8 ms·

I was hiring manager for 3 positions about 4 months ago and the amount of fake applications out there was mind boggling to me. I would say 90% were either entir

I was hiring manager for 3 positions about 4 months ago and the amount of fake applications out there was mind boggling to me. I would say 90% were either entirely fake or had the exact same generated ai text. It got so bad that we started only looking at resumes that had a working LinkedIn link. Also after so many bad resumes I started being very forgiving for the ones that didn't fully match the job requirements if they had something in them that made it seem like a real person, e.g. a personal hobby section. I think a lot of people discourage writing that but I argue it makes you stand out in an ocean of fake and copy pasted junk.

CalRobert 2y ago
What if we don’t like linked in? Is it effectively mandatory?
Amezarak 2y ago
Well, that's some handy information. I had no idea any employer would care one whit about my LinkedIn, or that a personal hobby section was considered anything but totally superfluous and irrelevant. I suppose I am supposed to actually fill out my LinkedIn too?
7thpower 2y ago
What did the working LinkedIn link help validate?
- shalmanese 2y ago
  That you have a decent number of connections and some of them are mutuals so I know you're a respected part of the software community.
hibikir 2y ago
And that's not even enough: A few weeks ago I had to interview someone who had what appeared to be a realistic profile. Everything that came out of their mouth was from chatGPT It was suspicious, but the ruse became clear when they shared the wrong screen, so we could see his prompt, and how everything we said was being read in. At this point every remote internet checklist has to include checks for humanity, because the percentage of straight out fakes is too high. Even the questions to ask me at the end were GPT provided.
- tugu77 2y ago
  > At this point every remote internet checklist has to include checks for humanity, I genuinely don't understand this requirement. Isn't an interview exactly that? It's a conversation pretending to be about a technical problem/question/challenge but in reality its purpose is to find out whether you click with the person and would want to work with them. If some ChatGPT text can trick you then your process is broken anyway and everybody joining your company can expect colleagues selected by this sub-par process.
  - davidclark 2y ago
    > If some ChatGPT text can trick you then your process is broken anyway This is pretty unfair and seems like victim-blaming when we have companies spending billions of dollars to create these programs with the specific intent of trying to pass the Turing test.
    - brookst 2y ago
      There’s a bit of an echo chamber on HN where people convince each other that all LLM-generated text is easy to identify, riddled with errors, and “obviously” inferior to all real-human writing. Because some LLM writing fits those criteria and is easily identified, these folks are convinced they can identify all LLM writing and anyone who can’t must be a dunce.
      - tugu77 2y ago
        I didn't claim anything about identifying writing. That's a strawman. I'm talking about humans talking to each other. Even if it's in a zoom call. Any interview process that doesn't include that is broken, and that's my claim. Echo chamber or not.
        brookst 2y ago
        Apologies for misunderstanding you, then. Agreed that human to human is critical, especially for identifying culture fit (not homogeneity of course, just interaction styles like openness, etc). I do think people cheat video interviews with LLM help, but in-person should always be required anyway, even if it’s via proxy (“meet with a colleague from our Madrid office”).
casenmgreen 2y ago
I left LinkedIn years ago, because everyone and their dog was copying my entire profile. I was happy for that info to go to potential employers, but not to random company and its canine friend. Then MS bought LI and I was so glad I'd left years ago already. I've seen one of two places have mandatory URL fields for LinkedIn profiles. One of the impressions I've been getting is that if you do not fit exactly into an recruitment agencies process, you're DoA, and I have begun to suspect the only work they do is look at LinkedIn.
- XenophileJKO 2y ago
  Well LinkedIn does a lot of stuff around making sure the accounts are for real people. Kind of helps with many of the issues people are complaining about. I mean they can improve it, but they do some level of effort.
- Aurornis 2y ago
  Who cares if someone is copying your profile? Having an established LinkedIn profile with their simple identity verification tool is such a trivial amount of effort for de-risking your job search that it’s hard to justify boycotting LinkedIn at this point. If an application looks suspicious for some reason, I’ll look for their LinkedIn profile as the second step. If I can’t find one or if the profile is also questionable, I move on. LinkedIn is far from perfect, but it’s at least some signal in a world where the noise level is rising fast.
  - acheron 2y ago
    LinkedIn locked my account for no reason awhile ago and apparently want me to send a photo of my ID to some sketchy “verification” third party. No thanks. I’m glad it’s a trivial amount of effort for you, I guess.
gooob 2y ago
> only looking at resumes that had a working LinkedIn link wait shouldn't that already have been the case? lol
irrational 2y ago
I haven’t been job hunting since around 2002, so I’m completely out of the loop. Why are people submitting fake resumes? Are they hoping to get hired despite having no skills beyond using ChatGPT? But, what happens after that? They don’t have the skills to do the job, so what was the point of getting hired?
- wruza 2y ago
  I can only think of a multiple-salary for onboarding period scam, where they llm all their job and get fired everywhere after a month with a couple years worth of money. You can’t really fire a hired guy without paying them at least once in US, can you?
  - hansvm 2y ago
    You (almost always) have to pay them for any work they actually did. If you catch a North Korean citizen day 1 of onboarding, you're obligated to kick them out immediately, and you might have to pay them for the few hours they were there. If you catch them before they start, you (usually) don't have to pay them.
- Aurornis 2y ago
  A growing scam involves people applying to remote jobs under fake or stolen identities. The work is then done by someone else or an agency that assumes the identity and collects the pay. They know it won’t last long so they try to target companies that look like someone could become another generic name on a spreadsheet for a year or two. There’s also a rise of “overemployed” people who farm out second and third jobs. Again, they don’t care about anything other than collecting paychecks for a while until they go through the long onboarding, ramp-up, and PIP process, by which time they may have collected $100K for doing barely any work. They use fake backgrounds and resumes as a way to avoid their primary employer getting notified and as a sort of filter for companies who aren’t looking closely at the details. If you can trick them with a fake application, you’ll probably be able to trick them in the interview and then trick them into paying you for a long time too.
  - 2y ago

CalRobert 2y ago

What if we don’t like linked in? Is it effectively mandatory?

Amezarak 2y ago

Well, that's some handy information. I had no idea any employer would care one whit about my LinkedIn, or that a personal hobby section was considered anything but totally superfluous and irrelevant. I suppose I am supposed to actually fill out my LinkedIn too?

7thpower 2y ago

What did the working LinkedIn link help validate?

shalmanese 2y ago
That you have a decent number of connections and some of them are mutuals so I know you're a respected part of the software community.

hibikir 2y ago

And that's not even enough: A few weeks ago I had to interview someone who had what appeared to be a realistic profile. Everything that came out of their mouth was from chatGPT It was suspicious, but the ruse became clear when they shared the wrong screen, so we could see his prompt, and how everything we said was being read in. At this point every remote internet checklist has to include checks for humanity, because the percentage of straight out fakes is too high. Even the questions to ask me at the end were GPT provided.

tugu77 2y ago
> At this point every remote internet checklist has to include checks for humanity, I genuinely don't understand this requirement. Isn't an interview exactly that? It's a conversation pretending to be about a technical problem/question/challenge but in reality its purpose is to find out whether you click with the person and would want to work with them. If some ChatGPT text can trick you then your process is broken anyway and everybody joining your company can expect colleagues selected by this sub-par process.
- davidclark 2y ago
  > If some ChatGPT text can trick you then your process is broken anyway This is pretty unfair and seems like victim-blaming when we have companies spending billions of dollars to create these programs with the specific intent of trying to pass the Turing test.
  - brookst 2y ago
    There’s a bit of an echo chamber on HN where people convince each other that all LLM-generated text is easy to identify, riddled with errors, and “obviously” inferior to all real-human writing. Because some LLM writing fits those criteria and is easily identified, these folks are convinced they can identify all LLM writing and anyone who can’t must be a dunce.
    - tugu77 2y ago
      I didn't claim anything about identifying writing. That's a strawman. I'm talking about humans talking to each other. Even if it's in a zoom call. Any interview process that doesn't include that is broken, and that's my claim. Echo chamber or not.
      - brookst 2y ago
        Apologies for misunderstanding you, then. Agreed that human to human is critical, especially for identifying culture fit (not homogeneity of course, just interaction styles like openness, etc). I do think people cheat video interviews with LLM help, but in-person should always be required anyway, even if it’s via proxy (“meet with a colleague from our Madrid office”).

casenmgreen 2y ago

I left LinkedIn years ago, because everyone and their dog was copying my entire profile. I was happy for that info to go to potential employers, but not to random company and its canine friend. Then MS bought LI and I was so glad I'd left years ago already. I've seen one of two places have mandatory URL fields for LinkedIn profiles. One of the impressions I've been getting is that if you do not fit exactly into an recruitment agencies process, you're DoA, and I have begun to suspect the only work they do is look at LinkedIn.

XenophileJKO 2y ago
Well LinkedIn does a lot of stuff around making sure the accounts are for real people. Kind of helps with many of the issues people are complaining about. I mean they can improve it, but they do some level of effort.
Aurornis 2y ago
Who cares if someone is copying your profile? Having an established LinkedIn profile with their simple identity verification tool is such a trivial amount of effort for de-risking your job search that it’s hard to justify boycotting LinkedIn at this point. If an application looks suspicious for some reason, I’ll look for their LinkedIn profile as the second step. If I can’t find one or if the profile is also questionable, I move on. LinkedIn is far from perfect, but it’s at least some signal in a world where the noise level is rising fast.
- acheron 2y ago
  LinkedIn locked my account for no reason awhile ago and apparently want me to send a photo of my ID to some sketchy “verification” third party. No thanks. I’m glad it’s a trivial amount of effort for you, I guess.

gooob 2y ago

> only looking at resumes that had a working LinkedIn link wait shouldn't that already have been the case? lol

irrational 2y ago

I haven’t been job hunting since around 2002, so I’m completely out of the loop. Why are people submitting fake resumes? Are they hoping to get hired despite having no skills beyond using ChatGPT? But, what happens after that? They don’t have the skills to do the job, so what was the point of getting hired?

wruza 2y ago
I can only think of a multiple-salary for onboarding period scam, where they llm all their job and get fired everywhere after a month with a couple years worth of money. You can’t really fire a hired guy without paying them at least once in US, can you?
- hansvm 2y ago
  You (almost always) have to pay them for any work they actually did. If you catch a North Korean citizen day 1 of onboarding, you're obligated to kick them out immediately, and you might have to pay them for the few hours they were there. If you catch them before they start, you (usually) don't have to pay them.
Aurornis 2y ago
A growing scam involves people applying to remote jobs under fake or stolen identities. The work is then done by someone else or an agency that assumes the identity and collects the pay. They know it won’t last long so they try to target companies that look like someone could become another generic name on a spreadsheet for a year or two. There’s also a rise of “overemployed” people who farm out second and third jobs. Again, they don’t care about anything other than collecting paychecks for a while until they go through the long onboarding, ramp-up, and PIP process, by which time they may have collected $100K for doing barely any work. They use fake backgrounds and resumes as a way to avoid their primary employer getting notified and as a sort of filter for companies who aren’t looking closely at the details. If you can trick them with a fake application, you’ll probably be able to trick them in the interview and then trick them into paying you for a long time too.
- 2y ago