Are your candidates really who they say they are? Though we wish everyone was genuine and truthful, we’ve been in the staffing business long enough to know some people will take the phrase “fake it until you make it” to extreme levels.
Gartner now predicts that one in four candidate profiles will be fake by 2028. The rise in candidate fraud has been made possible byvideo interviewing, artificial intelligence, and social media platforms, which have lowered the difficulty bar and offered novel ways for dishonest people to fool hiring teams into giving them job opportunities.
Regardless of whether fake candidates are embellishing their skills or outright fabricating them, your organization needs to be prepared to actively filter them out of the hiring process. From our experience, there are some signals indicating when someone might not be above board about their actual skills, experiences, and connections.
Following these tips and working with the right staffing and talent solutions partner can help to screen out fake candidates, allowing you to spend your efforts identifying the best person for your job.
Spotting Resume Inconsistencies
Fake candidates aren’t afraid to cut corners and their inattention to details often shows up in their resumes. However, their mistakes are not always going to be obvious. Staying aware of common slipups can help spot people who don’t qualify for open positions.
For starters, closely inspect the numbers. How much experience does a candidate have with a particular technology, skillset, or knowledge area? If someone claims to have 12 years of experience with HashiCorp configuration language (HCL), a tool popularized with IaC practices, they’re probably lying (it’s only been around since 2016). Or if they’re a cybersecurity professional who claims 7 years of helping companies adhere to the Anti-Money Laundering Act (AMLA), they’re not being honest.
Additionally, if a fake candidate is using an AI generated resume and didn’t check the results, there might be a disparity in their numbers. Do their years of experience not add up on the job? Is their overlapping working experience almost implausible? Though not unthinkable (some people are just driven achievers), recruiters need to ask questions that validate these experiences.
A possible yellow flag is that a candidate’s resume is a little too close to your job advertisement. Though our recruiters often tell candidates to customize their resume to highlight the skills that coincide with a particular position, that doesn’t mean it should copy everything. If a candidate looks too good to be true, they probably are. Skilled recruiters will see the difference between alignment and wholesale copying.
Reviewing Their Social Presence
As part of the screening process, we evaluate a candidate’s social profiles to get a sense of who they are. After looking at thousands of LinkedIn profiles, we’ve noticed some strange details. Sometimes, that means candidates faking entire profiles to increase their chances of deceiving you.
For instance, do they have a network of connections? If they’re a mid-level or senior level professional, it would be almost suspicious for them not to have at least a few dozen professional relationships. Yellow flags arise for our recruiters if we have extensive connections with a candidate’s current or past employers and they’re still only a third-degree connection or more.
Also, review their profile images before the interview. Being able to recognize them during the interview can help to spot if there’s something fishy going on. That said, you shouldn’t outright disqualify someone without an image, with an illustration, or an AI-enhanced picture (LinkedIn now has an AI photo generator). Just tread with caution.
Spotting Warning Signs in the Interview
The interview is often when the fake candidate’s veneer collapses. It’s hard to hold up the illusion when they are being scrutinized by people in real time, but a combination of skill and technology are making their ruse easier.
Since more companies are conducting video interviews, there’s a greater chance for fake candidates to have an AI copilot, similar to an invisible teleprompter, helping answer their questions. Some candidates will fake bandwidth delays so they can allow an offscreen person or a proxy interview service provider to feed them answers or even respond in their place.
With artificial intelligence, we’re seeing the rise of real-time deep fakes, where people can digitally graft their faces over a surrogate who will take the virtual interview in their place. If the signal is bad, you might believe that the pitch hitter is the actual candidate.
Our recruiters are always wary whenever anyone is off camera. That’s been a clear way some underqualified job seekers have outsourced their interview to more skilled professionals. For when AI fakes are too convincing for the naked eye, there are a growing variety of tools or plugins that can integrate with your video conferencing platforms to help you catch real-time deepfakes.
The Advantage of Working with the Right Staffing Partner
Catching fake job candidates can be a time-consuming and exhaustive process. If you flounder for a moment, there’s a chance that a less-than or completely unqualified person can squeeze through your filters. That’s where an experienced staffing and recruiting partner can better protect your business.
Our recruiters are completely focused on evaluating candidates so we can find and place exceptional people within your organization. On average, professional staffing companies spend more time with a candidate prior to hire than the typical organization. w3r Consulting recruiters put the time and effort into creating trust and fortifying relationships that last beyond any individual role.
Additionally, AI screening tools like our RingOfFire platform allows us to conduct fraud and technical assessments faster and with greater accuracy than human agents alone. Using client job descriptions, we can auto-generate tests that fit the exact role, industry, and business. Additionally, we can catch deepfakes, proxy interview services, and invisible teleprompters using sophisticated AI models.
By building a relationship with a candidate, we’ll have multiple touchpoints to verify that candidates possess the skills, experiences, and credentials they’re claiming. Eventually, lies collapse under their own weight and inconsistencies soon stand out. Exceptional recruiters can help that happen much sooner.
Are you looking for help removing fake job candidates from your talent pipeline? Reach out to w3r Consulting for assistance.
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Fake Candidates FAQs
How common are fake job candidates?
Fake candidates now make up a meaningful share of applicant pools. Gartner predicts that one in four candidate profiles will be fake by 2028, a rise fueled by video interviewing, generative AI, and social media platforms that have lowered the barrier to deception. w3r Consulting screens for fraudulent candidates as a standard part of every search, giving clients protection that internal teams rarely have time to provide.
How do you spot a fake candidate on a resume?
Inspect the numbers first. Claimed experience that predates a technology’s existence is an immediate giveaway, as is an implausible stack of overlapping roles or timelines that fail to add up. A resume that copies your job posting almost word for word is another signal, since alignment and wholesale duplication look very different to a trained eye. w3r Consulting recruiters validate these details through direct questions before any candidate moves forward.
Can you identify a fake candidate from their LinkedIn profile?
A candidate’s network reveals more than their headline does. Mid-level and senior professionals with almost no connections, or who stay a third-degree connection even when they share ties with their own listed employers, warrant a closer look. w3r Consulting reviews social profiles and profile images ahead of every interview so recruiters can confirm a candidate’s identity in real time.
What are the warning signs of a fake candidate during a video interview?
Off-camera behavior is the clearest tell. Faked bandwidth delays, a reluctance to show their face, and unusual pauses before answers are common signs that someone offscreen is feeding responses. Real-time deepfakes, where a person grafts their face onto a stand-in, are also on the rise. w3r Consulting combines recruiter scrutiny with deepfake-detection technology to catch these tactics while the interview is happening.
Should you reject a candidate who doesn’t have a LinkedIn photo?
Not automatically. A missing photo, an illustration, or an AI-enhanced image isn’t proof of fraud, especially now that LinkedIn offers its own AI photo generator. These are reasons to look more closely, not to disqualify outright. w3r Consulting reviews profile images before each interview so recruiters can recognize candidates in real time and weigh any irregularities in full context rather than reacting to a single detail.
How can a staffing partner help screen out fake candidates?
Staffing partners spend more time with candidates before hire than most internal teams can afford to. That extended contact creates multiple touchpoints to verify skills, experience, and credentials, and inconsistencies surface faster with every interaction. w3r Consulting recruiters build relationships that outlast any single role and pair that approach with AI tools like RingOfFire for added accuracy.