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Noticing You're Confused

arr.am

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Re: Noticing You're Confused

#61

Post by rjkennedy98 »

I don't think this is as rare as you might imagine. When I started doing engineering interviews at our last company I was startled about how obsessive they were about doing video interviews because I hadn't ever remember doing them in previous jobs. If video resolution was bad they would simply cut the interview and ask to reschedule.

When I asked why they did this, to my surprise they said they had been scammed by people who did phone interviews well, and in the on site interviews were completely incapable of answering the same questions at all. They we sure they had been catfished by multiple recruits.

Re: Noticing You're Confused

#62

Post by dpiers »

The interesting thing about white collar fraud is that it rarely goes reported, and there are little repercussions unless it does. Companies care less about protecting other companies from harm than the risk of exposing themselves to claims of libel or slander by the accused. It's also not great press if people find out you hired a con-artist or allowed someone to steal from you because of your poor internal controls. A study in Norway found that 96% of cases of corporate fraud were not reported to authorities.[1] The financial and reputational costs of a company pursuing prosecution outweigh the benefits, and it's usually better to keep things quiet: terminate the individual and recoup whatever losses you are able to without involving the legal system.

Even in this scenario of blatant fraud, Arram stopped short of explicitly naming the individual. ZeroCater was saved a huge hiring mistake, but 'Sam' probably went on to another company that is clueless to his scam.

This is why I always ask why someone is looking for a new opportunity/why they left their previous position. If the answer doesn't add up, I press for more info. Maybe they're just embarrassed because they were fired? People get fired all the time for reasons that don't necessarily preclude them from being valuable to me. But if they still can't come up with an answer that makes sense, I start "noticing I'm confused".

[1]: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01639625.2016.11...

Re: Noticing You're Confused

#63

Post by Ididntdothis »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #20

That is a uniquely scary story. I have only had the displeasure of hiring one person who effectively lied their way into the position. It was really obvious after they started that they had grossly overstated their skills and experience. My point of 'confusion' was that their reference checks were people who had worked with them, liked them but not for very long because they were leaving when that person joined, Etc.…

We once hired a contractor through a phone interview which went pretty well. Then he started working and I noticed that all his work always was done the next morning. It was almost impossible to have a conversation with him about coding. He seemed to have no clue about the most basic things but when you described what you wanted it was done the next day. We started to suspect that the interview was done with another person and that his work was also done by something else. To verify I had him sit next to me and make a simple change. He sat there and clicked around the whole day but got nothing done. But, surprise, it was done the next day. Unfortunately his ghost writer wasn’t that great either or maybe we would have kept him ;)

Re: Noticing You're Confused

#64

Post by arram »

dnh44 wrote: post #45
kstenerud wrote: post #13

Hang on... I'm confused here: > Not only had he lied about his experience, he’d set up fake identities complete with LinkedIn profiles with hundreds of connections, then gotten people who were complicit in his lie to pretend to be those people on the phone. > I sat down and tried to trace the source of my confusion. Sam didn’t have a LinkedIn profile, and when I asked him why he said he turned it off because he got t…

I don’t think this is a totally original story, I’ve read this on slashdot a few times in various incarnations. I think the purpose of this retelling is to make an illustrated point about his theme of feeling confused.

Author here. I'm afraid this did actually happen to me personally.

A few people have mentioned a slashdot story, I've never seen it but would love to if anyone who read it could link to it. It shouldn't be too hard to believe that there could be more than one elaborate case of resume fraud.

Re: Noticing You're Confused

#65

Post by Ididntdothis »

NhanH wrote: post #12

Imagine if you read the autobiography of a big name and they told a story about how they hack the interviewing process of X company, getting they first big break which resulted in all the big successes afterward. How much admiration would he get for that, a #1 HN story even. I do get confused reading this story, at least I wish it continue on for a bit afterward (how was his reaction, other people's reaction. Did you…

History is written by winners. If you fake your way into something and succeed you are a cool hustler. If you fail you are a fraud. If you run up credit card debt to keep your company going and succeed you show persistence. If you fail you are an irresponsible a...hole.

Re: Noticing You're Confused

#67

Post by bsder »

wink wrote: post #49
ChuckMcM wrote: post #20

That is a uniquely scary story. I have only had the displeasure of hiring one person who effectively lied their way into the position. It was really obvious after they started that they had grossly overstated their skills and experience. My point of 'confusion' was that their reference checks were people who had worked with them, liked them but not for very long because they were leaving when that person joined, Etc.…

I remember we also did this "starter project" thing and one our new hires (who had made a really good impression in the interviews) was told to create a simple web interface for something (one of those "we should really fix this papercut") together with another hire on the frontend. He was kinda furious that he was demoted to doing lowly web development in his first week (in order to get to know our infrastructure, i…

> He was kinda furious that he was demoted to doing lowly web development in his first week

My reaction to this depends upon what you told him when you hired him.

If you hired him to do front end development, then, yeah, he's over the line.

If you tell someone that they're going to be working with the chief architect on figuring out the networking substructure and then throw him in with the web monkeys with no advance warning, they have a right to be concerned.

It also depends upon the size of the company. At a big company, I would give zero slack on this--this kind of shenanigan is indicative of a political battle and you need to hold your ground.

At a startup, I'm going to cut you slack if I see everybody is busy and you say "Look, we need you move this pile of crap. Sorry. Someone has to do it, and everyone else is busy. Interesting thing X is coming down the pipe, but right now you are two idle hands. Grab a shovel."

Re: Noticing You're Confused

#68

Post by rainyMammoth »

And yet the sad conclusion is that even though that hire lied on his resume he might very well be an excellent match for that job given he passed the interviews and everyone seemed to love him.

If I was the CEO (author of the blog) I would ask myself why I put so many artificial barriers. Why does it matter that he got a similar position for the job if he was going to be good at it anyways?

I'm getting mad at all of those artificial gatekeepers that like to also play victim because "there are not enough talents out there".

Yes that guy lied on his resume and therefore should not be hired (and he should be shamed). But this CEO should also realize that his artificial gate-keeping is the reason why people feel the need to lie.

Re: Noticing You're Confused

#69

Post by Austhou »

rainyMammoth wrote: post #68

And yet the sad conclusion is that even though that hire lied on his resume he might very well be an excellent match for that job given he passed the interviews and everyone seemed to love him. If I was the CEO (author of the blog) I would ask myself why I put so many artificial barriers. Why does it matter that he got a similar position for the job if he was going to be good at it anyways? I'm getting mad at all of…

Because it's a VP position and not an entry level job?

Re: Noticing You're Confused

#70

Post by zodiac »

rainyMammoth wrote: post #68

And yet the sad conclusion is that even though that hire lied on his resume he might very well be an excellent match for that job given he passed the interviews and everyone seemed to love him. If I was the CEO (author of the blog) I would ask myself why I put so many artificial barriers. Why does it matter that he got a similar position for the job if he was going to be good at it anyways? I'm getting mad at all of…

It's true that he passed the interviews and everyone seemed to love him, but would you hire someone who lied to the extent that he did?
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