What HR can learn from the Secret Service

We often believe we’re hiring the best talent. After all, that is how HR is meant to support managers. However, sometimes, we’re just hiring the most convincing communicators.

The Secret Service would never fall for that. Maybe HR shouldn’t either.

When the intelligence community interviews criminals, their goal isn’t to be impressed. It’s to uncover truth.

Former Secret Service agent Evy Poumpouras describes it as ‘listening between the words’ spotting subtle mismatches between what someone says and how they say it.

Their training isn’t about persuasion or charm; it’s about detecting patterns, inconsistencies, and authenticity under pressure.

In HR, we could use a dose of that discipline

Most interviews in corporate settings still reward confidence, fluency, and polish which are exactly the traits the Dunning–Kruger effect warns us about.

This well-documented psychological bias shows that people with limited competence often overestimate their abilities, while the most capable tend to understate theirs.

It means we often judge how someone presents themselves rather than what they are actually capable of doing. In other words, we may be systematically favoring those who believe they’re brilliant over those who actually are.

Lesson 1: Baseline before judgment

Intelligence interviewers begin by establishing a baseline. What does “normal” looks like for the person they’re questioning? They observe tone, language, and nonverbal cues across neutral topics, then notice when those patterns shift.

HR rarely takes the time for that. We jump straight to evaluating answers without understanding how candidates normally communicate.

A “pause” might be mistaken for insecurity when, in fact, it’s their natural rhythm of thought.

A sudden increase in fluency might suggest a rehearsed story.

By learning to notice those shifts, HR professionals can develop sharper intuition grounded in observation rather than bias.

Lesson 2: Separate confidence from competence

As Chris Voss, former FBI negotiator and author of Never Split the Difference, reminds us, the most persuasive people aren’t always the most truthful, they’re simply the most practiced at appearing credible.

His golden rule of negotiation, ‘Tactical Empathy’, teaches us to read emotional signals without being seduced by them.

The same applies to recruitment.

Overconfident candidates often perform well in structured interviews. They speak with certainty, project authority, and make decisions sound effortless.

Yet genuine experts often express doubt because they know enough to see complexity.

HR should normalize humility and nuance as markers of depth, not weakness. An authentic “I’m not sure, but here’s how I’d find out” can reveal far more competence than a perfectly packaged answer.

Lesson 3: Probe for cognitive dissonance

The best intelligence interviewers, and negotiators, listen for the gap between words and behavior. They know that truth often hides in contradiction.

In HR, this could mean noticing when a candidate claims to ‘lead collaboratively’ yet describes decisions made entirely alone.

Or when someone uses excessive jargon but offers no concrete examples. These inconsistencies are not red flags by themselves but they’re invitations to go deeper.

A simple follow-up question: “Tell me about a time when that didn’t work” can reveal whether the story is grounded in lived experience or borrowed language.

Lesson 4: Awareness of bias, including our own

Perhaps the most important lesson from intelligence training is that bias runs both ways.

Agents learn to recognize how their own expectations shape perception and how easily the brain fills in blanks based on first impressions.

HR professionals are not immune to this. We’re drawn to people who sound like us, who mirror our communication style, or who ‘feel like a good fit’.

The Secret Service has a name for this: similarity bias. Their antidote? Structured, evidence-based methods that prioritize behavioral consistency over intuition.

In practice, this means:

• Asking each candidate the same core questions.
• Rating answers against objective criteria, not gut feel.
• Training interviewers to check for their own assumptions just as intelligence officers do before entering an interrogation room.

Lesson 5: Emotional regulation and presence

Both Poumpouras and Voss emphasize emotional control.

Great interviewers stay calm, curious, and composed, never reactive.

HR could benefit from the same approach, especially in high-stakes conversations such as performance reviews, investigations, or negotiations.

Presence builds trust. When interviewers regulate their own emotions, they help candidates feel safe enough to drop performance mode, hence revealing their true selves.

From interviews to HR insights

The parallels between intelligence work and HR go beyond interviewing.

The best agents don’t rely on instinct alone. They use pattern-based decision-making, drawing on behavioral data, linguistic analysis, and structured debriefs.

HR, too, can move in that direction.

By combining human intuition with technology, for example, using skills intelligence platforms that analyze patterns across performance, learning, and collaboration, we can start to see people more clearly.

Not just as job applicants, but as evolving systems of skills, potential, and adaptability.

Talent Circularity: Hiring for adaptability

This is where Talent Circularity comes in.

The idea that skills are not fixed assets but dynamic resources that grow, evolve, and circulate across the organization.

In such a system, hiring the right mindset matters as much as hiring the right skillset.

The future belongs to those who can learn fast, flex across boundaries, and redeploy their skills as business needs shift.

That requires HR to look beyond what people know now to how they learn and respond to change.

What’s the takeaway for HR?

The intelligence and negotiation communities share this truth: adaptability is revealed not through performance, but through authenticity.

If HR can learn to detect that, to see past confidence and into potential, HR will unlock the true power of talent circularity.

In intelligence work, the truth isn’t what sounds most convincing, it’s what holds up under scrutiny.

In HR, the same principle should apply.

When we look beyond performance to substance, we create a culture that rewards authenticity, reflection, and continuous learning. The very qualities that drive long-term success.

Maybe it’s time HR learned to think a little more like the Secret Service.

As organizations evolve toward more fluid, skills-based structures, HR’s task is no longer to judge but to understand.

Like the Secret Service, we must learn to observe truth beyond polish; like negotiators, we must listen with empathy.

Because in the end, the future won’t belong to the most confident, it will belong to the most capable.

Those whose curiosity, resilience, and growth mindset keep them learning, adapting, and creating value wherever they go.

Natalie Wintermark will be speaking at UNLEASH America 2026 – March 17 to 19 – in Las Vegas. She will be sharing more on Talent Circularity in the age of AI. You can grab a pass here.