Ask HN: Fake Job Candidates?
We've seen:
* fake github accounts
* ...with stolen, bot generated content that looks like their contributions
* candidates who manage to not remember their own name/getting it wrong/joining zoom with wrong name
* we hear from colleagues guy who shows up on Monday for work doesn't look like the guy who was interviewed
* 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)
How do you deal with this spam?
Are you using some services to filter this out?
Is ie. github interested in fighting those spam constellations of fake accounts?
How do you work with people without being an asshole to ensure they also play fair?
76 comments
[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 12.2 ms ] threadAt 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.
It's funny because I automatically drop a job prospect if they mention cover letter. If they request it right in the job ad and the job description is interesting, I send my updated CV and my contacts, but leave out anything resembling a cover letter.
If you care about getting to know me, set up a meeting. I already sent you a doc with what I did and where I did it. I'm not going to waste significant amounts of time on a document that I'm not even sure anyone will read. If your rationale is that it saves up your time, well it wastes mine, and mine is more valuable.
And finally, anyone can write anything about anything in a cover letter. It boggles the mind why anyone would think this sort of document has a critical role in figuring out anyone is a decent hire.
It's interesting though that there are such large differences in approaches out there.
> anyone can write anything about anything in a cover letter.
I could say the same thing about a CV.
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.
Companies have to do something to fight this kind of fraud
never had an interviewee decline to be on video call for an interview. Are you trolling ?
Would you mind sharing rough figures and %s? Just curious on what sort of scale and environment would attract/hire a bunch of impostors.
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.
I'm under the impression that most job ads out there are actually fake job ads, or ads from companies who have no job and/or no immediate plan to offer one to any candidate. We have HR types trawling candidates for their CVs to build up impressive-looking portfolios to showcase as who they have in store for candidates, and use that to catch potential customers.
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.
Last time I checked as an American I did not have a right to all German or England jobs..
Remote jobs that specify a country always seem to be US. Everywhere else has a timezone range where you're expected to work. So if as an American you'd like to work in remote GMT+/-3, you go for it.
The solution was to make me a contractor and it more or less worked out in the end.
The point is, hiring remote workers can have all sorts of legal and financial hurdles, even when the remote workers are in the same country. Larger companies often have global employees and are used to and capable of handling these issues but smaller companies may not be so well equipped.
i admire those people who can get away with this because it makes an absurdity of the rotten system.
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.
Outside of the US that would be very risky. You’d be opening yourself up to litigation.
You’d have to go to court.
> 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.
> 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.
Hit the nail on the head!
My employment contract has right on there that all outside employment will be disclosed. And because I pay salary, I am expecting that all of your efforts will go towards my job.
Try to lie and hold two jobs? I will 100% fire you, and get the other place to fire you. In fact I have done this once myself as well.
Why? Most (even salaried) full-time contracts require something like 38-40 hours per week. So long as what your staff are doing outside of those hours is not representing the company in a bad light, it should not be your concern. Trying to control what your staff do in their own time is toxic.
You can choose to hire double dippers then, when you start your own business. I am sure you will get a lot of quality work.
I really don’t think this view is out of the ordinary in the US. How many YV startups would allow someone to work for salary at a second job, if being paid a salary? I have seen many employment agreements, and it’s not very common.
It’s one extreme to own someone’s work output outside of work hours. It’s another to allow someone to collect two salaries.
And yes, I do busk in lieu of taking lunch sometimes.
If you keep barely completing fraction of your work, say 5% what you'd normally expect, it's a problem and looking at contract agreement where you agreed to work certain amount of hours for exchange of salary - that is not full-filled starts to matter.
Same way from PoV of employee it would not be fair if company would start to wire you fraction of agreed salary because they're also working with other developers at the same time and you just have to deal with it.
It only works as long as it's a niche behavior, because if not the system will adjust and it'll inflate the supply of labor
You can say you'd like to perform work for two different companies and negotiate your working hours and conditions with both.
- had to pick up mom from airport
- had doctor's appointment
- electricity was cut off the building
- mom is out of medicines
- traveling back to my hometown
- still at airport going back home
- checkup with my mom
- at hospital
- my mom is getting gallstones removed (she was fine after operation!)
- have dental appointment
- i have follow up checkup
- have problems peeing for last days, decided to check at it at hospital
- wasn't able to check in yesterday sorry
- not feeling good today
- can't attend
- driving back from pharmacy
- had some headache this morning
- can't join accompanying my mom for her monthly checkup
- can't attend bought some meds for mom and got stuck in traffic going home
- power interruption in my area
- picking up my sister at the airport
- had fever
- still not feeling well hopefully my tonsils will heal tomorrow
- internet today is on/off in my area maybe due to weather
- my internet is off restarting my router
- i'm on m1
- dropping my brother at airport
- having connection issues
- there was line cut off near our area
- having issues due to upgrade in our area
- currently travelling to my province
- heavy traffic on friday
- can't join will be driving my brother to the airport and there can be traffic
- having some connection issues atm
- sorry can't attend today
- having some connection issues
- having issues connecting
- may be late sorry (not joining)
...
I assume that's a mac, can't blame the poor fella :D
If at your company, "duration of time someone's butt is in their seat" is a meaningful business measurement, then by all means, insist your employees spend the required amount of time in their chair. Most full-time jobs I've had did not specify hours with such rigidity, and the best ones were very flexible about other things we need to do during the day (even, gasp, during business hours). Your business might not be willing to provide such flexibility. Definitely ask candidates about side projects and other jobs during the interview process and make your policy clear so they know it's important. Disclosure goes both ways.
I would find it distasteful if I got fired (and then the firer reached out to another, unrelated party to continue the damage), over something that was glossed over (or never asked about) during the interview, and simply written somewhere on page 13 of the employment agreement.
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.
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 understand the ostensible justification, but is that the real one?
Let's say that an employee does all of the work asked of them at a 100K salary and performs well, and still manages to hold down another n jobs.
What's the core issue here?
It feels like the real issue is that a boss is feeling a little butthurt that they didn't get to extract ($100K * n) production out of a $100K salary.
If somebody should be feeling wronged here, it's the person who is capable of doing ($100K * n) work getting paid $100K even though he's n times more productive than his peers who might be getting paid as much or even more than him.
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.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27571707
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?
Apparently, both companies cared. Cared deeply. Hence the coordinated firing.
> If they're getting their job done, who are you to tell another man what he can do with his body?
Quite literally, employment contracts stipulate Basic requirements such as working hours and availability.
If an employee says he's pulling 40h/week but he's actually pulling around 20h/week, if that, then the question of fraud is up.
If this was supposed to be a non-issue, why go through so much trouble to hide it?
Seems like collusion, wage suppression, interference with business and interference with employment. I hope this guy sues the crap out of OP's company.
> If an employee says he's pulling 40h/week but he's actually pulling around 20h/week, if that, then the question of fraud is up.
If an employee is getting 40 hours of work done per week, then I don't see the problem.
> If this was supposed to be a non-issue, why go through so much trouble to hide it?
Because it's none of their business.
It's as much collusion as it would be if two victims of fraud agreed to go together to the police to press charges.
> If an employee is getting 40 hours of work done per week, then I don't see the problem.
You're not.
> Because it's none of their business.
What they put in the contract is unequivocally their business, don't you think?
I'm the most productive engineer on both of my teams and have been for the 4 years I've been working at both companies. I don't tell them. Nor do I tell them about my sexual proclivities, my rental income, my residuals on several albums I produced nor my stock, crypto and portfolio income. I manage all of that a little bit of "company time", whatever that means.
> What they put in the contract is unequivocally their business, don't you think?
No. We are forced to sign a ton of unfair contracts just for the privilege of working our asses off to make other people rich.
I spent 20 years having 2 jobs. Obviously, full disclosed to the employer. I was in the Marine reserves. Employers don't like sharing, even if it's for the good of the country.
Working full time means working full time, not fraction of a time maybe while I also work for N other companies.
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.