Remote work definitely has many perks, such as flexible hours, a productive team, and reduced costs. Recruitment is also much easier and faster in remote settings than doing in-person interviews.
It also expands the "gene pool" as candidates can live anywhere, outside of commuting range. But, not seeing a candidate in person for interviews has made it easy for candidates to manipulate their identity or enhance their experience.
This has increased the risk of cheating and has made it very easy for candidates to conduct fraud and secure a job. Advanced technologies are also acting as a catalyst to invent new techniques for candidates to clear interview rounds.
How do candidates manage to conduct fraud during the interview?
Candidate fraud can take many forms:
- Candidates fake their entire resume and expertise and claim credentials and skills that they don't have.
- A third person who is better skilled gets interviewed on their behalf
- Someone else (usually in another room or off-screen) will answer the questions while the candidate mimics via lip-syncing or a headset.
- Plagiarize interview screening responses, resumes, or employment tests.
- Uses external help with virtual access, a remote desktop, or by searching Google for answers.
- Submits interview questions to ChatGPT or some other generative AI tool for aid.
The remote recruitment process might be challenging, but we can look out for and be aware of some indications that a candidate might be cheating in their interview. But also keep in mind that most of the candidates may be trustworthy, but looking for these signs is just to ensure you don’t hire someone who may not be a right fit for your job role.
Some red flags to be aware of while conducting the interview
- If there are two cursors while the candidate is taking a test.
- Body language–sweating, nervousness, coughing, throat-clearing, or frequently looking away.
- Suspicious background noises.
- Suspicious lighting–they may be hiding something or someone.
- Echoing voices.
- Delayed answers to questions.
- Eye, hand, shoulder, and cursor movements are not in sync.
Can candidate fraud be prevented?
The simple way to prevent fraud would be to interview candidates in person, but this may not always be feasible due to the rise in remote work hence, there are a few ways to prevent candidate fraud digitally.
- A must-have video prescreening round
- Ask for a detailed technical explanation for each question
- An online proctoring system that can monitor their tabs or keeps an eye on the full screen
- Let the candidate know you have an anti-cheating measure in place
- Shuffle the questions so that no two candidates are asked the same questions
- Have a time or word limit for answers
Despite taking all these measures candidates can still find a way to cheat in the interview. We at FloCareer have developed a technology where every interview taken undergoes a fraud detection tool that enables our customers to gain peace of mind with voice recognition-based candidate authentication
FloCareer Interview Platform and Fraud Detection
At FloCareer we have developed an Interview platform that can detect any fraudulent candidate with the help of voice biometrics. We have conducted an average of over 130,000 interviews in six months across sectors and derived some insights and have seen over 14% of candidates committing job fraud.
- Out of the total job frauds, 80% were guilty of lip-syncing, where the interviewee pretended to answer questions in a third person’s voice.
- 8% of the candidates chose to take help from a third person who prompted from behind the screen
- 12% for the online search, system tools, etc
These frauds call for a voice biometric base. Just like one's DNA is matched with hair samples, two voices are compared, before and after the interview. That’s exactly what we have implemented on our platform. When the voice science doesn't match, an alert is triggered.
We have seen that a majority of CVs that do not qualify for subsequent stages are those with a typical template from CV-builder websites, and CVs that list all possible skills.
When people try to oversell themselves and highlight all skills, irrespective of whether they know them or not, they sure do pass the filtering stage but fail to advance to the real test when those skills are put to use.
Interviews in IT companies mainly focus on skills such as Data Science, DevOps, Cloud & Cloud Security. Besides, there have been over 100 percent growth in demand for emerging skills such as AI/ML, Android Hardware, very large-scale integration (VLSI), Oracle Cloud, Unity etc. Apart from technical skill requirements, companies present candidates with scenario-based questions which are mostly around a present business problem.
This is in 98 percent of the cases. Instead of Googling and searching for standard answers, the best way of approaching such questions is to understand the problem and solve them on your own because companies look for candidates who are ready to attempt the challenge with original solutions.
