Is randomness the answer to fake job applicants?

Fake or fraudulent job applications have become a widespread issue across global job markets. Surveys indicate that a majority of job seekers have misrepresented themselves during the hiring process. For example, 64.2% of Americans admitted to lying on their resumes at least once (Study: Fake job references and resume lies – StandOut CV), and one study found 70% of workers overall have lied on resumes, with over a third confessing they do so frequently (70% Of Workers Lie On Resumes, New Study Shows).

A recent talent industry survey found some recruiters reporting that 30–40% of all applications for certain vacancies are fake (often generated by bots or coordinated fraudsters) (10 versions of fake in the global and local job market). This problem has been exacerbated by remote hiring and AI – the rise of virtual recruiting means candidates can more easily conceal their true identity or use technology to cheat. Hiring managers across sectors are finding it harder to “quantify the exact scale” of the issue, but evidence suggests it’s “widespread across a broad spectrum of sectors” worldwide (The Growing Threat Of Fake Job Applicants | Tripwire). The consensus is that fake applications are on the rise globally, propelled by the incentives of remote work and accessible AI tools that help candidates fabricate credentials or even simulate appearances.

Importantly, “fake” can encompass a range of behaviors – from minor résumé exaggerations to outright fraud. At one end, lying on job applications has become startlingly common: a Checkster survey of applicants and hiring managers found a whopping 78% of job applicants admit to stretching the truth (Your Candidate Tells a “White Lie” on their Resume. Do You Hire Them—Or Pass? | Harver). At the more extreme end, some candidates “don’t exist entirely or aren’t who they claim to be” (The Growing Threat Of Fake Job Applicants | Tripwire). These include people using stolen identities or deepfake technology to impersonate someone else, or applicants hiring proxy interviewees to pose as them through the hiring process.

In a global investigation, many fake hires were found in the tech and IT sector, where professional “interview proxies” are paid to land jobs for underqualified clients (Fake Interviews and Recruiting Scams: How Technology is Exploiting the Job Market – Digital First Magazine) (Fake Interviews and Recruiting Scams: How Technology is Exploiting the Job Market – Digital First Magazine). Overall, the digital job market’s fast pace and anonymity have created fertile ground for such fraudulent applications.

United States: Fraudulent Applications on the Rise

In the USA, the prevalence of fake job applications mirrors the global trend and has shown signs of increasing. Resume fraud and embellishment are extremely common – as noted, roughly two-thirds or more of U.S. applicants concede to some form of dishonesty on applications (Study: Fake job references and resume lies – StandOut CV). A Checkster study in the U.S. found 78% of job seekers misrepresent their skills or experience (Your Candidate Tells a “White Lie” on their Resume. Do You Hire Them—Or Pass? | Harver), while 66% of hiring managers said they often overlook these “white lies.”

Beyond embellishments, employers are also encountering truly fraudulent candidates, especially for in-demand remote tech roles. The FBI has warned that criminals are using AI “deepfakes” and stolen personal data to apply for remote jobs in the U.S., attempting to pass background checks by impersonating real identities (The Growing Threat Of Fake Job Applicants | Tripwire). The U.S. Justice Department even reported organized crime groups and foreign adversaries placing agents in remote positions to infiltrate companies (How CISOs Can Defend Against Fake Job Applicants).

By several measures, the issue has grown in recent years. Broader employment scam reports (which include fake job offers and fraudulent candidates) have surged dramatically. The Identity Theft Resource Center recorded a 118% year-over-year increase in phony job-related scams in 2023 (Identity theft report sees a 2023 surge in job scams – IT Brew), and the Federal Trade Commission noted that reported “business and job opportunity” scams quadrupled from 25,000 cases in 2018 to over 95,000 in 2022 (CONSUMER ALERT: With Employment Scams on the Rise, New York Department of State’s Division of Consumer Protection Offers Job Seekers Tips on How to Spot the Imposters | Department of State). While those figures include scams targeting job seekers, they reflect a parallel rise in fraudulent activity touching the job market.

Within companies, many recruiters are now screening out a flood of bogus applicants. One U.S. tech recruiter noted being “inundated with fake candidates” and estimated that only 2 out of 20 recent engineer candidates were actually who they claimed – the rest were imposters or scammers (Fake applicants are out of control. : r/recruiting). This kind of anecdote underscores how U.S. employers are grappling with more fraudulent applications than ever, a trend fueled by remote hiring (which allows overseas fraudsters to pretend they’re domestic) and by the availability of AI tools to generate convincing résumés and online profiles.

United Kingdom: CV Lies and Application Fraud

The UK faces similar challenges with dishonest and fake job applicants. Lying on CVs (résumés) or job applications is officially considered fraud in Britain, yet a significant number of candidates still do it. A recent survey by the fraud-prevention service Cifas found that nearly one in five UK adults (18%) had lied on a CV or job application to improve their chances of getting a job (‘Horrendous’: the ‘ridiculously common’ lies people tell on CVs, and …). More narrowly, in the last year about 1 in 11 people (9%) admitted to lying specifically about a degree or qualification on their CV (Nearly a tenth of Brits admit they’ve lied on their CV in the last 12 months | Cifas). These numbers have ticked up slightly – for instance, the proportion of respondents who knew someone who lied on a CV rose to 10%, from 8% a year prior (Nearly a tenth of Brits admit they’ve lied on their CV in the last 12 months | Cifas) – indicating a gradual increase in application fraud. UK employers have also caught many instances of false information: in one survey, 56% of UK employers reported catching candidates lying on resumes, and 26% had encountered fake references (Preventing Interview Fraud: Tips and Best Practices for Employers).

Beyond individual white lies, British companies are wary of more organized fraud schemes in hiring. Cifas maintains an Internal Fraud Database where employers report incidents like false employment applications. In 2023, “false employment application” cases (where individuals attempted to gain jobs with false identities or credentials) made up about 33% of insider fraud cases, a slightly lower share than the year before (44% in 2022) (Fraudscape 2024 – Cifas). This suggests that while the volume fluctuates, a substantial portion of internal fraud threats comes at the hiring stage. UK authorities have issued warnings that dishonest applicants pose risks not just to the employer but to customers and other staff if they slip through (Nearly a tenth of Brits admit they’ve lied on their CV in the last 12 months | Cifas). High-profile cases of CV falsification have led to criminal consequences in the UK, underscoring that misrepresenting qualifications can result in prosecution or blacklisting from industries (Nearly a tenth of Brits admit they’ve lied on their CV in the last 12 months | Cifas). Overall, the UK’s experience shows a persistent prevalence of fraudulent applications – from embellished CVs to fully fake candidates – and a recognition that the problem needs robust preventative measures.

Europe: Trends in the EU Job Market

Across the EU and continental Europe, employers are encountering many of the same issues, with the added complexity of cross-border hiring. Lying on job applications is not unique to English-speaking countries – surveys in Europe also reveal high rates of CV embellishment (for instance, one EU-wide study by HireRight found 84% of employers had uncovered misrepresentations on a résumé or application during screening (Preventing Interview Fraud: Tips and Best Practices for Employers)). The shift to remote work has opened European companies to applicants from anywhere, including fraudulent ones. Some fraud rings have targeted European job boards that charge per application, using “cyber slave” networks or bots to send fake applications from Asia and Africa to European employers (10 versions of fake in the global and local job market). This problem exploded in mid-2022 when advances in AI enabled even more fake applicants; certain European recruiting groups reported that by 2023 nearly 30–40% of applications for some roles were fake as AI bots replaced human scammers (10 versions of fake in the global and local job market).

In terms of recent trends, European fraud-detection firms are seeing a spike in sophisticated fake candidate tactics. For example, identity verification provider Sumsub noted that the prevalence of deepfake identities in verification checks jumped to around 5–7% of all fraud cases in Q1 2023 in countries like the UK, Germany, and Italy – up from around 1% in 2022 (New digital fraud statistics in the UK and continental Europe: forced verification and deepfake cases multiply at alarming rates | Sumsub). This indicates that in Europe, just as in the US, fraudsters are leveraging AI-generated video or images to impersonate job seekers and bypass screening. Some European employers have also dealt with “bait-and-switch” hires, where a candidate from abroad uses a local proxy to get hired and then outsources the work – a scam observed frequently in IT roles (Fake Interviews and Recruiting Scams: How Technology is Exploiting the Job Market – Digital First Magazine). The overall trajectory in the EU is an increase in fraudulent job applications in the wake of the pandemic. European insurers have reported double-digit percentage rises in application fraud in recent years (e.g. a 16% rise in falsified insurance applications from 2021 to 2022) (Fraudscape 2024 – Cifas), and similar upward pressures are reflected in employment contexts. EU institutions like Europol have even issued alerts about fake job schemes (both fake listings and fake candidates), highlighting that the labor market is increasingly a target for fraud and deception in Europe just as it is elsewhere.

Challenges Fake Applications Create for Employers

Fraudulent job applications create significant challenges for employers at every stage of the hiring process and beyond. Key impacts include:

• Wasted Time and Resources: Hiring teams must sift through large volumes of applications, and a surge in fake candidates means much of that effort is wasted. Recruiters spend hours reviewing résumés or interviewing candidates only to discover the person is unqualified or an imposter. This diverts HR personnel from legitimate candidates. One tech Talent Acquisition leader shared that fake engineering applicants became so rampant (only 2 out of 20 interviewees were genuine) that they “elected to no longer waste time reviewing applications” and shifted to other sourcing methods (Fake applicants are out of control. : r/recruiting). If a fake candidate actually gets hired before being caught, the costs multiply – companies lose productivity during the period the person cannot truly do the job, and then incur costs to replace them. Studies show a bad hire can cost tens of thousands of dollars when you factor in recruiting, training, and lost output. In one common scenario, a fake candidate uses a proxy to ace the interview and is hired, only for the scam to be discovered weeks later; by then the employer has paid salary and onboarding costs for nothing, “costing the employer thousands in wasted time and paychecks.” (The Rise Of Fake Candidates | Benchmark IT).
• Resource Drain and Financial Losses: Beyond time, there’s a direct monetary impact. Companies may invest in background checks, technical screenings, or relocation for candidates who turn out to be fraudulent. If a fraudulent employee slips in, fixing the mistake can be expensive. According to HR surveys, 75% of employers have caught lies on résumés and many report that replacing a bad hire can run anywhere from $17,000 up to $50,000 in expenses (Ask HN: Anyone having issues with job applicant fraud?). Additionally, HR and security teams must develop extra verification steps (like more rigorous reference checks or ID verifications), which can add overhead to the hiring process. Fake applicants also erode trust in recruitment systems – recruiters and hiring managers become more cautious or may ignore otherwise promising resumes for fear they’re fake, which can indirectly hurt talent acquisition effectiveness. For smaller businesses, the drain of dealing with scams (responding to bogus applicants, parsing suspicious communications) can be especially taxing on limited HR staff.
• Security Risks and Exploitation: Perhaps the most alarming risk is that a fraudulent applicant may have malicious intent once inside the company. Hiring someone under false pretenses isn’t just a skills risk – it can be a security threat if the person’s goal is to infiltrate the organization. Cybersecurity experts warn that bad actors are “knocking on the door through the job application process” (How CISOs Can Defend Against Fake Job Applicants). Some fraudsters seek access to sensitive systems or data by getting hired under a fake identity. There have been cases of criminal organizations planting insiders to steal customer information, trade secrets, or even to abuse company resources (for instance, using a company’s cloud servers for cryptomining or fraud) (How CISOs Can Defend Against Fake Job Applicants). The FBI and DOJ in the U.S. have highlighted incidents of foreign state-sponsored agents securing remote jobs to exfiltrate data (How CISOs Can Defend Against Fake Job Applicants). Even less overtly malicious fakes (like someone who just outsourced their coding test) can become a security weak link if they lack proper vetting. Furthermore, fake candidates often use stolen Personal Identifiable Information (PII) to pass pre-employment screening (The Growing Threat Of Fake Job Applicants | Tripwire) – if such an applicant is hired, it means an unknown person now has access to corporate systems under another name, which is a compliance and security nightmare. All of this means employers not only risk wasted effort but could suffer reputational damage, legal liabilities, or breaches of data/security by unwittingly onboarding a fraudulent applicant (Preventing Interview Fraud: Tips and Best Practices for Employers) (Preventing Interview Fraud: Tips and Best Practices for Employers).

In short, fake applications undermine the hiring process and can harm organizations in multiple ways. As one HR expert noted, even if a fake interview only wastes your time, “be grateful – it could be far worse,” since the worst-case scenario is a fraudulent hire who causes “irreparable harm to a company’s reputation and its clients.” (Fake Interviews and Recruiting Scams: How Technology is Exploiting the Job Market – Digital First Magazine) (Fake Interviews and Recruiting Scams: How Technology is Exploiting the Job Market – Digital First Magazine) This range of challenges has pushed many employers to seek new methods to detect and deter fake applicants.

Mitigating Fake Applicants with Random “Procing” Techniques

To combat the surge of fake candidates, employers are turning to more sophisticated verification measures – one novel approach is using “programmed random occurrence” (procing) techniques in the hiring process. In gaming parlance, a proc is a random event or trigger programmed to occur unpredictably. Applied to recruitment, introducing random checks or tasks can catch fraudulent applicants off-guard before they make it through. The idea is that a genuine candidate can handle small unexpected verifications, whereas a coached or fabricated candidate often cannot.

Examples of procing in hiring:

• Random identity and info checks: Employers can conduct random spot-checks on a candidate’s information during the process (Preventing Interview Fraud: Tips and Best Practices for Employers). For instance, an interviewer might suddenly ask a candidate to verify a detail from their resume or provide a specific work sample with little advance notice. Some companies will require a spontaneous video call or ID verification at an odd stage – e.g. calling the candidate without prior scheduling to ask a few questions or to confirm their current location. These tactics leverage the element of surprise to disrupt anyone who might be relying on a scripted persona or a remote accomplice.
• Impromptu screen-sharing or tests: A very effective technique is to randomly ask the candidate to share their screen or perform a live task during an interview. This was highlighted by recruiting experts as a “go-to method” to expose proxies or AI-driven cheats: if you suddenly request a screen share, fake candidates would have to scramble to hide any cheat sheets or remote desktop controls they have running (Fake Interviews and Recruiting Scams: How Technology is Exploiting the Job Market – Digital First Magazine). A legitimate applicant might be a bit nervous but can comply, while an imposter often slips up (for example, their answer quality may “dramatically decline when sharing their screen,” revealing an unqualified imposter (Fake Interviews and Recruiting Scams: How Technology is Exploiting the Job Market – Digital First Magazine)). Similarly, asking an unanticipated technical question or problem-solving exercise on the fly (instead of only pre-scheduled tests) can trip up those who memorized answers or had someone else do their initial assessment.
• Multi-factor identity verification: Some employers now integrate random identity challenges throughout recruitment. This can include sending a one-time passcode to the candidate’s phone during a video interview and asking them to read it out, or using AI-based face recognition at random checkpoints. Modern hiring platforms offer features like continuous face authentication, which verifies that the same person is present throughout the interview and not swapped out mid-way (Preventing Interview Fraud: Tips and Best Practices for Employers) (Preventing Interview Fraud: Tips and Best Practices for Employers). By injecting unpredictable ID checks, companies can prevent a scenario where a candidate uses a friend for the technical interview and then tries to show up themselves later – the system would flag the mismatch when a random face scan is requested.

Using procing-style randomness adds a layer of dynamic verification that static background checks or scheduled interviews alone might miss. It essentially forces fraudulent applicants to react in real-time without coordination, making it far more likely they’ll make a mistake or refuse the process (exposing themselves). In combination with traditional methods (thorough background screening, reference calls, etc.), these random checks greatly improve the odds of weeding out fakes. In the UK, Cifas recommends “rigorous checks throughout the employee lifecycle” as a defense (Nearly a tenth of Brits admit they’ve lied on their CV in the last 12 months | Cifas) – procing tactics serve exactly that purpose by continuously verifying candidate authenticity at unpredictable intervals.

It’s worth noting that technology aids this approach. AI-driven monitoring can detect anomalies (for example, tools that notice if a video feed might be a deepfake or if a candidate’s typing cadence on a coding test suddenly changes, implying multiple people). But even low-tech steps like surprise follow-up questions about a candidate’s past work can be telling. The core principle is to add spontaneity to the vetting process. Just as random drug tests deter cheating in athletics, random authenticity checks in hiring can deter or catch those trying to game the system.

In summary, fake job applications have become a prevalent and growing problem internationally – affecting the USA, UK, EU and beyond – with a noticeable uptick in recent years due to remote work and advanced fraud tactics. Employers are feeling the strain through wasted hiring efforts, financial losses, and security threats. However, by understanding the scope of the issue and implementing creative solutions like “procing” random checks, organizations can better safeguard their hiring process. Combining vigilance (e.g. watching for red flags like “pristine, overly perfect resumes” (The Growing Threat Of Fake Job Applicants | Tripwire) or candidates unwilling to use video) with strategic randomness and modern verification tools, companies can filter out many fraudulent applicants. This not only saves time and resources but also protects corporate security – ensuring that the people who do join are who they claim to be and qualified to contribute in reality, not just on paper.