Not sure why this would be any different for remote jobs. All job interview processes (remote and in-office) I've ever done have had an in-person step, and that should be enough to filter these fake candidates, no? Are companies really doing 100% remote interviews, as in: you sign the offer letter without even meeting a single person in person??

Also, the in-person step is usually at the end, which means yes, you can waste a lot of time phone- and Zoom-chatting with fake candidates, but that is equally true for in-office vs. remote roles. Nobody starts with the in-person, on-site interview.

Though we have been burned by someone we believe (but cannot prove) was 100% remote and working two jobs at the same time (they were laid off in a recent downsizing before we could get enough evidence, but they didn't seem as productive as we would expect). So I expect even if you apply for a 100% remote position you will need to do one round of interviews onsite. (though who knows if this will protect us)

You're dating yourself with that question. (yes, and they have been for a while)

EDIT: I also had interviews with Credit Suisse some years back (decade or so), they wanted me to speak to some people in the US and London, but didn't allow the video conference from home, but they asked me which major city in Europe I was in, so they book some meeting room in their own offices or some WeWork facility in case I was somewhere where they wouldn't have offices.

Stuff can be forged but that needs local spy level of skills to make it work.

They were also hiring a company specialized in background checks, I literally had to fill up a form with the 14 places I had been living in all my life with dates of entry and exit, super annpying given the UI was slow as hell and that I had low recollection of addresses and date of my early years, I had to ask my parents. I may have been able to cheat probably but I didn't try.

I am also seeking a new position and I have realized that most b2b / work from anywhere jobs you could apply for were for cryptocurrencied / blockchain related companies so they surely make it easier for malicious remote applicants. I think it means they are kind of desperate / have difficulty to find talents. In other areas most companies only hire people who live in same juridiction they have an office and hr department.

So… you mean the way it's been done for the last hundred years?

If your company is so small that you can't afford to bring someone in, then you hire locally.

Also, $8-10k per hire is too much for an interview. We do ours for under $1,000 with round-trip airfare, hotel, and meals. It's always the last step before signing.

Personally, I wouldn't feel comfortable working for a company that didn't bring me in for an in-person interview, even for a remote job. It's just as important for me to evaluate the company as it is for them to evaluate me.

Yes, I got multiple job offers like that back in 2022 at FAANG and similar places, and a lot of my friends who interviewed recently had plenty of processes that were fully remote as well. The first time I’ve actually met someone irl from the company I signed my offer with was at least a month after I already started working, and it was just an optional lunch meetup.

However, afaik, these days most serious companies like big tech or tech-centric finance (JS/Citadel/Jump/etc.) or top AI places (OpenAI/Anthropic/etc.) would have the final rounds in-person.

Yeah, absolutely. The company I work for is in a different country, seeing anyone else would require flying over there, I interviewed and got the job without meeting anyone in person.

However, there was a background check done by third party agency. Basic check: criminal record, education and employment history (is it fake or real).

I can definitely confirm it’s not just finance and crypto being targeted.

I can also confirm it’s not just state sponsored North Korean agents too. Sometimes it’s just individuals trying to fake it until they make it.

However I dont agree with your conclusion that remote interviews are not dead because of this. Yes it’s annoying and time consuming filtering out these culprits, but the interview process already was an annoying and time consuming process to begin with. So I wouldn’t be so quick to throw the baby out with the bath water.

  I will say that hiring for remote jobs has gotten to be a gigantic time waste lately. Even though even moderate background checking can filter these candidates out, it's quite time consuming and with the rise of generative AI...

This never stopped and is still the case for "good" jobs btw.

So many roles are basically interchangeable and I’ll choose whichever one looks best on my resume or gives me some other tangible benefit. And I am prepared to bounce as soon as my vesting schedule drops. We all game this system too.

The days of us loyally working at any firm for 20 years, singing the corporate cheer songs and retiring with a pension are stuff of a different age.

I can't see how the fake-candidate epidemic blows the hiring process up in anything but a candidate-hostile direction.

With the open hiring market becoming more inefficient, companies will move more towards hiring through networking and vetted sources (select college job boards etc.) rather than the open market. In situations where they evaluate candidates from open market listings, companies will now have invasive proof-of-identity red tape earlier and earlier in the funnel (for example, background checks prior to application rather than offer in places where that's legal). Plus, look forward to overly clever hiring panels introducing annoying "trap" questions and weird hoops like this article alluded to - I hope you're ready to review local restaurants and pick up random stuff in the room during your interview!

Firm that looks like it is hiring for remote jobs, but is actually a honeypot that harvests credentials and identifiers that will enable our clients tondetect scam applicants.