How to Spot Fake Interview Candidates

A lesson in mock interviews

You may have seen this banana reader submission on Alison Green’s Ask a Manager Monday blog. If not, here’s a quick summary: The reader’s husband, who works in IT at a “mid-sized private company,” realizes that the new hire “John” is not the same candidate he interviewed. He has different hair and glasses, different life details, and can’t answer basic work-related questions. “John” eventually gives up before HR can fully question him. After that he is unreachable. Final scene.

John’s motives are unclear. It’s possible he just wanted a better paying job. The more sinister explanation is that he wanted access to company information. Regardless, it begs the question: Do job applicants really use reservations to ace job interviews?

I had certainly never heard of it before. Neither does Ariel Lopez, CEO of staffing platform Knac and former recruiter. “I’ve seen some crazy things, but I’ve never seen someone pretend to be someone else in an interview,” she said.

But Nick Shah, president of IT staffing firm Peterson Technology Partners, said this has been happening in the IT industry for quite some time. Swapping physical interview locations is rare (it’s kind of a dead giveaway if you show up to work looking like a different person). But having someone give you answers in a video interview? This is quite common.

• “I call it the dark side of recruiting,” Shah told me. “In the industry, there’s a terminology that people call ‘proxies.’ This is your face on camera, but someone else is speaking for you.
• Cases of fake applicants increased during the pandemic, prompting Shah to write this post on LinkedIn in November 2020. He says it’s easy to find someone to help you ace the interview. “There are actually companies that advertise that they will help you with your interviews and charge you $500 to $700 per interview,” Shah said.
• Companies need to be vigilant when it comes to fake applicants, Shah said. They are expensive, especially for tech companies with tight project timelines. And it sucks for the real, talented candidates who need the job.

The tech job market is crazy. This may be behind some of today’s strange hiring mishaps. Brian Kropp, head of HR Research at Gartner, said he’s heard all kinds of crazy work stories: employees telecommuting for two companies at once, outright lies on resumes, people taking technical assessment tests for each other.

• “I can totally see how [John’s story] it can happen because companies are trying to hire people so quickly and there’s such a demand to hire people that they’re not doing the same due diligence that they would have done before,” Kropp said.
• Especially on a largely remote world where we’ve never met some of our counterparts, Kropp can see how a false candidate could slip through the cracks.

Here are some ways companies can prevent fake applicants.

• One simple solution is to emphasize that you have zero tolerance for outright lying. That might be all it takes to scare off some dishonest applicants. “[S]Disrupt the recruiting process by saying, “We’re a company of high integrity,” Krop said. “We do not tolerate people who lie or are dishonest or disrespect each other. When that happens, we fire people.
• Shah has several techniques to see if an interview candidate is using outside help. His company requires video interviews in a well-lit room, on a computer and without headphones. He pays close attention to the candidate’s mouth and voice to make sure they are in sync. It also looks at eye movement to see if they are looking at someone else in the room. Asking a candidate to share their screen also helps weed out fakes.

The internet is full of scams. Fake candidates, fake jobs, whatever. Still, this Ask A Manager reader submission threw me for a loop. I’d almost admire John’s audacity if he weren’t wasting real people’s time and money. It seems much easier to either spend time learning the job skills or ask about the company’s education benefits. Lopez has a little advice for anyone trying to fake their way into a job: “It’s extremely important to come across as authentic. The best way to do this is to not lie about your identity. I didn’t think that was something to say in 2022, but apparently I was wrong.

— Lizzie Lawrence, reporter (Email | twitter)

Injuries at Amazon warehouses are on the rise

High productivity expectations at Amazon’s warehouses have led to an increase in workplace injuries. Now states are starting to crack down on the company. Amazon has been unsurprisingly tight-lipped about some of its productivity quotas, causing frustration among policymakers. Washington state Sen. Steve Conway asked to tour Amazon’s DuPont Washington fulfillment center after citations from the state Department of Labor: They allowed him to tour but sent him to another facility. He is now co-sponsoring and authoring a bill being considered in Washington state aimed at improving transparency on Amazon’s performance metrics. A similar bill was recently signed into law in California and went into effect last month. It’s an uphill battle for reform that also requires awareness among Amazon workers, my colleague Anna Kramer wrote. For the law to have a measurable impact in California and for other states to follow suit, warehouse workers need to know they now have the right to ask for performance expectations and data.

Read the full story.

WORKPLACE MESSAGE FROM META

Whether you work on the top floor or in the shop, Workplace celebrates who you are and what you can contribute to your business. Discover the place where you can be more yourself.

Find out more

Today’s tips and tools

Where does one go to create a simple web page these days? You can fire up Medium, pay for Squarespace, or get Wix. Or, if you regularly use Notion, you can just … use Notion.

In his continuing series on how the people who build productivity tools use those productivity tools, reporter Lizzie Lawrence spoke with David Tibbits, one of Notion’s earliest employees. Tibbitts showed her how to turn her Notions into public websites in just a few seconds: Just click “share” and “share to web.”

Read the full story.

Customer service agents are leaving faster than ever

The pandemic is tough on workers in all industries, but one of the hardest roles to work in right now is customer service. Customer service roles had high turnover rates before the pandemic, but higher demands and restrictions over the past two years have increased the pressure on customer service agents. “If you add today’s challenges like supply chain shortages, omicron and the resulting slower delivery and service times, as well as customers feeling frustrated, I think we’re seeing across all service touchpoints employees who are under huge pressure. This is accelerating the Great Resignation,” said Clara Shi, CEO of Service Cloud at Salesforce.

A critical role in most technology companies, customer service agents have moved from working in well-maintained call centers to working from their homes, and many have borne the brunt of under-resourced and customer frustration. A new study by Salesforce has found that companies will need to do a lot more to retain some of their most critical employees. Here are the highlights:

• The top three challenges reported by customer service agents include: burnout, customer satisfaction and access to career development opportunities.
• 71% of customer service agents have considered leaving their job in the past six months.
• 69% of respondents say they are considering leaving their customer service job.
• 86% of service agents said they needed more from their company to stay. Specifically, they want better compensation, opportunities for career growth and better management.
• 50% of customer service executives who responded said they had seen an increase in resignations in their departments.

More from us

Workplace stories you may have missed.

This week’s Ask a Tech Worker: Are your coworkers quitting?

Figma hopes companies will pay for a better way for tech workers to collaborate.

Opinion: Howard University Associate Dean Yuvai Myers Ferguson believes the Great Resignation is actually the Great Transition.

Monster’s Future of Work study says skilled workers are still hard to find.

Over the internet

View workplace news from the farthest reaches of the internet.

A look at who’s left out of the Big Resignation conversation.

A recruiter offered some negotiation tips on Twitter this week. The backlash was swift.

Some talking points to add to your next conversation about the benefits of pay transparency.

WORKPLACE MESSAGE FROM META

Whether you work on the top floor or in the shop, Workplace celebrates who you are and what you can contribute to your business. Discover the place where you can be more yourself.

Find out more