Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Anyone having issues with job applicant fraud?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 419 posts

Re: Ask HN: Anyone having issues with job applicant fraud?

#291

Post by ralphael »

kube-system wrote: post #24
paxys wrote: post #7

This is exactly why the technical interview process is what it is. No point wasting time asking about backgrounds and describing past projects (all of it can be easily faked). Make them write code in front of you live as part of the screening round.

I don't like making people write code live. Some really good coders just don't work well with people looking over their shoulder. I prefer giving people a take-home with an original problem to solve. Then, follow that up with a live call where you ask them some questions about it.

I've found that candidates have little or non appetite for take home problems.

If they are busy interviewing, putting aside 2-3 hours (which is not much really) per interview, limits how many they are willing to do per week. As its still a candidate driven market.

Keep in mind, people have to find the spare time while doing their jobs and living life. If they have a family - good luck finding spare time :-)

The best win/win I've found is to pair with someone for about 30 minutes. You help each other, just like you do in real life.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone having issues with job applicant fraud?

#292

Post by Nextgrid »

comex wrote: post #233
fsckboy wrote: post #73

It seems like good interview questions (for all candidates) could be "how should we stop interview and employment fraud, what are your ideas?" You want candidates who are clever at analyzing a new problem, and it puts the issue on the table in a cooperative way.

I don’t know. If someone was interviewing me and asked how they should stop interview fraud, I’m pretty sure I’d wonder if they were passive-aggressively accusing me of it. At the least I’d feel self-conscious. Which would probably not be conducive to a good interview for either side.

If you approach the question transparently it would work - just explain the problem that you've had a lot of candidates trying to abuse the system and would like to get their thoughts on the issue.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone having issues with job applicant fraud?

#293

Post by csunbird »

xwdv wrote: post #38
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyone who is doing this, you're destroying trust and making life hard for the rest of us. Sadly, they don't care. This is why we can't have nice things.

Um we can still have nice things if people stop being naive. It’s not hard to verify someone actually exists… there are ways.

I mean, I had a company asking me to send pictures of my passport and my residence permit by email in the first interview for a remote role. They acted very surprised when I flat out said "No, you can have them when you approach me with an offer. Then you can decide if my papers in order, not before"

Ended up not continuing the interview, as giving out very sensitive information like candies to companies on the first interviews is not a good idea at all.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone having issues with job applicant fraud?

#294

Post by meltyness »

s1k3s wrote: post #95

Ask HN: Anyone having issues with job description fraud? The job market is a market. Nobody owes you anything. In most job fields the buyer has the leverage over the seller so the buyers will go out of their way to press that leverage (low pay, low benefits, impossible demands etc). It just happens that in a few fields the seller has the advantage so they're doing the same thing to you. My point is you have to accept…

I had an instance where I applied to a Fortune 500 company. The minimums were broken out as a survey, and you were automatically (and explicitly) disqualified if you answered "wrong". One of the minimums contradicted the posting, and being honest, I was disqualified.

Months later, after the summer, I got a frenzied email from HR asking me to apply again. Apparently the posting ruled out all the candidates, someone high-up thought for-sure "someone" was qualified.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone having issues with job applicant fraud?

#295

Post by patrakov »

One of my clients (where screening CVs was one of my duties) had a different kind of fraud.

On a particular week, we received a lot of CVs for a DevOps position. They shared a few common characteristics: were sent through Indeed, allegedly from Indians who emigrated to the USA, talked about skills and duties but not achievements, and were longer than one would normally write. Additionally, they used too-low-level phrases that one would never use in the CVs, like, e.g. when describing their experience with Ansible, "use the 'file' module to copy files to and from remote systems". I.e. phrases that would appear in a course curriculum, but not in a proper CV.

The final red flag for me was a phrase repeated word for word in two CVs allegedly from different people.

I don't really know how to react properly to this, in order to avoid lawsuits for rejecting candidates based on nationality and other kinds of discrimination (ans I was specifically instructed about discrimination-based lawsuits as a very real risk, something that happened before). So I just told about the problem to the head of HR, marked all CVs received through Indeed on that week as highly suspect (even those that a casual reader would mark as OK), and let him deal with it. I don't know what exactly he did.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone having issues with job applicant fraud?

#296

Post by noufalibrahim »

onion2k wrote: post #275
iaaan wrote: post #128

Earlier this year, I interviewed this guy who gave me really strange vibes. He would stall for a good 15-20 seconds after each question I asked... and then spit out a perfectly worded answer. I google'd some specific, peculiar phrases I remembered him saying after the interview and found that the phrases came straight out of places like the Kubernetes documentation, word for word. He was googling my questions and the…

He would stall for a good 15-20 seconds after each question I asked... and then spit out a perfectly worded answer. He was googling my questions and then reading the documentation aloud to me. If he's just Googling everything then he sounds like a senior developer to me! I'm half-joking. Obviously you want people who understand the problem you're asking, and who have a good knowledge of the domain, and who can answer…

Even so, I'd expect an candidate to say something like "this is something I know but I'd have to look at the docs for in depth information about the detail you're asking". That would convince me that he knows what he's talking about. Googling for every question and then reading back verbatim what's in the docs sounds shady to me.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone having issues with job applicant fraud?

#297

Post by __d »

lodovic wrote: post #247
__d wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I did wonder about that, but they could've just recorded the interview. Although that did happen, but I think that was the recruitment agencies: they'd debrief their candidates after their interviews, and the next time they sent someone in, they'd be prepped for the whiteboard design exercises we'd used previously. I ended up with a dozen different questions that I rotated, which seemed to be enough. General in…

Why would you continue to use that contracting agency if they were clearly gaming the interviews?

It's a tough call.

Firstly, all agencies prep their candidates to some extent. They know your stack, they know what skills and experience you're looking for, so they make sure the people they send in match the profile, and you know, just bone up on the important things a bit before the interview.

It's not a stretch to go from that to saying "and they'll ask about X and Y, so make sure you refresh your memory on that".

And then it's not far to outright "here's the list of stuff we know they've asked recently -- do your best!"

The worst offenders would get a grumpy phone call and sit out the next few rounds of recruitment, but ultimately you want the candidates, so ...

Re: Ask HN: Anyone having issues with job applicant fraud?

#299

Post by Firmwarrior »

hnbad wrote: post #283
badpun wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly, they forgot the "k" in the "35+ PROJECTS DONE". Would be even funnier if they misplaced it, and instead said "10k+ GLORIOUS YEARS".

The Warhammer 40k jokes for this just write themselves, don't they?

Incredible, I never knew I needed a Warhammer 40k / Office Space crossover until this moment

To the DeepFakeMobile!!

Post reply on HN