Remote work has transformed the
Glider AI, a company dedicated to digital hiring solutions for employers, reported a 92% jump in candidate fraud since the start of the pandemic. The company found that candidate fraud was most common in early to mid-career positions, in high-paying remote tech roles and in locations with fewer high-paying opportunities, such as Latin America and the Asia-Pacific regions, as well as in the outskirts of U.S. cities.
And as technology has evolved, so has the way candidates cheat, says Satish Kumar, founder and CEO of Glider AI.
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"Candidate fraud goes beyond embellishing experiences during an interview or on a resume," he says. "It's actually quite sophisticated in a virtual work environment. We have seen everything from deep fakes to lip-syncing."
A deep fake, which is a video of a person whose face or body has been digitally altered so they appear as someone else, is one example of impersonation Kumar has seen employers encounter in remote interviews. But other times, candidates have come to interviews as one person and have gone so far as to show up to the first day of the job as an entirely different individual. Still, the most common way candidates cheat is by using Google and other devices while taking a skills test.
And while employers may feel helpless to control what a candidate does from the comfort of their home, Kumar underlines how far transparency and clear guidelines can go in preventing fraud.
"From a Glider perspective, a deliberate attempt to cheat is when a code of conduct has been clearly agreed to and [broken]," says Kumar. "Ultimately, it's important to identify whether or not the fraud was intentional."
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For example, employers may have trouble identifying genuine fraud if they never made it clear that using external resources on a test is not allowed. Kumar advises employers to first have communicated rules in place for each step of their hiring process — as well as a bit of grace for the misunderstandings that may come. After all, virtual interviews are relatively new and do not come with universally recognized parameters.
"If you're not being observed, your behaviors may be very different than when you are in front of people," says Kumar. "It's in the candidate's best interest, as well as Glider's and our customer's, to provide gentle reminders when a non-permitted action is taken. Allow a candidate to explain why they did what they did."
For Kumar, the golden rule is to treat remote interviews just like one would treat an in-person interview. But as employers find themselves opening up the candidate pools to a larger demographic of candidates, making accommodations for factors like geography or various types of disabilities may naturally come into play. It's vital that companies define what a '"fair" hiring process looks like, explains Kumar.
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For now, Kumar advises employers to consider incorporating technology solutions that screen for fraudulent activity and testing platforms that were built with digital cheating in mind. While employers can manually observe the hiring process, going as far as asking candidates to stand up and walk around to prove they are real during an interview, Kumar notes that this may end up painting companies negatively and leave more room for unconscious bias to come into play.
The hiring process should still be centered on empowering candidates with the tools to do their best, rather than a process centered on suspicion.
"I believe most candidates want to do a good job and do everything possible to land their dream job," says Kumar. "Companies just have to look at fraud more proactively than reactively."
