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Ask HN: Anyone having issues with job applicant fraud?

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

#71

Post by pridkett »

kube-system wrote: post #3

About 5 years ago at a previous company we had someone who interviewed well, and then the person who showed up was totally not the same quality person we had talked to previously. I guess the placement strategy at some low quality placement agencies is to just put someone good on the interview and hope the hiring company doesn't notice. I haven't seen it recently, but I am now in a position where we have good recruit…

I had this happen to me at a former large employer. I insisted on removing the agency from our list of approved agencies and was told that if we did that to every agency that did that sort of fraud then we’d have no agencies in our budget range.

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

#72

Post by roey2009 »

vsareto wrote: post #64
claytonjy wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> while he was supposed to be working for one company he was making public github commits for the second If you're setting their hours, doesn't that make them an employee rather than a contractor, legally speaking?

May have billed a specific time span, but also had commits during that span. Dunno how they proved the github account belonged to the contractor though unless they just admitted to it or used the company email to register.

He probably used the same GitHub for both their repos. I don't see how otherwise it could be connected. Not so bright.

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

#73

Post by fsckboy »

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.

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

#74

Post by itg »

jamestimmins wrote: post #25

Once worked at a 3rd party coding interview company as an interviewer, and we had a bunch of grad students from a college who were all clearly cheating. They solved the problem from the top of the page down (rather than organically, as someone would when doing actual programming) in a very specific way. The company didn't want to disqualify those candidates, since we couldn't prove cheating, but it was pretty fascina…

Fortunately our company gives us the option to reject a candidate if we feel they are cheating and can provide an explanation. Once had a candidate solve a problem extremely quickly but they could not explain how they solved it all. I then made a small modification to the problem which wouldn't have changed the solution much and they were completely lost.

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

#75

Post by fsckboy »

vsareto wrote: post #64
claytonjy wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> while he was supposed to be working for one company he was making public github commits for the second If you're setting their hours, doesn't that make them an employee rather than a contractor, legally speaking?

May have billed a specific time span, but also had commits during that span. Dunno how they proved the github account belonged to the contractor though unless they just admitted to it or used the company email to register.

> Dunno how they proved

people who no longer trust you and don't want to work with you any more generally don't have to prove it.

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

#76

Post by tayo42 »

claytonjy wrote: post #61
bb88 wrote: post #30

It's a problem here too. Even if they use their camera, it doesn't mean they don't have someone feeding them answers to questions. Phone interviews are even more sketchy since the person who may be answering the questions is a completely different person who shows up on day 1. We had one person we hired as a contractor, but then her voice changed on the phone, and started calling people by their last names in chat. I…

> while he was supposed to be working for one company he was making public github commits for the second If you're setting their hours, doesn't that make them an employee rather than a contractor, legally speaking?

Maybe it's not a real contractor. I had one job where I was a "contractor", I had set hours, got paid hourly, received a w2. It seemed like just an excuse to be cheap and not provide benefits.

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

#78

Post by askafriend »

discodave wrote: post #36
askafriend wrote: post #11

Simple - just auto-reject anyone who refuses to use a camera or answer specifics.

That still costs you (the employer) money. It's like a DoS attack for your hiring system. E.g. a nefarious actor could harm a competitor by overwhelming them with fake applicants that it takes time to sift through.

True, but it costs you less if you just do it from minute 1 instead of letting them go through the process.

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

#79

Post by gedy »

xupybd wrote: post #20

Ug... as someone that one day would like to work remote this is infuriating. Anyone who is doing this, you're destroying trust and making life hard for the rest of us.

I'm not sure if it's just "remote" or also aiming for cheap overseas contractors.

As a senior remote US employee I don't see how any of the companies I interviewed with would even allow past screening not turning on camera or other tricks like this.

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

#80

Post by rabuse »

strongpigeon wrote: post #21

Slightly tangential, but I wonder how long before you have people using deepfakes to look and sound like someone else on camera to perpetrate this kind of fraud. It seems like all of the pieces are mostly there.

Just ask them to turn their heads all the way around. Should defeat any of that, lol.
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