4 ms·

I've seen a lot of this, and I've started to pick up a few red flags you can watch out for. - The biggest and most obvious is that they don't have a functionin

I've seen a lot of this, and I've started to pick up a few red flags you can watch out for. - The biggest and most obvious is that they don't have a functioning webcam that clearly shows who they are. If I encounter this, the interview ends immediately. - Another one is, if you do hire a person, they suddenly want to be paid through some unrelated company. ("Oh, it's my brothers company, I do this for tax reasons"). There are other red flags which aren't as certain, but should definitely raise your suspicions: - The CV has been professionally designed or laid out. - The most recent job entry is a vague "Remote contractor" or similar which doesn't list specific companies they've worked for. - The name on the email doesn't match the name on the CV. - You get a series of emails following up after a few days, as though someone is running a drip email campaign. - The application email is sent directly to any of your employees, rather than to your standard recruiting email address, almost as though someone has used a sales tool to find internal contacts. These last 5 points can occur in legitimate applications, but when you see them, it's a sign that additional suspicion is warranted. These fake employees are generally not individuals, but professional operations.

calvinmorrison 4y ago
> - The biggest and most obvious is that they don't have a functioning webcam that clearly shows who they are. If I encounter this, the interview ends immediately. I get this. I also just did like 10 rounds of interviews and between google meets, zoom, teams, phone calls, I would say there was a 50% failure rate of somebody on the call having a non working webcam or another issue. I actually missed an opportunity at a job because the HR lady was bizarrely inflexible. I called, no answer, teams, couldn't let me in because of org permissions, yada yada. At some point I had rescheduled for the third time and just replied "look, I don't know what the issue is, but I will be happy to do an in-person interview". Never got a call back. So... tech problems do exist. I am on a phone call with a client right now who spent 10 minutes trying to get a screen share working. What can I do?
- Philip-J-Fry 4y ago
  Tech problems exist on the employer's end, that's all on them. If their Teams permissions don't allow someone external to join, then they aren't fit to be even trying to do remote hiring. In 2022 there's virtually no excuse for a non-functional webcam on the candidate side though. If they don't have a dedicated camera, then most laptops come with one as standard nowadays. If they don't have a laptop, then they at least have a basic smartphone. You'd have to be incredibly unlucky to have no webcam, no laptop and no smartphone. Yes, people without smartphones exist. But they are an absolute minority.
  - xboxnolifes 4y ago
    More than that, equipment is the cheap part of a developer. The company can easily provide any of this.
  - calvinmorrison 4y ago
    I was, and I mean, three minutes late to the meeting after having issues with teams (the issue was actually microsoft thinking I was still apart of my former company though I was signed out), and the lady left the call! I think an incompetent HR person prevented me from getting the job. I almost emailed the CEO out of frustration with the process
Falkon1313 4y ago
As to the last point, I've known or been referred by someone on the inside for all my career jobs that I eventually ended up in. If I didn't, I'd try to make a contact on the inside, to find out what the company and team are like, and who's the hiring manager, before applying. I think that's just good practice, call it pre-screening. No need to go through the whole lengthy (and expensive for the company) applying and interviewing process if a casual meeting discussion first doesn't go well. I did cold apply and get a job offer once. I accepted on contingency because their contract had a weird clause. They balked at the contingency and I canceled the acceptance. That was a waste of all of our time.

calvinmorrison 4y ago

> - The biggest and most obvious is that they don't have a functioning webcam that clearly shows who they are. If I encounter this, the interview ends immediately. I get this. I also just did like 10 rounds of interviews and between google meets, zoom, teams, phone calls, I would say there was a 50% failure rate of somebody on the call having a non working webcam or another issue. I actually missed an opportunity at a job because the HR lady was bizarrely inflexible. I called, no answer, teams, couldn't let me in because of org permissions, yada yada. At some point I had rescheduled for the third time and just replied "look, I don't know what the issue is, but I will be happy to do an in-person interview". Never got a call back. So... tech problems do exist. I am on a phone call with a client right now who spent 10 minutes trying to get a screen share working. What can I do?

Philip-J-Fry 4y ago
Tech problems exist on the employer's end, that's all on them. If their Teams permissions don't allow someone external to join, then they aren't fit to be even trying to do remote hiring. In 2022 there's virtually no excuse for a non-functional webcam on the candidate side though. If they don't have a dedicated camera, then most laptops come with one as standard nowadays. If they don't have a laptop, then they at least have a basic smartphone. You'd have to be incredibly unlucky to have no webcam, no laptop and no smartphone. Yes, people without smartphones exist. But they are an absolute minority.
- xboxnolifes 4y ago
  More than that, equipment is the cheap part of a developer. The company can easily provide any of this.
- calvinmorrison 4y ago
  I was, and I mean, three minutes late to the meeting after having issues with teams (the issue was actually microsoft thinking I was still apart of my former company though I was signed out), and the lady left the call! I think an incompetent HR person prevented me from getting the job. I almost emailed the CEO out of frustration with the process

Falkon1313 4y ago

As to the last point, I've known or been referred by someone on the inside for all my career jobs that I eventually ended up in. If I didn't, I'd try to make a contact on the inside, to find out what the company and team are like, and who's the hiring manager, before applying. I think that's just good practice, call it pre-screening. No need to go through the whole lengthy (and expensive for the company) applying and interviewing process if a casual meeting discussion first doesn't go well. I did cold apply and get a job offer once. I accepted on contingency because their contract had a weird clause. They balked at the contingency and I canceled the acceptance. That was a waste of all of our time.