Hiring engineers has always been hard. For a while, as a remote first company, it was actually amazing. The world was available to you. Talented individuals were everywhere. Today everyone is fake, like live-face-swapping fake. Over half the candidates are fake in some way. I’ve pretty much given up and have fallen back to referrals only.

This is me venting about the the top 5 fake candidate moments. I hate this new world.

Facey McFaceswap

I swear to you, this guy didn’t pay for the upgraded version of Magicam, which I had just learned about on this call (PLG FTW) when I googled the watermark.

According to his resume, he was very senior, working at top tier companies — a first red flag — in silicon valley for the last 16 years. After so long working in the USA, I would expect to be able to have a free flowing conversation. That did not happen, he said on the call he was from Spain, but he clearly was not. He was using someone’s LinkedIn on his resume, and he was face swapping with photos from that LinkedIn. Some of the facial features were coming through via the face swap, but there was something dead about the eyes so I might have figured this out without the watermark.

If the real Brian is out there, this guy stole your nose.

LinkedIn Campers

These are people who have somehow taken over a formerly real, but since abandoned LinkedIn profile. There’s been multiple data breaches on the platform with millions of credentials released so I don’t imagine this would be that hard. Lot’s of people give up on platforms like this and leave their accounts active and walk away, and they’re ripe for the taking.

In many cases, the most recent experience is a stealth start-up, sometimes it’s stealth for 5 years too long — another red flag.

Another super common tactic are people that replicate linkedin.com/in/firstnamelastname with the hyphenated version linkedin.com/in/firstname-lastname. In many cases the experience and education is the same.

A cursory google of your candidate will yield what seems like valid results, but upon further inspection, it starts to look quite suspicious.

If the linkedin for your candidate is /john-doe, then test to see what /johndoe is and whether it’s a copy.

The auto reply bot

The job hunt can be very dynamic. There’s lots to keep track of, and responsiveness as a candidate is an important quality. I can appreciate, especially for engineers, the desire to automate large parts of this process. I’d recommend avoiding email automation on reply. Much like everything, there’s edge cases that if not accounted for can make that process fall apart. I guess, for one, show up for your interviews. If you don’t, ensure your autoreply bot has accounted for that potential scenario. Maybe avoid automated communications to begin with.

The CarelessGPT

There used to be a time where the most lazy of applicants would send cover letters that looked like

Please accept my application for the {{role_title}} position at {{company_name}}

{{insert skills here}}

Now I tend to get cover letters that include continuation prompts from chatgpt where the user just copied the entire response, including any additional clarifying questions.

I expect most people to use some sort of AI to help them write because they think they need to personalize their application but they don’t actually want read into what the company is about or any details about the role. If you’re doing this, just proof read the darn response before you send it.

Don't actually live there

We're looking for candidates within certain time zones, with a number of regions that are off limits. This isn't stopping people though. I would guess that nearly half of the calls I got on, people weren't geographically seated where they said they were. 

If you don't have IP or geo logs on them, local sports pop-quizzes work like a charm. If you went to FSU, you would know the Gators. If your city won the Superbowl, you'd know some names of star athletes that I throw at you. If you hear rapid googling or eyes darting to another screen, they're likely full of shit.

For my job hunters out there, I’ve got two points of advice.

We’re hiring

We’re hiring full stack engineers, or if you’re mostly backend that works too. We’re python, django, react, react native, expo, leaning heavily into AI. We're a series A backed fully remote team of 12 with a D2C app in the digital vault space. Upload your CV here, and if you seem like a good fit I’ll respond with more details.