45 ms·

I Got Catfished by a Candidate

• Willson50 8y ago
  Does being a catfish really matter if they passed the rest of the interview process?
  • mfoy_ 8y ago
    Well, blatantly lying in the very first meeting / discussions is a huge red flag... If they were so knowledgeable / likable, why the ruse? Why all the extra effort to create a fake past?
    • deadmetheny 8y ago
      I partially agree, but at the same time there is a certain level of cargo culting going on in tech hiring, and if you didn't work at the right places or get the right degree from the right school, the deck is stacked against you even if you are fully capable of doing the job.
    • throwawycatfish 8y ago
      I imagine these actions are the logical conclusion of someone who can pass an interview but doesn't have the credentials to get their foot in the door interview. The tech industry has a similar problem in over relying on the school you've graduated from to filter out candidates.
  • amorphid 8y ago
    If you're going to outright lie to my face & get caught, you'd better have a proof that you had discovered a brain tumor after having told the lie, pictures of the tumor being removed, and a doctor's note explaining "healthy now - no more liar liar pants on fire".
    • sigstoat 8y ago
      it sounds like they were trying to get a sales job. maybe the doctor's note should read "healthy now - much better at lying, won't be caught next time"?
    • hfdgiutdryg 8y ago
      Why? Management lies to employees constantly. Sales lies to customers constantly. Why the sudden insistence on honesty?
      • bduerst 8y ago
        So it's okay to lose an arm if you've already lost a leg? Because honesty is better than dishonesty?
        • ironjunkie 8y ago
          Ahah, that's what management tells you. While telling you at the same time that you shouldn't ask for a raise as they don't give those out this year.
          • bduerst 8y ago
            So you lie to your coworkers and customers, because someone else lied to you at some point? I'm not sure I quite follow...
            • ironjunkie 8y ago
              It is all a game in which everyone pretends to be honest, but walks a fine line of acceptable lies. I'm only reacting to the "feel good" line that everyone is honest. This is not the way it works and we should not be duped to believe that.
              • bduerst 8y ago
                Believing that honest > dishonesty is not the same as being duped into believing that there are no dishonest people... This article is proof enough of that, and nobody is making that claim.
  • AlexCoventry 8y ago
    It's a sign of massive disrespect. Do you want a close relationship with someone who doesn't respect you?
    • CoolAndComposed 8y ago
      I don't know a potential employer. Why would I respect them to start? I have expectations, they have expectations and we try to meet in the middle. That's society.
      • AlexCoventry 8y ago
        If you think that honesty isn't a fundamental expectation for someone who's hoping to work closely with you, that's a massive sign of disrespect.
    • mindcrime 8y ago
      Do you think management at this company respects their employees? Or maybe they refer to them as "resources", treat them as disposable, fungible, commodities, and deserve no more respect in turn? Not saying that is the case, but the question deserves asking. Respect is a two way street.
      • AlexCoventry 8y ago
        Yeah, I am fortunate that I don't need to work for that kind of place, I guess.
      • astura 8y ago
        I mean, I never worked anywhere where I felt management didn't respect me.
        • mindcrime 8y ago
          Interesting. In my experience the vast majority of companies consider their employees disposable commodities. See: micromanagement, use of the term "resource" to refer to people, layoffs as soon as there is a bad quarter and the stock price takes a little dip, shoddy "open plan" working conditions, and all the other things companies tend to do. If you have found a better situation, hang onto it with both hands and don't let go!
  • tytytytytytytyt 8y ago
    Yes, but I still wish they mentioned how well the candidate did technically. Wtf.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • hinkley 8y ago
    Impersonating people has crossed the line into fraud. The odds that this is the first and last time a person commits fraud for the job are fairly bad. You don't want that kind of drama.
• deedubaya 8y ago
  You'll never be able to trust a candidate who lies. Blatantly lying to a potential employer will never work out well in the long run. Just don't do it. Programmers are lucky in that they can take code they've written, and say "see, here's my proof that I can do the job".Other types of jobs (like sales), however, are reputation based, and you damn well better make sure the opinion of the person who is vouching for your candidate is legitimate.
  • maxxxxx 8y ago
    "You'll never be able to trust a candidate who lies." This also goes the other way. I have had companies lie to me about salary structure or working conditions and it definitely hurt my loyalty when I found out that I had been lied to.
    • itronitron 8y ago
      >> companies lie to me about salary structure or working conditions That is the rule rather than the exception unfortunately. What recruiters need to watch out for is the candidate (like the one described) that can't control their lies as they can do lasting long-term damage. Everyone else is just tuning their risk-reward calculation.
      • deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
    • vkou 8y ago
      You're supposed to lie in socially acceptable ways. Preferably ones where both parties know the other is lying. Your boss lies to you that he can't give you a raise, you lie to the hiring manager that you won't take the job without a 10% bump in pay, your VP lies that the merger won't affect headcount, etc.
      • Retra 8y ago
        None of those are socially acceptable. But I dunno, maybe you live in a shit place.
• deedubaya 8y ago
  Maybe the author should evaluate _why_ they got catfished. Recruiting processes are so convoluted and hard to break through, that someone who apparently otherwise would have been a great candidate, had to lie to get an interview. Was a good candidate really only one that had worked at the managers previous employer? How many great candidates are companies missing out on because of arbitrary filters?
  • CobrastanJorji 8y ago
    Yes. This particular candidate should definitely not be hired, but there are probably some other great candidates who can "discuss the pros and cons of MEDDIC" or whatever but aren't getting an interview.
  • evrydayhustling 8y ago
    This doesn't hold up. Unless a candidate is single-mindedly targeting the author's company -- like, they get rejected and come back with a fake resume -- then they decided to fake a resume before talking to the author. The author can't fix the societal experience the candidate has been having, and you have no sign that they filtered unfairly. I am sympathetic to candidates who feel they have skills but lack credentials, but it is no excuse for falsifying info. Make the strongest case you can about your true history, and you'll eventually connect with a company that values the actual you instead of a fake that will eventually break down.
    • deedubaya 8y ago
      > Unless a candidate is single-mindedly targeting the author's company -- like, they get rejected and come back with a fake resume -- then they decided to fake a resume before talking to the author You think it was just a coincidence that the fake job/reference the catfish had listed was one of the hiring manager's past employers? > Make the strongest case you can about your true history, and you'll eventually connect with a company that values the actual you instead of a fake that will eventually break down. This is definitely true and the right advice for candidates who are considering lying to get through the recruiter filter.
    • 8y ago
• anothergoogler 8y ago
  I hope the author knows that you don't need a backdoor reference check to confirm past employment.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
• briandear 8y ago
  I really hate the so-called term “catfished” it’s a completely contrived word that came from a 2010 movie that probably 50 people actually saw. “Ghosting” is another one, but at least you can use context to sort of figure out what people are actually talking about. A bit off topic, but this adulteration of language — from an obscure pop-culture reference, is a bit silly. Obviously the author agrees that most people don’t know what the term means or he wouldn’t feel compelled to explain what the heck catfishing actually means in the second paragraph. Urban dictionary != real dictionary. I guess in another life I must have been a member of the Academie Française. Or maybe just too old to be cool. It’s so fetch apparently that I and a large number of non-Buzzfeed aficionados just don’t get it.
  • phyzome 8y ago
    In the case of this word, it's in "the real dictionary" now, by which I am assuming you mean "people's actual lexicon". Yes, it's a relatively new word, but this is how language works. How about you comment on HN in only Old English from now on, so you can avoid these newfangled spellings people made up?
  • pavlov 8y ago
    MTV's "Catfish" series has had seven seasons so far and is shown around the world. It's not obscure at all.
    • netsharc 8y ago
      But how did they get the name? From the movie. I saw the documentary on a flight. I guess I'm part of the 6.57x10^-7 percent!
      • pavlov 8y ago
        It doesn't matter where the name came from. The MTV show could be called "Sea Urchin" and it would still define the phenomenon.
    • phyzome 8y ago
      I never even knew this show existed, and was still aware of the word and its meaning. (I mean, not at first. There was a moment when someone had to explain it to me.) But all of this is irrelevant to the main point: Language is dynamic.
• dewiz 8y ago
  I was hoping to find out from the story why this catfish lied in the first place. If they passed the interview so well they must be someway good.
  • crispyporkbites 8y ago
    Probably because they couldn’t get an interview any other way, the reason this person got so far in the process was not because they were qualified for the job, but because the hiring manager liked the fact that they used to work at the same place together. Which is a crappy reason to hire someone.
  • mathattack 8y ago
    Sounds like it was for a Sales position. Those types of interviews are easier to BS.
  • coupdejarnac 8y ago
    I would guess he lied because he needed a job, and he figured it would have no bearing on his performance on the job.
  • mihaifm 8y ago
    In the tech world I would imagine a scenario where you don't have any professional experience in language X, you've been working only in language Y, but you've done some personal projects in language X and would like a career shift. It's hard to get a senior position without any experience.
    • merinowool 8y ago
      Just do a project in language X on a professional, senior level and if you incorporate, you can write you worked for that company on that project.
  • SystemOut 8y ago
    Industrial espionage or other type of work to gain access to confidential information is one that hasn't been brought up.
• jeena 8y ago
  > Rule #2: Take a long hard look at a candidate’s social profiles. > Rule #4: Google is your friend. That are one of the main reasons I don't post with my real name on the Internet, and I don't have an LinkedIn account. I don't want people to interpret what I put on the Internet in their own way when it comes to the decision if they should hire me or not.
  • jrs235 8y ago
    Do you want to work for people that believe and actually review social profiles and google search you? So perhaps publicly posting that you disagree with such behaviors might actually be doing you a favor. No? I think I understand not desiring to post your name with any other opinions though.
    • jeena 8y ago
      The problem is that they will need to get to page 47 on a google search to find this. The odds of this doing me a favor are just to astronomic in my opinion.
  • chatmasta 8y ago
    I take the opposite approach. I accept that everything I post online is public, and a chance to control my own narrative. I would much rather fill the Internet with my own content about myself, than leave it empty for someone else to impersonate or disparage me. Additionally, I am proud of what I post publicly — otherwise I wouldn’t post it. Public personas are a professional necessity, especially in our industry. For example, what if you want to show your contributions to open source? Or your stackoverflow answers? If you do everything online under a separate identity, then all your positive contributions are unlinkable to yourself. Yes, you can hide any “bad things” you may post from your employers. But are you really posting anything bad? Is it worth sacrificing credit for your positive contributions? Granted there is always the “nothing to hide” counterargument. That is, it’s not up for me to decide what’s “bad.” A potential employer could misinterpret my words, or otherwise negatively judge me based on my online profiles. But in that case it’s probably better to avoid the relationship anyway.
• Const-me 8y ago
  > a catfish is someone who creates a false identity By this definition, U.S. Marshals Service is a bunch of catfishes: https://people.howstuffworks.com/witness-protection.htm/printable https://people.howstuffworks.com/witness-protection.htm/prin...
  • CoolAndComposed 8y ago
    The double standard judgements here are disappointing =/
  • eeZah7Ux 8y ago
    Social networks are making witness protection very risky. For a witness the old "we know where you live" is now 100 times more plausible and threatening.
• djhworld 8y ago
  The thing about checking social profiles for number of connections etc is strange to me, although maybe it makes sense in the sales world. I have a LinkedIn but rarely log into it, most LinkedIn emails get filed into spam. Missing good opportunities? Maybe. I dunno, it's just never been my thing. I hope recruiters, at least for developer roles don't use LinkedIn profiles and connection count as some sort of metric in a hiring decision
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • paulgb 8y ago
    I deleted my LinkedIn over a year ago and haven't looked back. It might be handy for sales folks but as a developer it's a cesspool of spammy content and dark patterns.
    • amatecha 8y ago
      Yeah, I get the "opportunity of a lifetime" about once a week, maybe once every two weeks.
      • tytytytytytytyt 8y ago
        From a recruiter in NJ about an opportunity in CA?
    • pyrophane 8y ago
      I’ve been thinking of doing this as well. While I do occasionally get hit up by internal recruiters, which I don’t mind, that happens infrequently. For the most part it is just 3rd party recruiters seizing on a keyword hit pertaining to something I did 10 years ago (“I have a great .Net role I think you’d be perfect for”).
• southphillyman 8y ago
  I know this candidate lied but them navigating the interview process so impressively appears to validate that they are good at selling......
  • jkFeiwi 8y ago
    More like: validate that they are good at lying
• piptastic 8y ago
  That's odd. The author defends his "backdoor reference checks" by saying he would have never caught the catfish otherwise. Then later on the same person he contacted for his "backdoor reference check" was given to him as a reference, which would have happened regardless.
  • darrenkopp 8y ago
    Yes, but they might have naively used the given number rather than the number they personally had, out of convenience, which would have caused the catfish to succeed.
    • netsharc 8y ago
      But no, the author knew Jim, if he had dialed that number and did a bit of small talk he would've known that's not Jim on the phone (unless the fake Jim is quick on his feet about pretending to be someone else). The catfisher is stupid, he should've looked through the author's LinkedIn profile and saw that the author is connected with Jim, he would have not used Jim as a reference if he had done that.
      • darrenkopp 8y ago
        Oh, I see what you are saying. Yeah, that is a good point.
    • dx034 8y ago
      You can't just fake a corporate email address. And even phone numbers for offices are usually all in one block, you can verify if that belongs to the company.
• lkrubner 8y ago
  On the upside, the person who was trying to get a job seems very good at selling. Certainly, they seem good at selling themselves. If this is for a sales job, then the energy they showed should count in their favor, and the work they put in, as well as the easy social graces that charmed everyone. I've known honest salespeople, but generally sales, as a profession, does not reward complete honesty. The important thing would be to find out if this guy was lying to hide previous criminal behavior. That would be important to protect the current company from. But if there was no criminal behavior in this guy's past, I'd be interested in seeing if they could hook new customers as well as they hooked the hiring company.
  • bduerst 8y ago
    Why? They'd eventually deceive the new customers just to make the sale, even going so far to fabricate facts and people just to do it. That's not the type of person you want bringing on new accounts at your company.
    • lkrubner 8y ago
      If they engage in outright fraud, then they are criminals, and they've probably been criminals in the past. That's why I emphasized the one thing to really check for is whether they are hiding a criminal past. At one point, when I was running my own business, I worked with an alcoholic who was a good salesman. I knew that he could be toxic, so I structured an agreement such that I kept some distance between him and my company. I basically just offered him a generous finders fee. I told him if he could bring in business, I would give him a percentage. We got at least one big contract because of him. I'm not saying that every company can or should work with such people. Every company is different. But if you know the circumstances of your company, and you think you can get useful work out of someone who has some known problems, then it is possible to structure a deal such that your company wins.
      • bduerst 8y ago
        >If they engage in outright fraud, then they are criminals, and they've probably been criminals in the past. You're assuming that they were caught and convicted. Displaying this pattern of behavior w/o a criminal history doesn't mean they won't continue said behavior in the job. It's a terrible idea to have hired this candidate and I'm not entirely certain what your motivation is for arguing otherwise.
• HeyLaughingBoy 8y ago
  Out of all of the possible people to choose as your fake manager, this person chose one out of the two people that I knew from Acme Corp Someone who I had interviewed and who turned out to be a terrible employee (we fired him after 9 months of trying to find something he could do right) listed me as a reference on his resume. Problem for him was that the hiring manager at the next place where he applied turned out to be a friend of mine. The world's smaller than you think it is!
  • rconti 8y ago
    Well I mean, friend or no, you wouldn't have exactly been able to provide a glowing review. Of course, you can be slightly more candid with a friend. Or did the candidate provide fake contact info for 'you' ?
    • HeyLaughingBoy 8y ago
      This is how I answered when my friend called and asked what I thought of the guy, "Do you want my actual opinion or the Corporate Response?" He immediately knew what I meant and said "OK, that's all I needed." For those who don't get it, the Corporate Response (that any other person checking up would receive) would be "the employee worked in Software Development from MM/DD/YY to mm/dd/yy and was assigned xxx tasks" with no further comment.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• thieving_magpie 8y ago
  >Rule #2: Take a long hard look at a candidate’s social profiles. That worries me if I need to enter the job market. I have no social media profile with my name attached to it. I don't enjoy the facebook/twitter/instagram style sites.
  • toomuchgov 8y ago
    It eliminates alot of places you would not be happy working at.
  • donttrack 8y ago
    Me neither. Never was a problem for me.
  • mr_toad 8y ago
    I doubt employers who search out candidates on social media are looking for good things. They’re probably looking for red flags, and potentially anything could be a red flag to some people.
• gumby 8y ago
  > backdoor reference checks aren’t always considered kosher by everyone ?? These are the most important references. Many excellent candidates won't have a back connection but when they are possible they can make an important difference two ways: One is the way described here (or, "this person was OK but doesn't sound like they would work out for the kind of thing you want -- that was where they failed with us too."). The other is the opposite, which has happened to me twice: "Oh that person? Look, if you don't take them let them know we'd really like them back" (on a candidate who barely made it through the interview but there was enough something there that we decided to do some background checking. Turned out he was simply nervous in front of people he didn't know and gave a terrible interview.). Without the background check we might have missed an excellent candidate with poor job-seeking skills. Whenever I get a resume with a school on it that I or one of my colleagues attended I always check. I also once had an amazing candidate with 20 years experience in the lab doing just what we wanted. Their resume said that they had a degree from my schoo in X. I of course looked them up on the alum site and saw they had a degree in Y. Now both X and Y were in the set {Chemistry, Physics, Material Science, Chemical Engineering} so clearly had they simply told the truth it wouldn't have mattered -- the 20 years of experience would have said enough for anyone who actually cared about degrees after all that time. But since they lied...the resume went into the trash and the candidate was never brought in for an interview.
  • anothergoogler 8y ago
    How do you know that your backdoor reference doesn't personally dislike the candidate for something unrelated to their mutual work experience? Maybe hiring by hearsay works for some people, but I don't trust references, good or bad.
    • seunosewa 8y ago
      That’s actually an argument for checking more than one reference from each organization.
      • dx034 8y ago
        Or asking the candidate? You can still check if the position of the other person is relevant but it makes sense to not randomly ask people at former employers if there are only 1-2 who can really describe the work they did.
• crescentfresh 8y ago
  The place I'm at now forbids employees from being references for past employees (or current employees discreetly seeking other employment). Is this normal? It would have prevented "Jim" or anyone else at ACME Corp from being a reference to catfish-er, so requests for a reference from the company would have been denied right off the bat. That would have made it harder to spot the fake.
  • AndrewGaspar 8y ago
    I've never heard of anybody doing this. Sounds pretty messed up to me.
    • justizin 8y ago
      This was the policy when I worked at Rackspace circa 2001-2004, they would only confirm employment. In the bay area, I often can't even confirm employment because the company has gone out of business, my manager was fired after I voluntarily left, etc... Literally everything about this story raises the hairs on the back of my neck except for giving false contact info for a manager the recruiter knew by name - esp the, "trust your gut", stuff, which is basically saying: Embrace your implicit bias. I have managers who I can't get in touch with, one of whom I've had to tell several recruiters, "This dude wouldn't take my calls when I worked for him, he pretty much just ignores everyone." In those cases, however, I do my best to do a LinkedIn connect and provide a company email. "Feel free to contact jackass@shittycompany.com and see if you have better luck than I do." Just because you are (MAYBE) a manager who cares enough to give references, don't assume anyone else is. Many of my past managers are pissed that I bailed on them, because they were shitty managers, but I have 20y in the industry and in many cases that meant more than them. It's a tough game to play when you don't want to be a manager, yourself.
      • gamblor956 8y ago
        There are companies that exist solely to verify employment history, i.e., if you leave Company X, Company Y will confirm your time of employment, titles, etc. to new employer Company Z.
• AlexCoventry 8y ago
  What is an "outbound hunter mentality"?
  • chunger 8y ago
    Cold calling, usually. It means that they're not only working leads that come in from marketing campaigns, website, & emails (these are inbound, initiated by a potential customer). Typically means picking up the phone and calling strangers to try and sell them things (initiated by you - outbound).
• rb808 8y ago
  The real question is how many people normally get the job with embellished resume's, fake recommendations and friends as references. I think its quite a high percentage. I'm always honest but I think I've missed out on a lot of jobs I could easily do because I don't meet the "requirements".
  • cascom 8y ago
    There is a big difference between embellished and fake. I always assume there is some title/responsibility inflation on resumes i read, but i generally assume that those people did in fact work at those companies in those groups, etc.
• cascom 8y ago
  Almost every job I ever had had an intermediate step with background/biographical reference checks after I accepted the offer, but before I started.
  • dx034 8y ago
    That makes sense. Once you signed, it's easy to get a reference from your employer (at least factual). Before that it's unnecessary. Especially if there are more tests to come, I don't want 10 companies requesting references when I look for a new job.
• qaq 8y ago
  I know a person who has faked a position on resume to get around the whole you need experience to get hired and to get experience you need to get hired thing in marketing field and now he is super successful C level exec in Fortune 50 company so go figure.
  • trhway 8y ago
    >and now he is super successful C level exec in Fortune 50 company Sleaziness and moral flexibility in general seems to be a very useful soft skill for reaching high management levels.
  • maxxxxx 8y ago
    There is a very thin line between "hustling" and outright fraud. The same behavior can result in a good career or jail time depending on luck and ability.
    • amatecha 8y ago
      it all depends whether you roll a 1 or a 20, am I right? ;)
      • lovich 8y ago
        I don't know ow why you were downvoted. It was told on a joking manner but is effectively true. There were many people on here crowing about the greatness of Elizabeth Holmes even though she was a giant fraud. If people are going to ask for ridiculous requirements for well paid jobs then they should expect either A:that people will say what you want to get the position since, as this article implied, reality and what is useful to a company don't seem tied together or B:never complain about a shortage of candidates and the associated highb salaries if you are going to cultivate a list of requirements that exclude 99.99% of humanity
• hfdgiutdryg 8y ago
  Maybe he would have been great and our best performing AE. Maybe he wouldn’t have even known how to log into Salesforce. Or, even worse, maybe he would have been dishonest about something down the line. Whatever the outcome, better to suss it out early. So, the person appeared competent and capable, and "may have been our best performing AE" but it's "better to suss it out early" by immediately rejecting him? Sounds like they should have considered some sort of short-term contact to evaluate the guy. Instead, their ego was bruised, so they rejected him and patted themselves on the back.
  • huebnerob 8y ago
    Your stance is that they should have hired the guy who blatantly misrepresented himself to them? Hard disagree, even if this guy is the best that ever was, he's shown his true colors. The second it's beneficial to him, he'll lie again.
    • hfdgiutdryg 8y ago
      My position is that, in his own words, the applicant "may have been our best performing AE", but the solution was to reject him. As for misrepresenting oneself, what's the actual problem? If he's got the ability to do the job, who cares if he lied to get through the Byzantine interview process? And, as I already said, employers (management) lie all the time.
  • volkk 8y ago
    egos set aside, once you know the person youre looking to hire has been lying about most of his past to the point of making up email addresses and getting his buddy to speak on the phone for him as a reference, i dont see how you can look past that and actually still hire them.
    • dmitrygr 8y ago
      > has been lying I believe in sales it is called "selling"
• andrewstuart 8y ago
  I'm a recruiter. Three anecdotes come to mind for this topic: #1 I once sent out a coding test email to a candidate. Not long after I got an email back from this candidate saying "Hey bro could you do this test for me please." or words to that effect. Obviously mistakenly forwarded it back to me instead of to his bro who he wanted to do his coding test. #2 I definitely got catfished but it was by another recruiter who was fishing to try to find out who my client/employer was - he was hoping I'd call the number so he could pretend to be a valid candidate and I would reveal the name of the employer. I took the issue to the job board that the resume came from, and they threatened to ban his company from advertising on their board. Never happened again as far as I know. #3 I've got about 150,000 resumes in my candidate database. One thing I'd be interested to do is run some sort of duplicate text detecter over my candidate database. I've definitely received resumes that duplicate text from other resumes.
  • lovich 8y ago
    Maybe hire one of the devs you interact with to search for duplicates? Searching for duplicates substrings isn't necessarily something that could be done off the shelf but it shouldn't be too hard for a competent dev to get you a working process
    • andrewstuart 8y ago
      I'm a developer - I could do it but I can't be bothered - not important, merely interesting.
      • lovich 8y ago
        Ah well if you ever get the itch and do it, please post the results. I would be interested in seeing the data
  • ng12 8y ago
    I've been wondering how often #1 happens. Our coding test isn't particularly difficult but it is timeboxed, and somehow candidates pass it who take 15+ minutes to string together a for-loop when they come on-site.
• maxxxxx 8y ago
  I don't think we should use such stories as a reason to make the hiring process even more paranoid. In general people are pretty honest so I wouldn't like to see them having to jump through even more hoops because of a few fraudsters. Advice number 1 is probably best : "Trust your gut". If something doesn't make sense it's worth clearing that up.
  • Clubber 8y ago
    Yes, this and reference checks. Plus, if a guy isn't working out, fire him. Not a huge deal. The current tech hiring process, at least what I read on here, is absurd.
    • organsnyder 8y ago
      Depends on what "isn't working out" means. If the employee is just bad at their job in mundane ways like low performance, poor quality, etc. then that's probably not too harmful (or it shouldn't be, if your company is more than a dozen people or so). However, if "isn't working out" means that the employee has behavioral issues that harm colleagues, is inappropriate with clients, steals intellectual property, or something like that, the damage could be much worse—even catastrophic. Of course, companies should be built to be resilient to these situations, but it's rarely "not a huge deal". All that being said, I agree with your premise that much of tech hiring is "absurd". Too many companies (especially consultancies) are built with a very low tolerance for underperformance, to the point that they don't contribute to the development of the overall workforce.
      • Clubber 8y ago
        Sure, deciding why to let someone go is up to the company or manager. Firing someone isn't the huge deal, the reasons for firing them certainly can be. With development, you can actually have negative productivity. An example would be spending money to un-hose what the developer did years after they've left. If enough stuff was built on top of a mistake, it's unfeasible to fix. Bad design decisions tend to lead to other bad design decisions. I'm dealing with a lot of that where I am now. I think part of the reason these tech interviews are so absurd is people are emotionally terrified of firing people, so they take great pains to ensure they won't have to. I'm just speculating though.
• eecc 8y ago
  Very upbeat narrative, guy sounds so proud of himself. Also very short sentences, is it usual to write so naively, perhaps a kind of mannerism meaning to be true?
• alex_young 8y ago
  I know a guy who catfished Forbes for years about his net worth and parlayed that into a sweet job in federal government with lifetime benefits! [1] [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/trump-lied-to-me-about-his-wealth-to-get-onto-the-forbes-400-here-are-the-tapes/2018/04/20/ac762b08-4287-11e8-8569-26fda6b404c7_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.2ebb6dc7cc54 https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/trump-lied-to-me-abou...
  • hudibras 8y ago
    Oh wait, I thought you were talking about this guy: https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2017/11/07/the-case-of-wilbur-ross-phantom-2-billion/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2017/11/07/the-cas...
• navs 8y ago
  sigh > Rule #2: Take a long hard look at a candidate’s social profiles. Is not having a LinkedIn account going to come back to bite me, even when applying for dev roles? I've had even senior devs at popular local dev shops say LinkedIn is a "necessary evil" because it: 1. is easy to grep 2. you can find whether a candidate has similar connections to you 3. recommendations I get New Zealand is small and the social graph for LinkedIn can be well utilised because of this but I just don't want a LinkedIn account. Is a traditional CV so bad?
  • jiveturkey 8y ago
    > Is not having a LinkedIn account going to come back to bite me, In SF bay area, no. Of course hiring is local so YMMV.
  • downer54 8y ago
    You know what? I’d rather die broke on the streets than work for dipshits who care about social media profiles. Oh! I didn’t blog enough for you? My Facebook vacation pictures aren’t sunny enough? My user profile photo doesn’t smile quite so bright, so as to satisfy your insipid whims? How about pay me the money I’ll need for the next 18 months, so I can save up enough money, in order to pad all this bullshit fluff walled garden nonsense, to make hiring managers feel warm and fuzzy inside.
  • itronitron 8y ago
    I don't think it will hurt for dev roles. I wouldn't be surprised if over half of the people on LinkedIn are recruiters, so it must be critical for their own careers.
  • gamblor956 8y ago
    In California at least, looking at an applicant's social profile can reveal information the company is not allowed to ask for or use in the hiring decision. LinkedIn wouldn't qualify since it's a public resume, but checking out an applicant's Facebook page or Instragram would likely give rise to actionable legal claims if the applicant is rejected. This doesn't mean you'd lose, but you'd pay out a chunk of money to defend the lawsuit and other candidates would avoid your company.
• mrbill 8y ago
  You just never know who might turn up from your past... 1999: I was a sysadmin at an ISP in Austin. One day we had a tour come through, people looking to see if they wanted to colo in our datacenter. In walks in the former CEO and most of the technical staff from the Oklahoma City-based ISP I'd started my career at and left in '96. We laughed, shook hands.. and they headhunted me away a couple months later with a 200% salary increase for their new Austin-based startup. 2015: interviewing for a remote sysadmin position at a firm in California. They knew of me through some mailing lists I've run for a couple of decades. A couple of interviews in, I mention that I'd need to get off early on Thursdays to attend Lodge as I was a Freemason. Turns out two other execs interviewing me were also Masons. It certainly didn't hurt my job prospects.. And then after I started the CEO asked "Weren't you mr_bill on efnet #unix IRC in the 90s?" I gulped and said "Yeah..." and he said "Cool! I was on there too..." And, at my current job, after I got hired, my team lead said "Yeah, (other coworker) said you were cool and said you'd fit in well here..." - turns out the other coworker was another EFNet IRC buddy that I'd never met in person.. So, never lie about a contact or reference and never burn bridges if you can avoid it - you never know when someone from your past may be in a position to influence your future.
  • swozey 8y ago
    And on the flip side bear in mind that some of us were 10-15yo on IRC back in the day. Don't fault those of us too hard.
    • rlayton2 8y ago
      Yes, one of the great things about the "don't use your proper name on the internet" was the ability to let go of the past if needed. Much much harder now.
      • roel_v 8y ago
        Getting ot now, but actually you'd be surprised (at least I was) how fast you drop off the internet as websites and services die. I've gotten more careful about using my full name maybe 4-5 years ago (the 10 before that I didn't care, and I never used my real name the 10 before that) and nowadays I'm all but invisible online, save a few work presentations with my name on it left and right. I know the mantra is 'the internet never forgets', and probably if you're high profile it doesn't, but for your average joe, even thousands of comments and tweets and posts die off after only a few years.
• kelukelugames 8y ago
  This is not a catfish. This is a person lying on their resume
  • tzakrajs 8y ago
    They also gave a fake reference number implying they were prepared to pose as someone else to social engineer. That is beyond lying on a resume.
    • dx034 8y ago
      I think he never called it? Maybe it was just an invalid number.
  • vidoc 8y ago
    > This is not a catfish. This is a person lying on their resume I agree, the author uses "Catfish" because it's cool to use a word that you know your reader will have to google, a bit like using a TLA. Anyhow, "Catfish" is a cool word nevertheless, and I am proposing we reserve it to people who climb the professional ladder exclusively thanks to their online identity. Typically, an engineer who does a lot of public speaking, who uses github to host repos of files that actually contain not a single line of code. A mini celebrity of engineering that end up going from companies to companies, generally hired without being whiteboarded, who at the end of the day is just a dud.
• jiveturkey 8y ago
  > My team and I are a pretty savvy group. Except for the repeated evidence of an overinflated sense of self, pretty fun reading. I'm left thinking, wow, this really happens?!?
  • itronitron 8y ago
    well, the story could be completely made up...
• tgb 8y ago
  The author is missing the most obvious rule that they should have taken away from their experience: don't use the number and email provided by the candidate. Jim's email or number is probably readily available on the company website or by calling up the front desk at the company.
  • InclinedPlane 8y ago
    Yup, if the company is big, call or email the "front desk" or 411 number of whatever and ask to talk to that specific person. There are about a zillion ways to do this properly and the poster did none of them, sheer amateur hour.
    • lozaning 8y ago
      For what it's worth I have worked at places where its a fireable offense to talk to anyone about past employees. You'll be referred to our co-employer (insperity) who will only give you mm/yy of beginning and end of employment and not a word more.
• rdtsc 8y ago
  I was recruiting developers for 5 years or so. We've had a few ones who managed to almost slip by like this. Almost... The most obvious was when I started doing it, there was the one who copied a project from Github and presented as his own work. "Hey look what I built!" kind of a thing. The problem is I like work samples (more than whiteboard algorithm puzzles), they perhaps didn't plan on that, so I got excited and start asking questions. Usually that leads to a great time and I learn a lot about their work, attitude, how well they can explain a problem etc. Well it turns out he couldn't explain how it works. I was baffled. Here is this awesome candidate -- personable, friendly and built this great application but was having difficulty explaining the basics. So I asked my coworker during lunch. He went did some research and found the original project on GH. I felt like an idiot after that. But better me feeling like an idiot that spending months on salary and admin work only to find we got a dud.
• chickenfries 8y ago
  > However, I am glad that I caught it early before we hired him. If we had hired him, tough to say what could have happened. Maybe he would have been great and our best performing AE. Maybe he wouldn’t have even known how to log into Salesforce. When you make it to the top by lying, you're considered a winner: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-goldman-gary-cohn-got-to-wall-street-2015-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/how-goldman-gary-cohn-got-to-... > "I lied to him all the way to the airport," Cohn told Gladwell. "When he said, 'Do you know what an option is?' I said, 'Of course I do, I know everything, I can do anything for you.' Basically by the time we got out of the taxi, I had his number. He said, 'Call me Monday.' I called him Monday, flew back to New York Tuesday or Wednesday, had an interview, and started working the next Monday. I know there are dozens of other examples, because I hear people talk about how they had to lie to get their first break all the damn time, from people who are now very successful.
  • justherefortart 8y ago
    Everyone lies, because the interviewing process itself is a fucking joke, ESPECIALLY in the Bay Area. If the person can answer all my questions and they have a good attitude, I honestly don't give a shit what got them to that point. If someone doesn't work out, you can fire them. Yes it's "exhausting", maybe if it's so difficult to manage or run a business you should find a different role for yourself. I really enjoy hiring personally. I treat it like a two way street instead of "I'm the big boss man with all the power". I remember how I was recruited out of college, I show that same interest in the employee as I want them to show in their career (note, not my company, I'm 100% okay with someone just coming in and doing a good job, not being in fucking love with my product, industry or anything else all these bullshit companies seem to offer).
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    • incognitoz 8y ago
      Care to tell us which company you hire for, so that we can avoid it?
• mediocrejoker 8y ago
  Am I the only one who was really distracted by the use of the term Catfish in every other sentence? I've heard the term and I know there was a film called Catfish a few years about someone who created a fake identity online but I didn't realize it was such a common term. How is a catfish different from a fraud?
• woolvalley 8y ago
  Why are backdoor reference checks "necessary—especially in the Bay Area"?
• johnwh 8y ago
  Backdoor references are very unethical in my opinion. Beyond the fact that you are telling a third party about someone’s job search without the searcher’s consent, you can also get a very biased opinion. My wife was fired from a job at a well known University in the area. She had 2 bosses in a year, one of them twice after coming back from prolonged mental health leave. Within a month of coming back my wife’s boss had a long term relationship end which lead to my wife being blamed for everything and anything, and was then subsequently fired. On the other hand, my wife has excelled at her current job. She has been promoted 4 times at this point to a director level position and is extremely well respected. If they were to call her previous boss (who has had multiple people promoted over her in the past 2.5 years), the review would be awful and not reflective of my wife’s work. You know what would have caught this without any effort what-so-ever? Calling the company and verifying dates of employment. It is part of every job application, and is expected.
  • hndl 8y ago
    How does this work in the case when you're still employed at a current place and a looking to make a change? Edit - I think you mean doing a verification after an offer is put out.
    • tytytytytytytyt 8y ago
      You mean like verify past employment dates and only verify the last employment date after they are hired and no longer work at their last employer?
      • hndl 8y ago
        right
    • Retric 8y ago
      Employment verification is common for things like loans, so in most organizations it does not stand out. It's also common for this to be farmed out to 3rd party companies at large companies to avoid the risk of lawsuits.
• organicmultiloc 8y ago
  You can call it "catfishing" like you just captured a criminal mastermind, but people of color generally don't have the reference game down and are forced into doing stuff like this in order to avoid having their application thrown in the garbage. References are more of a "how many connected white people do you know" check than anything else. If you always had references to call on before you even finished school than you probably won't even understand the world of people who did not, and the people who didn't get that first internship and have no way to break in short of fraud.
• _bxg1 8y ago
  Why would you do this? Either you can do the job or you can't... I guess if the entire job is remote you could outsource the work to someone else?
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • quickthrower2 8y ago
    Can do the job != Can convince company to hire you
    • _bxg1 8y ago
      Right but if it turns out you're a fraud it'll become apparent almost immediately and they'll just... fire you. What would you gain from that?
      • quickthrower2 8y ago
        Not much, probably it's a personality type thing.
• kapauldo 8y ago
  Seems like he was an excellent hire for sales.
• matz1 8y ago
  It's all depends, for sales person, I don't care if you lies, as long as you can sell and the client happy.
• segmondy 8y ago
  Lot's of candidates lie. The one test that we gave that most people copied was converting decimal to roman number. They copied the first solution that they found, variable names, etc. the few times they changed the variable names, they kept the same number of spacing, braces in same position. So one line might have "if (...){ " where another has "if(...){" How demanding can this be? Once money is involved, folks will do almost anything. I had to fire a recruiter once for asking me to lie. Updated my resume, sent me the updated copy with tools I don't know and have no intention of learning and said he was going to use that.
  • Clubber 8y ago
    >The one test that we gave that most people copied was converting decimal to roman number. I've read some really stupid programming questions, but that has got to be one of the top 5 stupidest. Also, I think you mean to say "integer," as Romans didn't have the concept of "decimal." http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/52552.html http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/52552.html
    • dx034 8y ago
      Why stupid? As a take-home exercise it doesn't sound too bad. Won't take forever to solve but still requires some understanding of algorithms. Not as easy as FizzBuzz but also nothing you can't solve after work.
      • Clubber 8y ago
        1. The candidate must know how roman numerals work to pass. (This was before OP said it was a take home test which makes it a little better, but ...) 2. The question uses the term "decimal," rather than "integer." Roman numerals don't account for decimal numbers, so it's not even an accurately answerable question as posed. 3. When you google Roman Numerals and decimal, the first link tells you this. I assume the writer didn't event attempt to google. 4. The question will filter out candidates who don't know how roman numerals work and / or googled it to research how roman numerals work. Not only are these good candidates filtered out, but now they are telling all their other good candidate friends about that company and their stupid questions. 5. The pool of good candidates that will respond to your opening just temporarily diminished by a few people (depending on friends in #4) 6. For all this, the business didn't even test something that is in any way relevant to what that business does, unless that business is a digital clock face maker for smart watches or something. If any one of these happened, that's bad. Way more thought and consideration should have gone into this question.
• xor1 8y ago
  >backdoor reference check Anyone know a good place to do one of these on myself? I have an infraction on record (traffic ticket) that apparently shows up as a misdemeanor in at least one database. I found this out during my Global Entry interview. I'd like to begin the long and painful process of unraveling this, but I don't really know where to start. It could be a problem in just one database, or in dozens.
  • dx034 8y ago
    I would be very surprised if that flags up anywhere, unless you apply for a government position.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• partycoder 8y ago
  tl;dr: A guy tried to social engineer a recruiter by providing fake references and creating fake profiles. The recruiter verified the references through contacts in the mentioned companies. A better conclusion for this unnecessarily long article: pay for a background check including employment verification once the candidate passes all interview rounds.
• ww520 8y ago
  This read like a soft marketing material for Linkedin.
• megy 8y ago
  > The next day I received two references from the recruiter—but neither was a manager and neither was from Acme Corp. Apparently she was still waiting for that particular reference. Odd…but OK. Why wouldn’t he have that info readily available? Getting ref's takes time, it is silly to think it doesn't. You need to contact the people and ask them first, and lots of people are very busy with work. You are not there priority.
  • jiveturkey 8y ago
    apparently the contact came from an outside recruiter. not from the candidate himself. when dealing with an agency like this, the agency normally has refs in hand, in advance.
• donretag 8y ago
  I get catfished often. Company X offers me a role where I have responsibilities Y and benefits Z. Promotions after a set number of time. Times go by, still not doing Y, but intern level work. Benefits Z never appear. And that promotion? Sorry, someone needs to die or leave first, and then maybe we will hire a direct replacement. Companies lie all the time in order to get a candidate to join.
  • danpalmer 8y ago
    Are you “interviewing” the company well enough when you are looking for a job? They shouldn’t be lying, but you can often pick up on these things through red flags in answers they give to your questions.
    • hinkley 8y ago
      Maybe it’s a local thing, but I find I rarely have time to interview the company anymore. For the most part they’ve a set agenda that takes up all the time. I miss the days when nobody knew how to interview. I had plenty of time to ask questions.
      • organsnyder 8y ago
        Any good interview process will allow—even encourage—candidates to ask questions. I've found that most interviewers are very open to me turning things around and asking them something; and judging by the way interviewers tend to love talking about their companies, I think it's been to my advantage to do so. Yes, good interviewers often have a script; but a good script will provide time for questions and other free dialogue.
• njharman 8y ago
  > He impressed each interviewer with his knowledge and passion for the brand, his sales acumen, outbound hunter mentality, and overall presence. > Our Catfish never faltered, kept a smile on his face the entire time, and did his homework. We even talked about sales operations, discussed the pros and cons of MEDDIC, and talked about Salesforce workflows. I mean, this guy was pretty good. Sounds like they were an excellent candidate. That you let go.
  • meowface 8y ago
    A good employee who goes to great lengths to deceive others will eventually create more trouble than they're worth.
  • austenallred 8y ago
    They were a great candidate right up until the "lied on their resume and in job interviews, also created a fake email address and phone number to pretend to be someone else" part.
    • Spearchucker 8y ago
      You don't know that. The only way you're going to know that is to ask why. Call him back in, tell him is skillz are the bomb, but why lie? Who knows, there might be an acceptable answer.
    • dx034 8y ago
      Maybe the recruiter did that after the candidate told them that he can't provide one? Recruiters usually get paid after the contract is signed.. I would've definitely called the candidate.
  • yborg 8y ago
    A great candidate that would place a large knife into you and your company's back at the first opportunity. This guy's name should have been in the article to save the rest of the industry a little bit of time ... and the guy would probably get some job offers from the people who read this and thought "excellent candidate!". The hiring company should also then publicize this excellent hire so the industry can see what firms out there believe "Lying = Sales".
• paul7986 8y ago
  I’m so happy that I’m older and do not work in a place filled with young or insecure people all worried about making themselves look best vs. working together/pulling in each other’s strengths and getting the job done awesomely. I could never work at Google or places where you exhaust yourself physically and emotionally to shine brighter then the next. Barf!!! This manager’s hiring post reads to me like a company filled with brogrammers.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• Steeeve 8y ago
  It's strange to me how much linkedin is valued in silicon valley because to me it's like the ugly stepsister of social networking. Expecting someone to have a fully built out profile and expecting that person to actively seek out contacts in their own company is strange. I typically seek out contacts either when I first meet them or not at all. The only rhyme or reason to when I do it is when I happen to have a reason to be on linkedin. People are very haphazard about what their contacts look like. Some people have 50% recruiters, some people it's all friends, some people it's work colleagues, some people it's potential clients. Just because you know somebody doesn't mean that you are linkedin friends, and just because you aren't linkedin friends, doesn't mean that that person knows much about you at all. I wouldn't trust social profile hunting as a real gauge for anyone's abilities. I know plenty of good coders that don't have github accounts because they aren't involved in open source at all. There are plenty of recruiters that don't know linkedin because they have other sources that fill their pipelines. There are people that build out their profiles specifically for job searches. There are others that won't build out a profile at all. As far as back-channel references go, I'm not a fan. I expect references to be minimal because giving a reference is odd territory. A bad reference can result in a lawsuit, so why would anyone ever give a bad one? A TMI good reference can result in a lawsuit. People should stick to the basics. The danger territory as far as I'm concerned is hiring someone at the tail end of a long group of rejects. You peel back your instincts in order to get to the finish line.
  • jasonkester 8y ago
    Indeed. My LinkedIn account has a few contacts, but they're each a combination of two rare events: - somebody from an old company added me as a contact, and - I happen to have checked LinkedIn that year That adds up to maybe six random people over 15 year. My GitHub account is similar looking. A few public client libraries for my sass businesses, some private repos from old consulting gigs, and a handy way to log in to a few other awkward developer services. You wouldn't hire me after looking at either.
  • raesene9 8y ago
    I'm not really surprised at how heavily linkedin is used. It's an easy check for companies to carry out, so they'll make use of it. As a candidate spending a bit of time connecting to people on Linkedin can help your chances of finding a role, so why not do it? Obviously, some people will have other better avenues of getting roles, but it's one avenue that can be used. Personally I've never used Linkedin to find a role however I do find it handy just to get an idea of who works where in the industry and where pepople I've known in previous roles work now.
• lentil_soup 8y ago
  Off topic, but what's an "AE"?
  • laser 8y ago
    Account executive?
  • calcifer 8y ago
    Account Executive, I think.
• viach 8y ago
  I can't imagine someone passed a software developer interview and got rejected over the bad references, or better, even having checked his references at all. Something to consider before moving to Bay Area.
• xtrapolate 8y ago
  (1) I don't want to hire dishonest/unreliable/disingenuous people. I wouldn't want to work alongside them, and I prefer to distance myself from such personalities at all cost. (2) From a job seeker's perspective, I don't want to be secretly spied on by a potential employer. I can (and often will) volunteer any information necessary, through a mutually agreed upon channel. I wouldn't want someone prying through my personal social network accounts, secretly contacting random people that may or may not know me from past workplaces. I wouldn't want a potential employer making baseless assumptions based on my social media accounts (or lack thereof).
  • pfortuny 8y ago
    quote: “if I didn’t do my backdoor checks I would have never uncovered the Catfish.” So: the end justifies the means... This is the way of tyranny. Unbelievable and unacceptable.
• catfish123 8y ago
  Disclaimer: I not condoning any lying and misdirection. It's interesting how we seem to tolerate plenty of lying and manipulation from managers, even more CEOs and the ads industry (ads are communication from companies) and even more from politicians. For an unemployed person, lying might be seen as necessary not to end up homeless. For a CEO or a politician perhaps it can be about getting marginally more support or power or money. Again, I'm not condoning it. Yet it seems society is less forgiving with the less fortunate.
• Iv 8y ago
  I am not sure why she feels it shows such a glaring hole in their recruitment process? Interviews and CVs are extremely vulnerable to lying. The only step in the process to catch liars is exactly what she did: be a bit paranoid about references.
• f4stjack 8y ago
  The thing I don't get is, and probably I'll be downvoted to hell because of that, even though this guy lied about his past, his knowledge is solid. Nobody can guess what the interviewers will ask you and from what I've read from the text he aced those. If this is the tech business rolls what I see that it wants developers with a history, with connections, with "clout" so to speak; doesn't matter if you can help their business immensely, or fit to the position they are listing for. And this attitude is really really paradoxical. Like you are not searching for a candidate with required skillset but an ideal candidate with required skillset with glowing references. Because why take the risk? Like having a glowing history prevents anything happening... Anyway imho what you are trying to gauge from a job interview is how good that guy/gal is. And I'm sure if that guy did say "I am an newly trained man with no relevant job history" he wouldn't go into the interview stage even though he knows his stuff for his application. I mean if he failed that, I'd say "okay this guy is trying to scam this company" but no, he is able and informed about the position he is applying to. And that's totally irrelevant from the text I am reading. Which is bonkers if you pardon my french. This text also reminded me of a quote from Neil Gaiman, he faked his references for his first job and then he worked to create those references(https://singjupost.com/full-transcript-neil-gaiman-commencement-speech-to-the-university-of-the-arts-class-of-2012/2/ https://singjupost.com/full-transcript-neil-gaiman-commencem...). In his words he was "chronologically challenged". So if he was trying to be a writer in our modern times, we wouldn't have a Neil Gaiman.
  • lvillani 8y ago
    His knowledge is solid, sure, but would you really want to work with someone who has such a strong inclination to cheat and deceive? I certainly wouldn't.
    • tomcooks 8y ago
      He adapted to an unfavourable situation, studied hard, did his research well and passed multiple tests - I'd gladly work with someone like that
      • watwut 8y ago
• fwdpropaganda 8y ago
  > We even talked about sales operations, discussed the pros and cons of MEDDIC, and talked about Salesforce workflows. I mean, this guy was pretty good. > Maybe he wouldn’t have even known how to log into Salesforce. I think the author is just a pretty bad interviewer.
• tomcooks 8y ago
  I'd have sat down with him and told him I know he's lying, but hire him anyway because he managed to adapt to the situation and excel (which is exactly what I want from a manager).
• gaius 8y ago
  For everyone that fakes their way through an interview, there’s a job ad that was a bait-and-switch anyway. That is just how the game is played now. I don’t like it either, but don’t hate the player.
• aaron695 8y ago
  I'm surprised people think back-channel/backdoor references are legal. Maybe they are in OP's location but they certainly are not ethical. You have no right to ever complain about facebook etc privacy again if you think you have the right to possibly get someone fired by betraying their trust like that. And any company that allows employees to back-channel reference is also incredibly unethical. What annoys me the most is that fact the OP seems proud of the fact.
• blauditore 8y ago
  Wouldn't the fake reference part be easy to debunk? If applicable, call the company's generic (front desk) phone number and ask to be forwarded to XY. If the company is too large for that, use email and make sure the domain of the address you got matches the official company website.
• the_watcher 8y ago
  Isn't employment verification a standard part of background checks? Whenever I've gone through them, I've had to provide contact info to verify my employment at least 5 years back.
• ihsw2 8y ago
  Catfishing can be the only way to get a job. The article author clearly reinforces this by explicitly stating that he was attracted to this candidate on the basis of their pedigree. Here is a person that would've otherwise been fine but their only qualification missing was something outside of their control -- repeat, someone that would've otherwise been a qualified candidate. Is the tech industry driven by merit or is it driven by nepotism? You decide.
• ebbv 8y ago
  Tip #3 is pretty silly. Lots of people don't use LinkedIn, it's a horrible site, and a LinkedIn profile isn't proof of anything. Spend more time talking to your candidates and ask for real references. Don't trust phone numbers and emails given by the candidate, if someone references someone who works at a company then contact the company through their public contact methods.
• dx034 8y ago
  Is getting a reference from your current manager considered standard? How do you get that without tipping your manager off?
• hexo 8y ago
  never give your (new) employer your social profile!
• venuur 8y ago
  This seems to be more of a story of a flawed interview process. The author claims all the interviews when very well. This suggests their questions are not substantive enough to actually distinguish an experienced candidate from others. Alternatively, the “catfish” was amply qualified and faked references for reasons not discussed in the article.
• phendrenad2 8y ago
  Isn't a "backdoor reference check" a great way to tip off the candidate's current employer that they're looking around, and make the candidate your enemy for life?
• emodendroket 8y ago
  I'm not going to defend lying on your resume, but the contours of this story are interesting -- they talked to this guy because of the fraudulent history, and then were champing at the bit to hire him, which suggests that in every other way he was a good candidate. Perhaps we're putting an excessive emphasis on the previous companies someone's worked at.
  • mercer 8y ago
    I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Based on the story itself, I have no reason to believe that they'd have dismissed him if he had been honest and competent.
    • emodendroket 8y ago
      The story seems to suggest he was "comfortable" with him after he saw his work history, which suggested to me that an honest resume may have ended up in the trash can without any interview.
      • mercer 8y ago
        Ah, right. I can see that.
• linkmotif 8y ago
  How is this catfishing? Isn't this just attempting to lie to get a job?
• ianamartin 8y ago
  Coming soon to a blog near you: "I was the perfect candidate and didn't get the offer because companies hire based on who you know and where you worked, not how good you are." Assuming that all of this is completely accurate and not at all written by someone who's a little wonky (Honestly, heart palpitations over a fucking candidate? Dude, cool your jets, man. You are waaaaaaaaay too stressed about this.) it's still an extremely unusual situation. Anyone who uses this one--in my opinion at least partially false and possibly entirely fabricated--instance to go around giving advice about hiring has a screw loose. The takeaways are incredibly suspect. 1. Trust your gut. You know what? Fuck your gut. I don't care about your gut. Or mine. Gut instincts are more often than not a thinly veiled excuse for allowing racism, sexism, and insecurity into the hiring decision. Instead of something murky and nebulous like a gut instinct, try having a process instead. And follow it, even if it disagrees with your gut. 2. Social profile Fuck that too. Social profiles are bullshit. LinkedIn is a bullshit predictor of anything and a bullshit indicator of past performance. So is GitHub. 3. References--given or backdoor Fuck this too. References are meaningless. Don't bother. The references a candidate gives you are going to be at least neutral if not glowing. Extremely few people are dumb enough to give bad references. Backdoor references are extremely unethical. References are noise, not signal. 4. Stalk your candidates online looking for anything suspicious. Wait for it . . . . Fuck this too. If you dig deep enough, you'll find something wrong with everyone. The author says he doesn't know what would've happened if he'd gone ahead with the hire. I do. The author would've continued the neurotic and unhealthy behavior displayed in the article. He would've continued to be the kind of boss who makes decisions based on his gut regardless of anything else a situation might be calling for. He would've brought the candidate into a toxic work environment run by a person who is entirely too emotionally involved with his job. The author would probably have ended up firing the candidate and then later refused to acknowledge that he ever worked there when future companies called for references. In my opinion, every element of this article is extremely suspect. From the veracity of the facts therein to the takeaways based on them, it all smells a little . . . fishy. My main takeaway is that I should remember to never apply to work at this company. But then again, that's just my gut talking.
• jpz 8y ago
  I presume an "AE role" is an account executive role - which must be a sales and relationship role? It would seem to me that he aced his interview - he certainly sold the story! I don't mean to imply sales is unethical btw, I know ethical sales people - but the fact they couldn't filter the prospective candidate on actual skills or knowledge, and only filtered the candidate for fabrication, seems to indicate they are hiring for people of a certain background. The fact he gamed that is quite impressive, but it also speaks a lot about whatever the hiring criteria is.
• pc86 8y ago
  > But, in the end, something would have slipped and the situation would have caused repercussions six months down the line. Sorry but I just don't believe this part. People have faked their way into high paying, high powered jobs like this before. Sometimes they're caught, but I just can't bring myself to believe that every single person gets caught every single time. I've often thought about creating an entirely fake, nearly perfect resume for a VP or SVP job just to see if I could even get an interview, but I don't want to waste anyone's time with that and I'd be more than a little worried about the professional implications.
• jyew 8y ago
  interesting, lots of people are condemning this lying act but have no problem with the "fake it till you make it" culture
• bausshf 8y ago
  Good article, but please fix the site. The stars for certain text will cover text in the article making some things "hard" to read.
• GBond 8y ago
  Isn't this the plot of Mad Men?