “I’m not sure…”Me puzzled: “Well, what kind of fuel does it use? Gas, diesel, or is it electric?”Candidate nervously: “I don’t remember”Me: “Ok. When you drove here today, what route did you take and why?”Candidate: “I don’t remember”Me, really puzzled: “Okay, let’s move on. It says here that you’re proficient with whiteboards..”Candidate: “Yes, I’m really comfortable with whiteboards!!!”Me: “Great, what kind of markers do you prefer to use?”Candidate: stares back blankly… “I don’t know”Me: “Can you draw something on the whiteboard for me, perhaps a triangle”Candidate: “No, I don’t think I can…”I went another round of questions with him, but stopped when his hands started shaking. I put the resume away, and asked him my ultimate back stop question. The one I ask to make sure I’m not misreading a candidate or missing their strengths because I’ve become over focused on weakness.I asked him: “If I could custom design a job that leveraged all of your strengths, what would that look like? What can you do better than anyone else?”He stared at me blankly for what seemed like an eternity, and simply said “I don’t know.”Facepalm. We were only 15 minutes into the interview that was scheduled for an hour.I suggested a break, and left the room to get bottled water for both of us. While I was walking back to the conference room, my colleague let me know the candidate left and looked visibly upset. I wasn’t trying to humiliate him, or confront him. I was just going down the resume, skill by skill that he listed to find out what he could do. I was actually trying to find something for him - seriously he had 10 years of work experience, he had to know something. Damn if I could figure out what.

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I was really good at studies till my 12th standard. I aced in almost all the public and board exams. Though I did not qualify the JEE Mains (2004), I got a decent score in AIEEE. I was very passionate about Electronics and wanted to pursue ECE. But unfortunately I did not get admitted to any top NITs for ECE branch and so I took admission in a top state owned Engineering College. I graduated with a 73 % aggregate and no job! Though I got placed in two IT service companies, they never gave me a joining letter.As most of my friends were also in the same boat, I did not care. I attended total 25 interviews and finally got placed in a company. I hated my job and quit within a year.Now coming back to the question. I did a lot of analysis why I ended up jobless even though I was an above average performer. I am summarizing my analysis below:1. Did not care to studyThe fad among many Engineering College students is not to give enough importance to their studies. I did the same. I started studying by burning the midnight oil on exam nights as my friends did the same. Very few students are really good at managing their exams without studying. The majority of the students ended up scoring less marks or fail.So the question is why don't they study.a) The Engineering fee in Govt. colleges are highly subsidized, so the education loan is not a burdenb) YOLO - So don't waste time learning stupid thingsc) You will get 40 marks even if you don't studyd) I don't study, I am a genius attitudee) Steve jobs and Bill Gates are college dropouts. So I might be a future millionaire even if I don't study.2. Professors did not care to teachThe majority of the professors are not interested to teach students. Professors do not update themselves with the current advances in the field. Most of them just read out old notes or follow sub-standard text books which will help you excel in the public exams. None of the professors in our ECE department has a PhD. Our library is flooded with obsolete books (There are at least 100 books in the library on various transistor valves and CRT technology).3. Do not know the fundamental conceptsRashmi Rao rightly pointed it out. My friend was once asked the uses of zenor diode in a viva. He answered "Zenor Diodes are used in rockets".I got rejected from an interview for not answering why the BJT is called a current controlled device. I just mugged equations to answer the university exams. I knew how to do FFT computations, but do not know why and where it is used.4. EnglishThough I was taught in English medium, I did not speak English very fluently.Neither did I write well. The reasons were a) I never had a chance to speak English with anyone b) Our professors interacted in regional language c) I never knew the importance of learning to speak English. I screwed up a couple of HR interviews and GDs just because of this.5. Placements preparationI was too lazy to prepare for placement interviews. I was good at Math throughout my school days and so I was over confident to crack the aptitude tests. TCS, Wipro, CTS, Infosys were the major recruiters in our college and they had written aptitude tests. With a few registered companies and huge number of students, I lost in the competition.6. Blank resumeMy CV was total shit. I had a big table on my CV with my school board exam marks (the only thing I can boast). The B.Tech final project with explanation ate almost half of the resume. I had zero achievements or paper presentations or skills. Fortunately I had learned C++ in the 12th which helped me to get shortlisted for some IT company interviews. An expired IEEE student membership or Active member of XXX organization in your college that never existed is not gonna save your ass.7. InternshipIt is really hard to get an internship if you are not from an IIT/NIT level institutes. My batchmates and I never tried for an intern. We did not even know how to apply for interns. We had limited access to internet (as there was no IIN). We never heard of Google/Intel/Yahoo challenges/Hackathons. But we used to outsource our final year project to a small tech company near our college. They taught me the basics of Embedded Programming. I added this in my resume as internship experience.8. Other reasonsI was busy wasting my time. Watched a lot of regional movies. Never read newspapers or journals. I did not have reading habit.There were many more reasons. I do not want to enlist them all. I realized I was in deep shit after my graduation and so there was nothing I had to do about it. When I started hating my first job, I thought of quitting. I took 6 months break and started preparing for GATE. The coaching institute I joined had good professors and I started loving the lectures. I took admission for M.Tech in an IIT and narrowed down my field of expertise. Later moved to the US for my PhD.EDIT 1 :Possible Solutionsa) Current/Prospective students1. Learn a programming language despite your field of study. This will help you challenge your logical thinking. Coding is important in every field of Engineering.2. Be a master in a specific field. You can’t master the whole ECE area. Select a subtopic you like and do a little research on the current trends in that particular field. Do not select a sub-topic like Communications, rather go for Embedded systems, RF design, Analog Design, VLSI, Networking, Image Processing, Machine Learning etc.3. Read. Read some journal. Not necessarily conference proceedings or technical papers. Read CHIP, E4Y etc. This will keep you posted with current happenings in your field and will not bore you with equations.4. Learn to write and converse in English effectively. Take coaching classes or watch Youtube videos for help5. Do hobby projects. Find interesting, small projects from internet. For ECE guys, there is no need for you to learn to solder perfectly. Understand that there is a clear difference between technical diploma degree and an engineering degree. Use circuit simulation software like PROTEUS or MATLAB, Keil, MPLAB to work on your projects. Learn to use GitHub.6. Know the job market, latest technologies and try to master it. For ECE graduates there are lots of opportunities in Embedded or FPGA design. Check the career portal of your dream companies and find out what skills they are looking for. Try to have a basic knowledge of their tools. E.g. Verilog/VHDL, Embedded C/C++, Hadoop, CAD, Python, C++, Java, Android etc.7. All Non- CS students, learn MATLAB8. Take Labs seriously. This is the only place you are going to learn something.b) Graduated students1. Stop worrying that you did not get a job. Realization that you are completely screwed is the first and foremost part.2. If you are a non CS student and want to work in your field of interest, then join for a masters program. Join a good coaching institute if required. CS students, learn to be a better programmer.3. Learn to code in Java/C++/Python and keep coding (ECE/EEE/IT/CS/AE)4. Improve your English speaking skillsDisclaimer: Please do not think that my batchmates were below average performers who were pushed by their parents into Engineering stream. We joined this reputed state engineering college, due to limited number of seats in the NITs. I was the last one to secure admission in ECE with an AIEEE AIR 17,000 (Got admit in most of the NITs but not for ECE ). I am sure that majority of my batchmates realized the fallacy and worked hard later. Couple of them are with ISRO/DRDO/Civil services, some went to IIMs, couple of them moved to the US for MS. But still there is a big chunk of guys stuck with Wipro,Infy and TCS.