Fair Chance, hopefully as your name implies you will consider the following: Knowing full well that GM, BT and others will jump all over me, many, myself included, do not believe the polygraph should be used as the sole determinant.  That being said, despite what you state, it SHOULD be used as part of the fact gathering process ~note what YOU said ~FACT GATHERING ~ To be fair, yes there are cases (most?, I do not think so) where a "negative" (as you call it) polygraph can stop an application in it's tracks.  But what people should know is that in these cases, during the pretest, the applicant has denied some behavior that MIGHT preclude his hiring...he takes the examination, fails it and then confesses to lying about witholding the information.  Congratulations to him for being honest, but alas, he was too late. I assure you he was told up front to be honest (see the FBI manual on this site), but CHOSE not to be.  Now it is NOT a matter of the polygraph, rather it was his CONSCIOUS decision not to be honest.  What a lot of folks fail to consider is that there are many behaviors which are possible to overlook, especially when you weigh frequency and current involvement. Much more so than if the person CHOOSES to lie about it and demonstrate his lack of candor and integrity.  I am sorry, but I and many others DO believe that there is a deterrent effect in the prospect of taking a polygraph.  There are those who say that Ames and others defeated the process; while that may be arguably true, they represent a small segment and as bad a taste as that may put in your mouth, the prospect of taking a polygraph has stopped some from spying on their country.  Christopher Boyce from the  infamous Falcon & Snowman case is a case in point. He testified before Congress that the prospect of taking a polygraph caused him agreat deal of concern.  Enough to stop him? We may never know.  Has the prospect of taking polygraph ever stopped someone who has not yet been identified?  We can never know that. But I believe it has. It has been said that the polygraph is imperfect.  True, there are woefully few things that ARE perfect, but it IS the best thing we have at our disposal right now.  Can improvements be made? For sure that can be accomplished, but it takes committment, not just an attitude that "it is time to fold the tents".  There is a price that we must be willing to pay to enjoy not only the freedoms that we have, but because of our open society.  Whether we like it or not, polygraph may very well be one of those prices. I may be wrong, and only you know the answer here, but is there a possibility that out of fear of not getting the job you wanted, or whatever, you made a choice to be untruthful about a matter and when confronted about it, you admitted your transgression, were not hired and now you are "blaming" the polygraph?  I am not out to embarrass you.  You do not even have to respond to this, but MY experience (you cited yours) has been that this is exactly the scenario that occurs.