[PreludeSH]

Originally Posted by am1m

All the comments about this being a particular issue from a certain region, is this the same region that is (in)famous for US visa and immigration fraud? Then perhaps companies should react the same way as the US embassies and subject resumes from that area to extra scrutiny!

Unfortunately I have seen this from same region that we all know. I have had a colleague asking me solution for tricky things in programming or domain. Later I came to know he works as consultant to someone who is in US and does the job on his behalf. It was 2 years ago and I was really surprised.

I had known about people lip synching (although I would blame the interviewers for asking prepared specific/discrete questions and not ask on what the person has done and elaborate on that) They are very cold about this and dont bother thinking if its right or wrong.

[Jude300]

Well a very nice thread and something that's becoming a trend with online interviews. While I have not had instances of lip sync i have had candidates who turned off camera quoting network bandwidth issues and were searching on Google for answers. We could make out based on the beating around the bush before coming up with well worded answers and also the keyboard noise in the case of one candidate. But this was noticed only for candidates with tech skills i.e. we had to recruit candidates to work on tableau dashboards and other automation initiatives. Working for a MNC Bank, we don't recruit candidates if we see such red flags even though the candidate otherwise presented well.

However, last week I had a very interesting interview where the candidate made reference to studying in Catholic schools and that he reads the Bible to enhance his knowledge thinking he could impress me. He made those remarks subtly and sandwiched into the response to questions but were totally irrelevant and unwarranted. If he had not made mention of these he would have been selected as both me and my colleague who interviewed him were impressed with him otherwise .

[satishv1987]

Originally Posted by GJ01

I do not want to create a political storm by saying where these candidates hailed from - we all are today way too short-tempered to take it and this thread will snowball into something else, but we too had such cases coming only from a particular region that has always been notorious for pushing fakes.

In the last 7-8 months, I've caught multiple candidates lip syncing their interviews and all of them hailed from the region you are referring to. This is not to insinuate that candidates from other states are all beacons of virtue. But there must be a reason why such one particular state has such a disproportionately large number of candidates using unscrupulous means to get into the IT sector or get an admit into an American university.

I would put it down to the insane dowry amounts that IT engineers and H1B visa holders command in the said region.

[rusteinstein]

A very funny video I saw a couple of years ago of a candidate caught lip syncing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aV03KuwI6UQ

[libranof1987]

I was part of the interview panel for my past organisation all through 2020 and '21 and we had two strict mandates from HR:
1) candidates' video always on
2) candidate to show ID proof on camera that we had to take a screenshot of

Despite this, one managed to slip through the cracks (lip sync) to round 2 but was finally exposed.

I've myself interviewed someone who was clearly reading off an answer sheet, and even Google'd twice.

[poloman]

Is this pointing to the wrong interview practices employed by the companies as well? In my opinion interviews should not be exams where you ask googlable questions. After joining the org, the guy/gal can google it anyway. Any way lot of coding nowadays is cut and paste from online or minor modifications of legacy code.

The interview should focus on the candidate's aptitude, problem solving skills, attitude and body language, analytical mind, quick thinking etc. You can learn technology but none of above mentioned skills. Also these are very difficult to fake.

[sunbaj]

Yes this is a very common issue off late. I have to take interviews on video calls and I have till now encountered close to 4 such cases. I have seen that the candidates angle themselves in such a way that there is no proper lighting and we have to repeatedly ask them to come to a better lit area. The stand that we have now taken is that if there is slightest of the doubt then do not onboard the resource. I also encountered this issue in one specific region. I know of a company where my friend works, they have actually taken a decision at corporate level if any candidate from that region is to be selected then the candidate will have to come to a specific location of company's designated place (like a office space) at least once for a technical interview.

Another issue that we have started encountering is that resources are just absconding after taking the 1st one or 2 month of salary. As soon as they are assigned to a project which usually takes 1.5 to 2 month because of background check, Drug test and other onboarding formalities they just go absconding.

[Small Bot]

I'm an HR dude as well, and yes, we have seen a few such cases in our company as well.
I remember a very recent case where the hiring manager found the staff's communication skills to be substantially different from what he saw in the interviews. So he flagged it off to HR.
Upon inquiry, the staff admitted that he had his friend attend the interview on his behalf. So he was summarily dismissed for Gross Misconduct (Impersonation and Fraud).

[Romins]

This is not something new, it is there for many years. We usually call these fake interviews "Nagavalli-Ganga". Very good English during interview, and when the guy comes to office he can't even say what he had for breakfast. I knew someone who did this for 25k per interview. He would do the interview for you on telephone and clear the technical rounds, way back in 2015. Video calls were not so popular those days.

[vabhian]

In my personal experience, I have seen fake interviews long before COVID too and someone here has mentioned that.

I took a lot of interviews last year - almost all of them over video calls - and I had my doubts over some candidates who used to an inordinate amount of time in starting to answer the question - and I am not saying that I expected anyone to start blabbering right away, but sometimes you get a feel that the person on the other end is taking a long pause and when he/she starts speaking they have got it every word as correct as it can be (as if they are reading it from somewhere). I also got few candidates who at the time of interview mentioned that their video is not working or some such excuse for not being able to come on camera - for all such cases, I just ask them to get it re-scheduled through HR and prefer not to take the interview.

My preference these days is always to focus on problem solving skills and aptitude (as pointed here by poloman above) and I ask them to explain the reasoning behind their answer or I push them in more scenario based problems to see how they tackle the problem or issue at hand (not possible for all job types/positions/levels, but I try wherever there is a possibility).

[meto]

It’s surprising to see the number of fake interviews happening in current times. With a boom in the IT industry and the burden of the sheer number of daily interviews conducted every day; I can easily understand how easy it is to effectively fake an interview. We have done our internal assessment at a personal level, and a whopping 8% of the candidates showcasing the experience of 3-6 years are faking the interviews in past 1.5 years. We have mandated at least 2 rounds of video interviews for the candidate to be selected.

It is not only the fake interviews but also the forged resumes creating a nuisance. The candidates mention large corporate names (Ex: Infosys, IBM, Accenture) as their employers, however, they work with them only as a third-party consultant under a different payroll organization. These payroll companies are mostly bogus. Once when I searched for such a payroll company on google; it ended up being a roadside computer repair technology & solutions shop. The recent trend is that they do not disclose this during their technical round and either disclose this during the HR round where the selection is finalized or omit this information altogether. All of these candidates are below average and have done some sort of a course before they appear for the interview. They are currently getting through because of market demands, but once onboarded, their background check comes back red and it becomes difficult for us to deal with such a situation. All these cases are outside the 8% number I mentioned before.

I do not want to categorize, but all of the applicants from the above two scenarios are from a very large university. Currently, we have to be extra-cautious when we see this university name in their resume. We have stopped taking risks on candidates from this university and unless someone is above average for the required position, that contender is dropped.

Personally, after a disagreement with one of my friends who is outside the IT industry on this topic, I have begun questioning myself if I am a biased interviewer. Every time I see the university name, I have to be extra-cautious, have a much longer interview and be sure before I select the candidate. At myself, it’s a guilty feeling and makes for an extremely sour sensation.

Are lip-syncing and fake resumes the limit? Not at all.

In pre-covid times, we had mass recruitment with about 150 in-person interviews scheduled. Two candidates successfully cleared 4 rounds of face-to-face interviews and were selected. During the joining time, two different candidates joined us. I had the final selection of both of these candidates and had probably taken about 25 interviews on that day; so it’s very hard to remember all of their faces after a month. We discovered that the folks who appeared in the interview; they have taken the aadhar card of actual joiners, photoshopped their picture, and successfully went through the verification channel on the interview date. Since there is no original aadhar document, it’s very easy and undetectable. Only after closely looking at the aadhar picture on the document taken on the interview date w.r.t his actual document, did we figure out what had happened. This thorough cross-verification was only done because both of these candidates could not even carry out a proper conversation and flags were raised immediately by the team. They had paid 10% of their annual CTC upfront for this before they joined us.

In another instance, one of my colleagues received an anonymous email stating a candidate who joined us is false with no prior experience. Someone from within the organization worked with this candidate and took all the telephonic interviews on his behalf. The person from within the organization also left quite immediately after the interview. After a year of joining, the joined candidate stopped paying him the agreed-upon monthly salary percentage and hence the resultant email. The whole incident was investigated and found out to be true.

[theflyingguy]

This is probably going on for years.

My first experience was when I was working in US for a reputed IT services provider back in 2012. We were looking for candidate with a niche skill and obviously, the manpower consulting premium for the role was higher. We had many candidates applying.

We generally had a separate hiring unit and a person joins a project for a different team at a different location. But since this was a niche skill, me and a an architect were interviewing the candidate for role in our team.

Long story short, the manpower consulting recommended a profile and we were impressed by the profile. We interviewed the gentleman and found him fit for the role. We extended the offer and the candidate joined us 2 weeks later.

This is where the things went wrong. The candidate who gave an interview and the guy who joined were totally different. The guy who gave interview was leaner with wavy hair and this guy who joined was on much healthier side and straight hair. We immediately questioned this guy & he agreed that it was someone else who gave the interview. The manpower agency knew our operating model and had assured the candidate that you will never meet the hiring guys ever and you can learn skills while on the project. The candidate who joined us had paid hefty sum for the confirmed job.

We unfortunately asked the guy to leave immediately and raised the issue with HR. They apparently fined the manpower agency but did not stop doing business. We made sure that this was well communicated within the org and found that there were many such candidates, sadly from a certain prominent region in India.

[sunbaj]

I have been thinking about the unemployment rate in India and how news channels like NDTV and others and specially Ravish from NDTV always cribs about the unemployment in India.

I currently work for a small IT company and we are in need to close to 200 to 250 resources and are struggling like anything to hire resources and we are a small company with a strength of close to 600. I have a friend who is in another company and the scenario is no different there though that is a slightly bigger company with a strength of close to 2.5k and they are looking to onboard 500 to 700 resources. And this resource crunch issue is across the board in IT sector.

Now do we assume that the graduates that are coming out of the colleges are so pathetic that they are unable to make it to these IT jobs. Where do we as a country stand in terms of good quality resources.

Or is it that to control unemployment India now need to move to manufacturing where there is no need of quality resource but instead who can work like a machine can succeed.

Another issue that I have come across in India is that many in India are not committed to their work. I have spent 7 years in US and I have seen how committed the people out there were to their jobs. Even a janitor out there was more committed in his job of cleaning the restrooms than some of my IT colleagues.

[vinu_h]

We are passing candidates through a proctor led online exam before onboarding them. They have you install a software that will take control of your device. You'll need to show the room around you - walls, furniture, under the table, finally put your phone into selfie mode and show the laptop itself. While you will need to make yourself visible to them, they won't be, and screen grab or window switch etc will be disabled. The exam is paused if they hear you speak or anyone else appears in the camera, and you'll need to repeat the steps listed earlier. Good stuff.

Very few opt for in person exams at the test center

[AirbusCapt]

Originally Posted by sunbaj

I have been thinking about the unemployment rate in India and how new channels like NDTV and others and specially Ravish from NDTV always cribs about the unemployment in India.

I currently work for a small IT company and we are in need to close to 200 to 250 resources and are struggling like anything to hire resources and we are a small company with a strength of close to 600. I have a friend who is in another company and the scenario is no different there though that is a slightly bigger company with a strength of close to 2.5k and they are looking to onboard 500 to 700 resources. And this resource crunch issue is across the board in IT sector.

Now do we assume that the graduates that are coming out of the colleges are so pathetic that they are unable to make it to these IT jobs. Where do we as a country stand in terms of good quality resources.

Or is it that to control unemployment India now need to move to manufacturing where there is no need of quality resource but instead who can work like a machine can succeed.

Another issue that I have come across in India is that no one is committed to their work. I have spend 7 years in US and I have seen how committed the people out there were to their jobs. Even a janitor out there was more committed in his job of cleaning the restrooms than some of my IT colleagues.

The resource crunch in IT is at bottom levels, the moment you shift to supervisor and higher levels, companies are always looking at ways and means to fire people. What you need to understand is that the cyber workshops we run in India (falsely called as software development) always require fresh, cheap resources to run the treadmill. The moment the resource completes a couple of appraisal cycles and gets salary hikes, he is not cost effective for the business.

The true unemployment lies in other core sectors, due the pathetic government policies and the never ending pandemic, several lakhs have lost their jobs adding to the unemployment pool. Adding to this chaos is millions of fresh graduates from all streams who are looking for jobs.
The real unemployment in India is to the tune of about 20/25% which is much higher than the fake government figures.