Recruiters, hiring managers, or anyone who reviews resumes either already has or will someday come across a fake candidate. This may be someone who lied on their resume or even went as far as to use a completely fraudulent identity. This has only gotten more common since the rise of remote work due to the pandemic, and now the introduction of AI poses even more uncertainty.
Now, why does this happen? The answer is twofold: They may just want to get hired, or they want to cause harm to the company. Most times, though, the goal is to just get hired at all costs.
Recruiters see fake candidates all the time. According to a survey of recruiters and hiring managers by Checkster, 77.6% of respondents encountered candidates who were misrepresenting themselves to a moderate or greater level throughout the hiring process. Another study found that 64.2% of Americans have lied about their personal details, skills, experience, or references on their resumes at least once. This can become worrisome for recruiters for obvious reasons. Even the FBI has gotten involved due to an increase in candidates using deepfake technology, and, with advancements in AI making it increasingly difficult to detect fake candidates, there is reason to believe this trend will only grow.
Where AI Comes into Play
AI has provided many benefits for HR professionals, especially around the hiring process, but it can also cause problems that only further complicate things.
Consider this situation: You’re a recruiter assessing seven job candidates, but six of them have very similar resumes. Coincidence? With GenAI becoming practically synonymous with resumes, it isn’t so far-fetched to consider that many candidates are simply pasting job descriptions into ChatGPT and asking it to create the resume for the ideal candidate for the role, which risks bringing in inaccurate information, creating bogus statistics, and even data from another person’s resume who also used AI. And if job seekers are applying to jobs in high volumes, they likely aren’t taking the time to tweak and personalize the output.
The Deepfake Problem
Deepfake technology is another scary contributor to this problem. This has come into play ever since the rise of virtual interviews, especially in the IT industry due to the high volume of remote jobs. The result: convincing synthetic media used by fraudulent candidates to hide their identities during video interviews.
The FBI has even issued warnings about a scheme in which fraudulent candidates apply for remote-work positions and use deepfake technology to hide their identity during the video interview process. In fact, 35% of US businesses have experienced a deepfake security incident in the last 12 months, ranking the second most common cybersecurity incident in the country.