Fake Job Candidates?

Saw this a number of times at my last job.

Things we encountered:

- candidates that were clearly talking to someone between getting asked a question and answering

- entirely different person interviewing than showed up to the job

- one person on the coderpad, another person on camera (and hiding this fact)

A surprising amount of comments trashing companies for trying to protect themselves from fraudulent candidates —- reality check required. If the person who interviews and the person who shows up for the job are different, companies are well within their right to terminate that employment. The point of the interview is to see if that person should be hired. If you’re unhappy about this, you’re probably in on the scam.

The root of this problem is that technically speaking, most people doing recruiting don't know their head from their ass when it comes to technology. I don't mean having actual programming experience, I just mean having enough basic high-level understanding to have a little intelligent conversation with somebody. This lack of knowledge means that the only method most recruiters have to try and rank people is asking the pointless "How many years of experience do you have with X technology?" questions that are easy to just totally bullshit your way through.

A good technical recruiter ought to be able to have a 5-10 minute conversation with a job-seeker about stuff they can't easily bullshit: going into depth on a past project or asking them a system design question in a particular domain and having enough sense to ask a good followup question or 2 and knowing if their answers are anywhere near reasonable.

> recently we dismissed developer after discovering he was working (also full time) at another company (we coordinated termination on both sides - I'm not even sure if it made him without work or just removed 2 out of N jobs)

Was the person doing their job or not? I can understand firing somebody if he was not performing, and I can almost understand firing somebody if they have more than one job and work with some sensitive/confidential information and might be a risk in some fashion with 2 jobs in a similar industry, but it seems pretty mean-spirited to go after both jobs.

Honestly, I'd be more inclined to fire a manager who couldn't tell their employee wasn't working 1 job than the employee who was industrious enough to perform at 2.

I agree all those other things are annoying/fraudulent, but...

> recently we dismissed developer after discovering he was working (also full time) at another company (we coordinated termination on both sides - I'm not even sure if it made him without work or just removed 2 out of N jobs)

I don't think I've ever heard a reasonable objection to this, assuming 1. the person's second job is not with a competitor, 2. they are not sharing confidential information (keep both jobs air gapped and separate) and 3. the person is performing up to expectations at both jobs.

We applaud low income service workers who bust their butts working multiple jobs (often 40 hours each) to make ends meet, but when it comes to office workers getting a second job, that's taboo. Doesn't make sense.

I know someone who's getting a 20% cut for any US-only remote jobs he secures for an offshore team of developers who otherwise can't get such jobs.

All he does is interview and get gigs for these people he doesn't even know, they do all the work.

Probably something you're experiencing the other side of?

AIUI they found him on LinkedIn just based on his skills overlapping theirs while being in the US, no prior connection - it's likely they didn't stop at him. From his POV it's nearly free money while getting tons of interview practice.

Very aggressive screening at the outset, with all the submissions in an easy to read list.

At my last job, we would ignore every single submission that didn't have a cover letter. If the cover letter has even the slightest red flag; for example if it doesn't mention anything specific about the company, then onto the next one. The next step would be an equally aggressive phone screen.

It's ruthless and you might miss out on some great candidates, but the time wasted by interviewing the wrong people is a killer.

"we coordinated termination on both sides"

It's one thing to ask if they currently work there and provide the same info, but coordinating to terminate them from both companies seems like an antitrust issue.

I have a suspicion an engineer/developer I worked with was secretly working two or more full time jobs. I didn't mention it to our boss as I had no evidence - only a gut feeling. He was eventually let go anyway after being given far too many second chances to produce any sort of output. He had graduated college and started work just a couple months before everyone went to work from home due to the pandemic, so it was always ambiguous whether he failed to adjust, had crippling social anxiety, or was actually just sandbagging us & doing other things with his time.

A couple reasons I thought this was: weird timing of IM replies and un/availability, repeatedly getting caught and warned against using his personal laptop instead of his issued laptop for work (when we were in the office), an impression everything was a game to him, and the aforementioned lack of any output. After he got fired he changed his FB profile to say he worked at a different company in the same general discipline as we do, which could have innocent explanation he was just quickly hired, but maybe that was his other job or one of them.

Also weirdly his social media story posts mostly consist(ed) of trading app screenshots showing "line go up" equity gains in 4x leveraged ETFs even during weeks I know the market was doing poorly. Again just a gut feeling but my spidey sense is these app screenshots might be recruitment bait for some kind of scam.

yeah we had people join with different person interviewing for them. We now have a policy to take a screenshot of person's face during interview and compare them to person who joins. We've busted a bunch but a whole lot have slipped through the cracks.

> How do you work with people without being an asshole to ensure they also play fair?

Too late.

> * recently we dismissed developer after discovering he was working (also full time) at another company (we coordinated termination on both sides - I'm not even sure if it made him without work or just removed 2 out of N jobs)

You should expect a lawsuit for this. If you give me his contact, I know a few good lawyers.

Really, who cares? If they're getting their job done, who are you to tell another man what he can do with his body?

Reminds me of this insane story from Ask A Manager:

https://www.askamanager.org/2022/01/the-new-hire-who-showed-...

I figured it had to be rare - how many people are brave enough to pull that off? Can't believe this is something people running into more.

I don't know if this is good news or bad for someone like me that's actively looking and not having much luck. Disappointing that fake people can get further.

We hired someone once who was only superficially competent in a niche technology that we didn't understand well. This person had a contact with someone who was competent and was coaching them. It took us a while to figure out what was happening. It was a huge PITA because they had to wait for their contact to be available to get anything done.

A lot of this typically stems from Indian recruiters who harvest peoples' resumes. Sorry to sound harsh, but all the WITCH companies do this and are based in India [1]

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27571707

I think if you stop offering remote positions you'll get rid of 100% of these, just saying.

Of the ones you interviewed, they managed to pass the interview didn't they? What's wrong then? Were they not making an effort to perform? Having a fake github doesn't matter if they perform well imo.

> we coordinated termination on both sides

Outside of the US that would be very risky. You’d be opening yourself up to litigation.

this is what happens when you gameify the interview process.

i admire those people who can get away with this because it makes an absurdity of the rotten system.

interesting that it is only recent.

Ironically, in my last job hunt I encountered several fake jobs/companies

I learned to filter out indian hiring people because 100% of them started a conversation demanding “updated resume”. I noticed even if I said the one I submitted was most recent they would still demand I send another. Clearly trying to get more data from me.

Other than that we’re several positions at companies which couldn’t be validated, interviewers who were so clueless they had to be faking, and numerous other issues.

And of course that’s after already weeding out all the bot generated job postings.

Have you tried paying them? One guy was so desparate for cash he apparently needed a second job.