With remote work the new normal, professional interviewers and fake candidates are growing at alarming rates and increasing in sophistication. What options are there for recruiters and hiring managers?
Since COVID-19, remote work and remote hiring have soared, and it’s more than a pandemic-exclusive phenomenon.
Remote work has forever changed how we work and how companies hire and keep employees. There’s an endless supply of stats touting the benefits of a remote-first world, like:
While remote work has major benefits for everyone, there are negatives, especially during the remote interview and remote hiring process.
Candidate fraud is growing at an alarming rate, whether it’s misrepresenting skills or experiences on a resume to professional interviewers interviewing for someone else. In fact, we discovered a 92% increase in candidate fraud from the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Not only did our AI pick up the increase in candidate fraud attempts, but recruiters and hiring managers are sharing their fake candidate experiences, take the examples below.
Suku Sodhi, Founder of Elite Global Recruiters shares her fake candidate experience on LinkedIn:
In another LinkedIn post, Tatiana Timmins, Technical Recruiter at Eliassen Group shares her experience with fake candidates:
Remote hiring and remote work have created an environment where cheating is perceptively easier and with growing sophistication. Here are some of the few examples where companies have observed candidate cheating:
Accounts of “candidates behaving badly” even made it to a recent New York Times article, take this excerpt into consideration:
Remote hiring processes have given some job seekers the impression that they can get away with extreme forms of dishonesty. Virtual interviews leave open the possibility that candidates can ask a friend to feed them answers. Telephone calls can create a psychological distance between the interviewer and interviewee, Dr. Feldman noted, which may make it easier for people to justify presenting themselves in an inaccurate way. At the same time, people are doing far more interviews than before, with about one in five employees voluntarily switching jobs in 2020.
New York Times
Not all candidate fraud attempts are done with malicious attempts, as shared in the New York Times article above, there are psychological explanations for why this is happening at alarming rates. Here are a few of the telltale signs that something suspicious is happening during the interview:
Arun Krishnan shares how he was duped by a fake candidate to his 11k + followers:
Most interview and hiring processes were not made for remote work and remote hiring:
Douglas Drouillard, CEO of Shrine Development shares his perspective on LinkedIn regarding interview time and compensation.
And, on the other end of the spectrum, Rashad Morton, Tech talent at Accenture details his experience as an interviewee.
If you’re not re-evaluating your interview to hire process, you’re exposing your company to incredible risk. Make sure you download our latest research where we provide insights into what leading organizations are doing to hire qualified candidates in a remote-first work environment.