Desperate employers and remote hiring: A recipe for candidate fraud?

The Nice Resignation together with the ocean of unfilled jobs are forcing employers right now to do as a lot as they will to make sure that they not solely retain their finest staff but in addition make the suitable choices when hiring.

That stress might imply recruiters and HR professionals are making expensive errors, based on Lindsey Zuloaga, chief knowledge scientist at HireVue, a hiring expertise supplier. One such threat arises when job candidates are lower than sincere within the utility course of—from exaggerated or blatantly faux job histories to fraudulent references to candidates who enlist help with assessments. It’s a problem compounded by the pandemic-driven shifts in what number of employers right now are hiring.

“Know-how and distant work have modified the alternatives accessible for dishonest within the hiring funnel,” Zuloaga says. “We’ve all heard horror tales of the flawed individual exhibiting up on day one after their digicam stayed off for the interview course of.

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“Like all sort of fraud, the cheaters proceed to invent new strategies, and the victims of fraud should at all times sustain,” she provides.

Know-how is taking part in a central function right now in making hiring extra environment friendly—however employers want to pay attention to each the advantages and dangers. HireVue’s International Tendencies Report discovered that, within the final 12 months alone, almost 60% of employers launched job-matching applied sciences for recruiting. On the similar time, greater than one-third supplied each in-person and digital interviewing. And about one-quarter began incorporating AI, chatbots and abilities assessments into their recruiting course of.

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Whereas expertise can usually cut back stress on recruiters and HR—which might, in flip, reduce the chance for fraudulent candidates slipping by—HR should work hand in hand with tech to weed out the unhealthy apples. Zuloaga affords a number of finest practices for stopping doubtlessly expensive errors within the hiring course of:

• Remove pointless necessities. When corporations rely strictly on resume knowledge factors, candidates usually tend to embellish their accomplishments with a purpose to make it to the subsequent step. For this reason she recommends eradicating pointless coverage necessities like inflated years of expertise and levels once they aren’t wanted. As a substitute, it’s higher to deal with skills-based assessments. The International Tendencies Report, she notes, discovered decrease worker turnover at corporations which have adopted a skills-first method to expertise acquisition [54%] and/or changed resumes with skills-based assessments [40%].
• Take a blended method. Zuloaga recommends combining skills-based assessments with a follow-up interview to debate the take a look at outcomes and dig deeper. As an illustration, should you’ve used a coding problem, ask the candidate to clarify their methodology in fixing the problem. For non-technical assessments, you’ll be able to ask competency-focused follow-up questions that dig deeper into an space the place somebody demonstrated excessive efficiency.
• Use sturdy background checks and onboarding procedures. Info safety is likely one of the major issues in terms of detecting candidate fraud, Zuloaga explains. If a foul actor does make it by an evaluation and follow-up interview undetected, having the suitable background examine and onboarding procedures managed by an HR group may help forestall them from infiltrating your group and accessing buyer knowledge.
• Streamline the method. In accordance with Zuloaga, discovering one of the best candidates requires gathering the required data on your hiring supervisor to make an knowledgeable choice, with out making the method unnecessarily taxing on your candidates. “Most individuals simply desire a job that helps advance their place in life,” she says. “Making the method fairer and simpler to entry, with out pointless steps or unrelated necessities, will create a course of the place folks don’t really feel like they should embellish or lie about their {qualifications}.”

Whereas precise figures on candidate fraud are usually not simply decided, Zuloaga says, instances are exceptions to the rule. Even so, they will show costly and dangerous, when it comes to firm knowledge.

“Most frequently, candidates are appearing in good religion, attempting to safe a job,” she says. “Dishonest of every kind existed lengthy earlier than the rise of totally distant hiring, however corporations want to pay attention to new strategies of deceit and undertake modern options to satisfy the problem.”