🔮 The Illusionists: How Job Candidates Cheat on Interviews

Since remote work spread worldwide, hiring fraud has become a hot topic in the tech industry. Some people have reached real heights in the art of deception (yes, for some it is easier to become Harry Houdini of the Internet age than to learn Python!).

Here are some common schemes to cheat on interviews.

🧙 The Stand-In

Say, a candidate is hired for a remote position in a company. They successfully pass the interviews, do great on the live coding, and you make an offer.

The candidate starts working but doesn’t even know the basics. You think: “What’s going on?” What’s going on is that someone else took the interview for them, says NEWHR founder Kira Kuzmenko.

The employer may not notice the deception. For example, in a large company, different people are responsible for hiring, and the candidate goes to a different team. Or because the hiring managers don’t remember the candidate’s face (yes, sometimes it happens!).

🧙 The Prompter

The same person who passed the interview is hired. But during the interview itself, someone else speaks for the candidate. And the applicant simply moves their lips to the prompter’s speech. Some job seekers rehearse the interview many times to do the trick well.

Recruiters say that it is only after the 40th minute that candidates start to get tired, and the recruiter may notice something weird going on. After the interview, recruiters can review video interviews in search of such desynchronization, a large international company employee told Kira.

🧙 The Reader

Candidates quickly Google or ask ChatGPT — and give these answers in interviews. You ask the candidate to write complex code. Suddenly the internet connection drops. When it recovers, the entire code is already written. A miracle!

It seems that this trend will stay with us for some time, given the crazy competition for tech jobs (and it is hardly possible to get all job interviews back to the office). Therefore, it is exciting to look at how companies prevent cheating by candidates.

Have you encountered similar cases? Are you doing anything to counteract this? Please, share with us in the comments.

💙 NEWHR Recruiting can help you to hire the best talent in tech. Just leave a request on our website or email us at contact@new.hr