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

I Got Catfished by a Candidate

saastr.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 662 posts

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#171

Post by wolco »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #120
deedubaya wrote: post #7

Maybe the author should evaluate _why_ they got catfished. Recruiting processes are so convoluted and hard to break through, that someone who apparently otherwise would have been a great candidate, had to lie to get an interview. Was a good candidate really only one that had worked at the managers previous employer? How many great candidates are companies missing out on because of arbitrary filters?

>someone who apparently otherwise would have been a great candidate Dishonesty is an intolerable trait. This person clearly wasn't a great candidate. Lying at work is just about the only thing I'll always fire somebody for.

The cia would not welcome you.

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#172

Post by AmericanChopper »

ironjunkie wrote: post #138
AmericanChopper wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>someone who apparently otherwise would have been a great candidate Dishonesty is an intolerable trait. This person clearly wasn't a great candidate. Lying at work is just about the only thing I'll always fire somebody for.

Everyone is lying at work to some degree. That's what office politics is all about, even though it is not straight lying. How many times did my managers not "lie" to me by telling me that it is impossible for the company to give a raise or anything as a policy right now, while my colleague gets one one week later (sharing salary information is beautiful!)

This is really a reductio ad absurdum. But if you think your boss is dishonest with you, then go find a new boss. Dishonesty instantly destroys trust, and unless it’s about something entirely trivial, it’s almost impossible to restore it.

A trustless workplace cannot be functional. You can point to examples of workplaces that are dysfunctional if you like, but it’s something I refuse to contribute to, or even tolerate. I don’t feel an ounce of remorse for any person I’ve fired for dishonesty, and it’s a practice I’ll continue with.

Perhaps other employers are more tolerant of it than I am, but all people hate being lied to. Some people do use lies to get ahead, but it comes at the expense of integrity, and youre equally capable of getting ahead with honesty and integrity (qualities that most people like, unsurprisingly).

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#174

Post by deviationblue »

navs wrote: post #86

sigh > Rule #2: Take a long hard look at a candidate’s social profiles. Is not having a LinkedIn account going to come back to bite me, even when applying for dev roles? I've had even senior devs at popular local dev shops say LinkedIn is a "necessary evil" because it: 1. is easy to grep 2. you can find whether a candidate has similar connections to you 3. recommendations I get New Zealand is small and the social gra…

Similarly, rule #4: Google candidate. What happens if candidate doesn't have Google presence? Or if there are other people with the same name as the candidate who have weird websites or videos posted somewhere. Give me a break, let's not get paranoid about hiring. You can always let someone go.

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#175

Post by johnbatch »

crescentfresh wrote: post #33

The place I'm at now forbids employees from being references for past employees (or current employees discreetly seeking other employment). Is this normal? It would have prevented "Jim" or anyone else at ACME Corp from being a reference to catfish-er, so requests for a reference from the company would have been denied right off the bat. That would have made it harder to spot the fake.

Most of the large Fortune 500 companies use https://www.theworknumber.com for this. It’s owned by Equifax and they do Income and Employment verifications. And salary history was compromised because of this. [0]

[0] https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/10/equifax-breach-fallout-y...

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#176

Post by keithnz »

maxxxxx wrote: post #78

I don't think we should use such stories as a reason to make the hiring process even more paranoid. In general people are pretty honest so I wouldn't like to see them having to jump through even more hoops because of a few fraudsters. Advice number 1 is probably best : "Trust your gut". If something doesn't make sense it's worth clearing that up.

problem is there's two things going on here with "trusting your gut"

his gut was actually mainly telling him the person was great...

but there was something fishy about their work history. Which caused a niggle.

My experience is, and I'd guess for most people who have recruited a lot, when you find someone who is good, it's obvious. So, in this case he probablly had found someone good for the job. ( depending on how they validated the persons skills )

I'd want to give the guy an opportunity to explain... The deception of having worked for a company that he never did is a pretty serious deception, not quite a minor altering of the facts, but I'd still want to know a bit more about the reason for the deception.

did it mean the candidate did it to get the opportunity to interview? and if he didn't do it he may not of got the opportunity to interview? In which cased I may be sympathetic.

Or, perhaps there was bad blood from previous employment? or, is there something more neferous going on, fraud, sexual misconduct, etc. This would be an instant no go for me.

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#177

Post by AmericanChopper »

wolco wrote: post #171
AmericanChopper wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>someone who apparently otherwise would have been a great candidate Dishonesty is an intolerable trait. This person clearly wasn't a great candidate. Lying at work is just about the only thing I'll always fire somebody for.

The cia would not welcome you.

You’re ignoring that fact that honesty is expected in some contexts and not in others. In business it’s not dishonest to withhold information from you’re competitors, or to even make a bluff in front of them. In the CIA it’s not dishonest to withhold information from your adversaries, or even manipulate them to your advantage depending on the context. Although I’m sure many CIA employees practice moral relativism to some extent.

In any case, the CIA and a normal working environment have a lot of differences, so you can’t really take ordinary workplace expectations and dismiss them because they’re not compatible with the CIA environment.

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#178

Post by hfdgiutdryg »

huebnerob wrote: post #58
hfdgiutdryg wrote: post #54

Maybe he would have been great and our best performing AE. Maybe he wouldn’t have even known how to log into Salesforce. Or, even worse, maybe he would have been dishonest about something down the line. Whatever the outcome, better to suss it out early. So, the person appeared competent and capable, and "may have been our best performing AE" but it's "better to suss it out early" by immediately rejecting him? Sounds…

Your stance is that they should have hired the guy who blatantly misrepresented himself to them? Hard disagree, even if this guy is the best that ever was, he's shown his true colors. The second it's beneficial to him, he'll lie again.

My position is that, in his own words, the applicant "may have been our best performing AE", but the solution was to reject him.

As for misrepresenting oneself, what's the actual problem? If he's got the ability to do the job, who cares if he lied to get through the Byzantine interview process? And, as I already said, employers (management) lie all the time.

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#179

Post by ironjunkie »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #172
ironjunkie wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone is lying at work to some degree. That's what office politics is all about, even though it is not straight lying. How many times did my managers not "lie" to me by telling me that it is impossible for the company to give a raise or anything as a policy right now, while my colleague gets one one week later (sharing salary information is beautiful!)

This is really a reductio ad absurdum. But if you think your boss is dishonest with you, then go find a new boss. Dishonesty instantly destroys trust, and unless it’s about something entirely trivial, it’s almost impossible to restore it. A trustless workplace cannot be functional. You can point to examples of workplaces that are dysfunctional if you like, but it’s something I refuse to contribute to, or even tolerat…

I think what you are really saying is that you will fire people for lies bigger than a specific "threshold", which I understand and agree with.

What I'm saying is that in the social work environment everyone lies to some level and it is actually widely accepted so. I googled exactly for 5 seconds and found this article to give you a couple examples:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/11652018/10-que...

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#180

Post by Kenji »

mrbill wrote: post #87

You just never know who might turn up from your past... 1999: I was a sysadmin at an ISP in Austin. One day we had a tour come through, people looking to see if they wanted to colo in our datacenter. In walks in the former CEO and most of the technical staff from the Oklahoma City-based ISP I'd started my career at and left in '96. We laughed, shook hands.. and they headhunted me away a couple months later with a 200…

Question: What is freemasonry about and why did you join it? I read up on them quite a bit but I just didn't find any good examples of actual goals and activities they are pursuing. Do Masons have a hacker mentality?
Post reply on HN