Scammers gaming India’s overcrowded job market • Hacker News Board

Re: Scammers gaming India’s overcrowded job market

#31

Post by fortythirteen » Tue, Jan 02, 2018, 4:00 PM UTC

pizza234 wrote: post #30

reallymental wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh the old bait and switch works very well for telephone interviews. Remove them ideally. Perhaps a solution to this could be to give the interviewee something that only he can give the interviewer back when they meet. Something that the interviewee cannot pass onto the 'real' candidate who will appear on the first day. On the other hand, fining the real candidate is the worst way possible, it has to be better than t…

> Perhaps a solution to this could be to give the interviewee something that only he can give the interviewer back when they meet. A video call as part of the hiring process, instead of a phone call, solves the solution trivially. Since we're talking about software engineers, which are (supposedly) used to these tools, there are no associated costs (I refer human, not monetary ones).

Not always. You can have someone off camera feeding answers into a IM window. It makes it easier to spot when something is off, but it's not fulproof.

Re: Scammers gaming India’s overcrowded job market

#32

Post by raverbashing » Tue, Jan 02, 2018, 4:01 PM UTC

valuearb wrote: post #12

Reminded me we hired an indian android developer (contractor) through a phone interview (in US). When “he” showed up for work, it wasn’t him. The contractor who actually showed up couldn’t answer the same questions.

Is this through an H1B?

No wonder it's the mess as it's presented

A video interview should be the minimum.

Re: Scammers gaming India’s overcrowded job market

#33

Post by nradov » Tue, Jan 02, 2018, 4:01 PM UTC

valuearb wrote: post #12

Reminded me we hired an indian android developer (contractor) through a phone interview (in US). When “he” showed up for work, it wasn’t him. The contractor who actually showed up couldn’t answer the same questions.

We had the same thing happen with a contractor position. Since this was for a short term contract and the candidate was out of state we hired based on phone interviews. But when the contractor actually showed up for work it was immediately clear that he was incompetent and not the same person. I wonder how often they get away with it?

Re: Scammers gaming India’s overcrowded job market

#34

Post by nradov » Tue, Jan 02, 2018, 4:02 PM UTC

raverbashing wrote: post #32

valuearb wrote: post #12

Reminded me we hired an indian android developer (contractor) through a phone interview (in US). When “he” showed up for work, it wasn’t him. The contractor who actually showed up couldn’t answer the same questions.

Is this through an H1B? No wonder it's the mess as it's presented A video interview should be the minimum.

H-1B is for W-2 employees, not 1099 contractors.

Re: Scammers gaming India’s overcrowded job market

#35

Post by fortythirteen » Tue, Jan 02, 2018, 4:02 PM UTC

valuearb wrote: post #27

reallymental wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh the old bait and switch works very well for telephone interviews. Remove them ideally. Perhaps a solution to this could be to give the interviewee something that only he can give the interviewer back when they meet. Something that the interviewee cannot pass onto the 'real' candidate who will appear on the first day. On the other hand, fining the real candidate is the worst way possible, it has to be better than t…

In our case he was so bad we were able to fire him first day fortunately. I still don’t understand how he thought it was going to work

Sometimes the hire is nothing more than a body at the desk that gives VPN access to an offshore worker. Larger companies often ave a more "into the fire" approach and are more vulnerable for this type of scam.

Edit: I'm really interested in who downvoted my comment, considering it's based on something I've personally seen happen multiple times.

Re: Scammers gaming India’s overcrowded job market

#36

Post by mohi13 » Tue, Jan 02, 2018, 4:03 PM UTC

thisisit wrote: post #9

This is like the boiler room stuff from "Wolf of Wall Street". Unfortunately it is not reviled rather held in awe. One thing which is never talked about in these articles is the failure of Indian government (past and present) to find effective family planning policies. Population growth is through the roof and hence unemployment is huge. With not much left in terms of job prospects lot of people turn to shady stuff.…

All this seems a dark side of democracy in a not well educated country. All the political parties do short term work just enough to win the next election and no one cares to plans long term. And when people are not educated they just don't get complicated perspective, all that understand is here and now leading to all short term band-aid solutions which are harmful for the long term.

Re: Scammers gaming India’s overcrowded job market

#37

Post by fortythirteen » Tue, Jan 02, 2018, 4:04 PM UTC

at-fates-hands wrote: post #20

valuearb wrote: post #12

Reminded me we hired an indian android developer (contractor) through a phone interview (in US). When “he” showed up for work, it wasn’t him. The contractor who actually showed up couldn’t answer the same questions.

Had the same thing happen at a startup I was at. We had a .Net developer get hired. First week he showed up and was asked to do some remedial stuff like update some tables on a database and then refactor a few controllers in one of our apps. First day he sat at his desk browsing the internet all day. Second day, the senior dev asked if he needed help and by the third day he was bringing in several .Net programming bo…

Hired a JavaScript developer who passed the technical interview via phone. The guy that showed up couldn't understand the syntax errors that were showing up in the console.

Re: Scammers gaming India’s overcrowded job market

#38

Post by reallymental » Tue, Jan 02, 2018, 4:04 PM UTC

pizza234 wrote: post #30

reallymental wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh the old bait and switch works very well for telephone interviews. Remove them ideally. Perhaps a solution to this could be to give the interviewee something that only he can give the interviewer back when they meet. Something that the interviewee cannot pass onto the 'real' candidate who will appear on the first day. On the other hand, fining the real candidate is the worst way possible, it has to be better than t…

> Perhaps a solution to this could be to give the interviewee something that only he can give the interviewer back when they meet. A video call as part of the hiring process, instead of a phone call, solves the solution trivially. Since we're talking about software engineers, which are (supposedly) used to these tools, there are no associated costs (I refer human, not monetary ones).

Yes, I did mention that they should remove the telephone interviews ideally.

I should have added the fact that skype would solve the issue as well.

But to this day, I don't understand why companies do a telephone interview. Its certainly not cheaper than a skype interview.

Maybe you could argue against a video call by saying that the person might grow a beard/shave their beard, put on weight/ lose weight, change their appearance drastically by the time they come to the first day on the job. Or the interviewee might be at their current job when they are interviewing for the next, so that might throw some people off the process. Thirdly I think some research somewhere might have said that a skype interview is more daunting, and hence less people will apply for the job/qualify to the next round as a result of the stress it causes and the telephone interview is just less stressful on the candidate.

All possible, all equally rubbish reasons imho.

Re: Scammers gaming India’s overcrowded job market

#39

Post by JumpCrisscross » Tue, Jan 02, 2018, 4:06 PM UTC

reallymental wrote: post #28

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> fining the real candidate is the worst way possible I fail to understand why this is unacceptable. If I take a test for you, we both get in trouble.

They pay a non-decent amounts to these test takers, because they are desperate, and most likely not very well off. So they're already in the red when they appear for the job they are not qualified for. Some do this because they think that the job market is skewed against them, and might also have the sentiments that these 'seats' within the companies are reserved for 'rich people' or the 'upper castes', when that's h…

> They pay a non-decent amounts to these test takers, because they are desperate

And because the consequences are low. Anticipated shame [1] is an observed determinant in cheating frequency.

> does no one any good

It deters cheating. This does the honest test takers, e.g. those without the resources to pay "a non-decent amount" to cheat, a favor. It does employers, by being able to better trust exam results, a favor. And as a result, it does the entire economy a favor.

[1] https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/46025357/bf0...

Re: Scammers gaming India’s overcrowded job market

#40

Post by jimmywanger » Tue, Jan 02, 2018, 4:15 PM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #5

ajeet_dhaliwal wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It needs people to take a stand and I think that's what's lacking. Often the alternative is not starvation so desperation isn't always an excuse. Look, if everyone around you is a cynic, if everyone around you is saying you're a dummy for being an honest person, if everyone around you is saying 'this is the way things work around here', you need to be brave AND honest to push back against that. Most humans (anywhere)…

It is worse, consider officialdom in China where any highish official can be brought down for corruption at anytime. So if you are clean, you won’t get promoted, because your higher ups and peers can’t control you with that axe over your head. So ya, you can take a stand, but you aren’t going to go far enough in your career for the stand to make much of a difference, cynicism or not.

Whereas if you can't be brought down for corruption, you will get promoted because you can pay your way off?

China's policy is fairly sane. Nobody except for the inner circle of the party can take anything for granted. If you bribe somebody for advancement, if caught, both you and the person you bribe get brought down and punished. Probably a jail sentence, confiscation of any property that you might possibly have gotten through dishonest means, and in severe enough cases, death.