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The new hire who showed up is not the same person we interviewed

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Re: The new hire who showed up is not the same person we interviewed

#51

Post by kingcharles »

Here's a funny one:

I worked at a financial company as a web developer. A co-developer sat at the desk opposite, with the wall behind him. He would sit there playing games on his phone all day. ALL DAY. Yet, his work got done, but it was the barest minimum and really poor code.

So, one day I say "Tomas, I never see you write any code. Yet, your work is always done."

"Oh!", he says with a grin, "I've outsourced my entire job to my friend back in the Czech Republic. I pay him about 30% of what I earn and he writes all my code and sends it back."

Re: The new hire who showed up is not the same person we interviewed

#52

Post by alx__ »

defen wrote: post #11

While I don't doubt this sort of thing happens, the following line leads me to believe that this is an exercise in creative writing by someone: > In the meantime, legal approved security to put a trace on John’s computer to review if there have been outside messages or if his work is being completed with outside help or on a different computer altogether.

I think it's weird wording from legal. My guess is that the work laptop has security software preinstalled that routes traffic through a proxy that they can see, even encrypted traffic. So they're just collecting John's traffic for analysis

Re: The new hire who showed up is not the same person we interviewed

#53

Post by endisneigh »

advisedwang wrote: post #34
endisneigh wrote: post #15

Record the interviews. Problem solved.

I've seen legal depts fight against this. They're worried the recording will capture some question or comment that could be evidence of discrimination. (e.g. someone asks "Did you have a good Christmas?" and is later accused of discriminating against non-Christians)

it's unnecessary to record the audio to solve the problem

Re: The new hire who showed up is not the same person we interviewed

#54

Post by jawns »

Earlier this year, I was asked to interview a man who was procured through a remote-staffing firm. He was based in Southeast Asia, and on his resume it looked like he met all of the competencies we needed -- including English proficiency.

But on the call, I noticed that whenever I asked him a question, he would turn off his camera, pause for 10-20 seconds, answer the question, then turn his video back on.

Eventually, I cut the call short and messaged the guy from the remote-staffing firm who had set up the interview to ask about this bizarre behavior.

An investigation determined that the man was using a translator and really didn't speak any English whatsoever.

I have no idea how he expected to be able to do the job if he had been hired, but I guess he thought it was worth a shot.

Re: The new hire who showed up is not the same person we interviewed

#55

Post by giantg2 »

"John is talking extensively about working in a garage because his three children and wife are home. In the interview, he made references to being single and was visibly in an indoor desk area."

If John is reading, you now have documentation that marital status has played a part in the decision process (even if not the sole issue) should they decide to let you go.

Re: The new hire who showed up is not the same person we interviewed

#56

Post by rootusrootus »

We had this happen, but it did not get all the way to being hired thankfully.

I got on a call to interview a candidate, and he didn't know anything. Like, hilariously unqualified, his knowledge level on software engineering was effectively zero. Fairly short call once we realized what the score was.

Immediately the recruiter calls me back (she was on the call as well) and started apologizing profusely. She said the guy on this call was definitely not the guy she screened on an earlier phone call.

Luckily we didn't get as far as hiring a fraud.

But I have to say, also, that this kind of incident is why I really love a good recruiter, and try to hold onto them if at all possible. We had one guy we worked with who had a nearly 100% success rate placing people with us. He didn't just phone screen randos, he had a pool of people that he cultivated, he interviewed them himself in depth. So when he made a recommendation, he knew it was a good fit, and he was right almost every time.

Re: The new hire who showed up is not the same person we interviewed

#57

Post by zamadatix »

defen wrote: post #11

While I don't doubt this sort of thing happens, the following line leads me to believe that this is an exercise in creative writing by someone: > In the meantime, legal approved security to put a trace on John’s computer to review if there have been outside messages or if his work is being completed with outside help or on a different computer altogether.

If you have a corporate laptop of ours I can log into the security dashboard and see the 15th command you issued in the terminal on December 12th, which processes it spawned, which files it accessed, which servers it reached out to... and this is with standard AV software. We're not even set up for worker monitoring (nor do we have interest, our mandate is on the security side not the HR side) but I could probably piece together a decently solid idea if he was pulling up outside messages or pulling in completed work from an outside system even without such additional worker monitoring tools.

Re: The new hire who showed up is not the same person we interviewed

#58

Post by ilamont »

throwawayboise wrote: post #48
hui-zheng wrote: post #39

> HR is going to send up a quick red flag and John is likely to resign claiming a poor fit rather than get caught committing or admitting fraud. Though at this point they all know John is committing fraud, they still decided only to approach this guy claiming a poor fit for his resignation. I don't know why they do that. They have discussed a lot and considered many things. I am sure there are many reasons to do so.…

If they terminate for fraud, they might be asked to prove it in some kind of wrongful termination claim, or risk being charged with libel or slander. Though the possibility might be remote, and the employer likely would prevail, the legal team and HR will not want to take any chance of having to spend time on that. They will want to take the lowest risk approach.

Do wrongful termination cases like this ever come up when obvious fraud is involved from the get-go for a remote position?

Resume fraud happens all the time with fudged degrees and job titles and positions. Usually when corporate HR finds out termination is immediate.

Re: The new hire who showed up is not the same person we interviewed

#59

Post by giantg2 »

linsomniac wrote: post #46

I once hired a guy who had no experience, but seemed like a good culture fit for our company and seemed very interested in learning. We interviewed him and made e-mail communication a large part of the interview, because it is a critical part of our business. And his communication was great! After hiring, a recurring problem we had was his e-mail to us and to customers were terrible. Bad grammar, bad spelling, uncorr…

My (professional) written communication is a strong point for me. What kind of job has mostly sending emails as the work?

Re: The new hire who showed up is not the same person we interviewed

#60

Post by mavhc »

thrower123 wrote: post #47
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #40

I've been a hiring manager for remote positions for a long time. If your recruiting channels are good, most of your candidates are going to be honest and good intentioned. But interview enough people, and you'll start encountering people trying to abuse remote work. They're not interested in contributing to your company. They're only interested in collecting paychecks while they do as little work as possible for as l…

> Always makes me wonder how many dysfunctional companies are out there letting deadbeat remote employees collect paychecks and do as little work as possible because nobody cares enough to press the issue. I can't imagine it's much worse than it was in the before-times. Wally has always been able to skate along with a certain amount of meeting-attending.

If you can't tell whether your employees are working, why do you even have employees? Imagine how much money you'll save.
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