Hiring Forecast: 25% Chance of Fiction

The candidate was strong but not perfect: They had deep knowledge, but fewer years of experience than the company would have preferred. After two virtual interviews, they were hired and onboarded, and started working remotely. But it wasn’t long before the manager realized the candidate lacked the right skills. They were way over their head. How could HR have gotten it so wrong?

This is an increasingly common tale at corporations. In a recent survey of 3,000 employees, some 6%—or 180 employees—admitted either to standing in for someone else’s interview, or having someone else do theirs, according to a new survey. The same report predicts that by 2028, 25% of résumés will be so reworked by AI as to be fraudulent. “There’s definitely an arms race going on between candidates and hiring managers,” says Bryan Ackermann, head of AI strategy and transformation at Korn Ferry.

To be sure, candidates have been fabricating résumés for as long as résumés have existed. But the current state of the job market, with AI affecting job openings and hiring, is forcing at least some candidates to take desperate steps. Most know full well that gen AI is particularly good at taking an existing résumé and rewriting it to optimally meet the criteria for a job posting. That résumé is then submitted into a corporate application-tracking system, which flags the candidate as extremely well-qualified. “AI is enabling these candidates to move much further down the recruiting funnel,” says Ackermann.

Of course, interviews then follow—and again, gen AI helps here. Most interviews take place remotely, allowing unethical interviewees to use a host of strategies, such as having a ChatGPT window open during the interview, to quickly field questions. (Someone sitting alongside the interviewee, out of view, can type in the questions in.) Candidates can also use a host of tools, such as Yoodli’s AI Interview Coach, to prepare. Some companies, especially in high-volume hiring, use AI agents to conduct first-round interviews; those programs are still relatively easy to cheat.

Experts say that few companies screen sufficiently to identify, let alone weed out, résumé fraud. “Unless it’s a very senior role, HR is not going to be confirming that the candidate was Student of the Year in 1988,” says HR expert Ron Porter, senior partner at Korn Ferry. Thus, the more mild forms of résumé fraud, such as extreme embellishment, often slide through unnoticed.  Porter most commonly sees false implications on résumés, such as an applicant saying that they attended a university for four years, without revealing that they did not actually receive a degree.

Experts say one strategy can pierce through the more serious fraud cases. “Firms are going to have to place a premium on in-person interviewing,” says Louis Montgomery Jr., principal in the HR Center of Expertise at Korn Ferry. Depending on the company and roles, this might mean sending candidates to local offices for interviews, or dispatching HR staff to areas with many candidates, or arranging for candidates to travel. Montgomery suggests that those interviews serve in part to verify candidates’ identities, both through the submitting of an official ID and through questions about their backgrounds, such as “Who are some of the colleagues that you worked with most at ABC Company?” One technique is to have an interviewer walk a candidate through their autobiography, a strategy that can sometimes catch other career blotches like firings, which can otherwise be invisible on a résumé with no job gaps.

References are also pivotal, experts say. Many companies will not give detailed references, but it’s still worth making the call, says Porter. He has discovered that nine times out of ten, the manager of a beloved employee will say something like, “I can only confirm that she worked here—she was great, and we really wanted to keep her.” A manager of a disliked employee will say something like, “I can’t comment,” in a tone of voice that suggests there was a problem. 

For remote interviews, experts advise firms to consider proctoring tech, which can monitor interviews to avoid in-interview cheating. For example, a company can, with the candidate’s permission, use apps that allow them to see what tabs are open on the screen of their computer. Or the interviewer can ask the candidate to place their phone across the room, so the candidate can’t use it to cheat. Other tools analyze interview recordings in order to gauge the likelihood that the interviewee was cheating. The technology for both candidates and interviewees is expected to improve substantially over the next few years. “This is a three-act play,” says Ackermann. “We’re still in Act I.” 

Learn more about Korn Ferry’s Talent Acquisition capabilities. 

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