Side note to the remote founders/employers out there: Have you been plagued by applicant fraud? We've found for all of our remote engineering roles, we get 100's of amazing applicants who are all fake (clearly not actually in the US) once you get them on a screening call. They're often reading from a script, broken english, and say strange things like they're born and raised in Texas, yet can't speak fluent English o…
We started scheduling video chats with the candidates clearly using ChatGPT with our virtual recruiter, and they all got on the call and began reading scripts, and could not answer more unique phone screen questions like: What engineering principle is important to you?
It’s the most frustrating thing, taking up so much of our time and taking time away from strong engineers who deserve our time.
I heard a good podcast about this, https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/133/
We’re testing a solution for this to keep our own product operating fast and delivering amazing candidates.
We’re also keeping a list of red flags:
- LinkedIn profile was created in the last year
- GitHub link has a generic identity, 0-2 followers, very little activity
- Candidate will say yes to a phone screen immediately, literally right now
- Or candidate will ask if the meeting is a technical screen
- Candidate will go quiet if you ask them if they are available to fly to HQ to meet the team for their final interview
- Job history includes large, non-tech enterprises where employment would be hard to confirm; think CVS, The Home Depot, Best Buy, etc
- LinkedIn About Statement is written in the third person
- LinkedIn profile uses generic language like “cutting edge technologies”
- Profile photos may be avatars, or look like stock photos
None of these things individually can indicate a fake applicant, but taken all together with language used with our virtual recruiter we’ve gotten good at identifying the fakes. We’re still doing a lot of tests to prevent discrimination on our part.
If anyone wants to chat, my CoFounder and I have become obsessed with solving this.