You need to fill an open position on your marketing team, and you've lined up interviews for the most promising candidates. But in this economy—with so many people competing for so few jobs—you wonder how truthful each will be about his or her working style.

Candidate A might say he loves team projects when he in fact loathes collaboration; Candidate B, meanwhile, may claim to thrive in formal settings when she's far more productive in relaxed environments.

So how do you make hiring decisions when slightly desperate applicants have little incentive to be honest about their strengths and preferences? According to Jonathan Littman and Marc Hershon, you should watch them cross the street.

Guy Kawaski reports on this amusing bit of advice in an Open Forum blog. "If you can't arrange for an interviewee to cross the street to get to your building," he writes, "arrange for the interview at a Starbucks, cafe or restaurant—preferably in Manhattan during rush hour, but any reasonably sized city will do. Watch carefully ... These few seconds will tell you more about [your prospect's] workplace capabilities than an hour of tough questions."

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