#28: Fake Job Applications: How to Spot & Prevent them in 2025

Rhona Pierce:
00:00

I don't know who needs to hear this, but the harder you make your hiring process, the more creative candidates will get to game it. And now we're not just talking about creative resumes or exaggerated skills. We're talking about full blown candidate catfishing. In 2024, it's not just recruiters using AI to screen applicants. It's candidates using AI to outsmart recruiters.

Rhona Pierce:
00:24

We've officially entered the bot versus bot era of hiring, where fake profiles, AI generated resumes, and even stand ins for interviews are becoming the norm. The question is, how do we protect our companies from these scams without undoing years of work towards fair, unbiased hiring practices? Today, I'm joined by my guest co host, Stephanie Fackrell, to help me break it all down. Stephanie has spent over a decade leading TA, HR, and DI efforts at some of the biggest brands in tech, Google, Apple, NVIDIA, Samsung. Now as the founder of Disruptive HR, she advises startups on all things HR and people.

Rhona Pierce:
01:10

Together, we're diving into what's happening in hiring today, why it matters, and how we can stay vigilant without losing the fairness and equity we've worked so hard to build. Let's get into it. Hey, Stephanie. I'm so happy to have you on the podcast today.

Stefanie Fackrell:
01:30

I'm so excited that it's been delayed, but, yay, today's the day.

Rhona Pierce:
01:36

Today is in fact the day. So I wanted to talk about this topic. Actually, you posted something a few months back about it, and I loved the concept of doing it like MTV Catfish style. That was one

Stefanie Fackrell:
01:53

of my favorite shows or is. I think it's still on. Right? It is on. It probably is like 15 years old now.

Stefanie Fackrell:
02:01

I'm not sure.

Rhona Pierce:
02:03

Yeah. So before we dive in to what we found on the Internet, I wanted to know kind of, like, what's the wildest story you've heard about a candidate using AI or other tricks to game the hiring process?

Stefanie Fackrell:
02:20

Yeah. So what prompted my post is I was in peak HR, the amazing HR program, and I was chatting with a recruiting leader, and we were just talking about how to identify fake candidates. She was dealing with a situation where the LinkedIn profile looked fake. It was somebody else's picture, all their information, and then the resume seemed pretty sketchy. And the individual had made it pretty far into the interview process, but something felt pretty fishy.

Stefanie Fackrell:
02:58

And she started to sleuth, you know, probably more in-depth than a recruiter should. As you've said before, recruiters are a little bit nosy. We're like detectives, but it felt like she almost needed to be a detective to really see if this candidate was real and potentially lived in the area that they have listed on their profile and their resume. So that prompted me to post because I just thought, oh my gosh, everything is getting out of control. And the level of candidate deceit to get noticed, and the level of detective work that recruiters are gonna need to start doing is just crazy.

Stefanie Fackrell:
03:43

And how do we solve for that?

Rhona Pierce:
03:46

Yeah. And and I'm so excited that we're talking about this. It's something that I've worked in tech like you for a long time, and it's been happening for years. I think now it's easier for it to happen. Why do you think that we're seeing, like, such an increase in these kinds of tactics?

Rhona Pierce:
04:06

Like, is it desperation? Is it creativity? Or is it something else?

Stefanie Fackrell:
04:11

Yeah. I had some thoughts on that because when I was working at some of the bigger name brands, you know, candidates would kind of cheat on their interviews, they would Google as they were interviewing. So it was a little bit different now than AI being here. And I do think a lot of it has to do with some market that we're in, the competitive nature. Also, the salary differences between regions.

Stefanie Fackrell:
04:40

I so I think it's a multifaceted issue. I do think it's creative, but is it ethical? Is it a waste of time? There's a lot of questions that linger.

Rhona Pierce:
04:54

Yes. Yes. There's a lot of questions. And I think we should start with kind of like what we found. I know after your your post, both of us did a lot of research online to see what were people saying about this.

Rhona Pierce:
05:11

And I found a thread on Reddit that is so full of so many things. And I'll pop it on the screen for those that are watching this on video. But for those that are listening, I'll give a quick summary of the post. So the person said, hey, all. I'm an in house TA leader here at a tech startup.

Rhona Pierce:
05:33

Over the past few months, I've run into issues that I hadn't seen in a long time. Tons and tons of fake applications for engineering roles. Apparently, there's a scam these days where the scammed finds a willing participant in the US for their bank account and an engineer outside of the US, typically in Southeast Asia, and the engineer pretends to be in the US. They get paid for passing the interviews and if they get the job, then they actually do the work and get a cut of the US elevated pay. This person goes on to say, I basically cannot review applicants anymore.

Rhona Pierce:
06:14

Of the last 20 engineers I've set up time with, I would say 2 were who they said they were. So many of them are clearly in an office doing these interviews. And they go on to say how you can hear that it's in a call center and all of these things. And they said that they've been bashing post and pray recruiters for years, but, at least they had a mix of it he had or she. They had a mix of inbounder and outbound applicants.

Rhona Pierce:
06:43

But at this point, they have elected to no longer waste their time entertaining, reviewing applications, and only talk to referrals or people that they source. So, that's a lot. That is a lot. What are your your like, when you hear a story like this about someone interviewing in an office, pretending to work remotely, what's your first thought as a TA professional?

Stefanie Fackrell:
07:10

I mean, obviously, there's a market for it. Right? Because, again, it's so highly competitive right now. I've never done a technical interview, but I can only imagine how challenging it is. I've reviewed feedback.

Stefanie Fackrell:
07:24

I've scheduled these things. I just think it's a level of insanity that we never knew was possible. And I think obviously, again, going back to the really tough market that we're in right now, 2023, 2024, candidates will do anything to get past the interview to be successful. But like you're saying, is this this person is doing the interview from a call center and they get a cut of the pay. Are they gonna continue to work with the individual once they get hired?

Stefanie Fackrell:
07:59

Like, is this just a never ending cycle of interviews and then full time work behind the scenes? Like, what is this?

Rhona Pierce:
08:08

Yeah. Funny story. Well, I don't know if funny. It wasn't funny for me at the time. I actually have two stories where things like this have happened in the past.

Rhona Pierce:
08:17

So I think now it's just more common because of how the market is. And, obviously, when there's people with a need, where there's demand, there's always gonna be the unethical, the I'll leave it at unethical, people that try to make money off of them. And I have a special distaste, and that's as nice as I can say it, for people who prey off of the unemployed. I remember it was probably 2013. Yeah.

Rhona Pierce:
08:50

2013 where I was interviewing. I I live in Oklahoma, and I was interviewing, I was hiring for a role, a technical role, at a company that I worked at. This company was in a smaller town in Oklahoma, so it was hard for us to get people because, of course, they were focused on not remote work. They wanted the people in house. So we moved.

Rhona Pierce:
09:14

We relocated a lot of people from various parts of the country to this town for work. And one of the interviews I remember, it came through an external agency. No shade or anything to the agency. The this recruiter is one of my good friends. But the the candidate, it just I remember talking to them on the phone multiple times for interviews before flying them in, and it just seemed like, there's something off.

Rhona Pierce:
09:46

And then when they flew in, I got emails, calls, and everything from someone. Look, it was like a pimp situation where I guess the person was going against their handler per se to come to this interview. And they were letting me know that they were here, that they didn't really do the job, that it was a different person coming for the interview. All of these things as I'm getting ready in like 30 minutes to meet this person face to face. Needless to say, when I met the person face to face, I was confident this wasn't the same person that I was talking to.

Rhona Pierce:
10:24

So this call center situation, this, I wanna call it human trafficking type of situation, has been happening for a long time because 2013 was a long time ago. That was one story. And then another one was more recently, this was 2019 maybe, where I met an engineer who had actually has a record now because it is a felony to take a job and have someone else do the job for you. Mhmm. So this person is an well, is a US citizen or is legally authorized to work in the United States.

Rhona Pierce:
11:02

Let's put it that way. They would go on interviews. They're a brilliant engineer. They made the mistake of listening to these people in other these predators who are like, look, you just go get the job for us, and we'll do the work for you. Well, the company realized what was happening as far as people logging in from other countries to do the work and this person here in the US is obviously the person liable because you are the employee.

Rhona Pierce:
11:30

They now have a felony record that they have to explain to every employer moving forward about this. So it's been happening for a while. That is crazy. But I wanna go back a little to kind of like what this person on Reddit was saying. It was really, I would say, a red flag for me of how they're like, and again, it's natural.

Rhona Pierce:
11:52

Oh, my gosh. This is happening. I'm not gonna rely on inbound applications. I'm only gonna do referrals or sourcing. How does that undo all of our hard work in TA and DEI for inclusion and for for, like, just hiring people, not only based on knowing who they know or what school they went to.

Rhona Pierce:
12:17

How do we handle this? I think we're gonna have to put way more parameters

Stefanie Fackrell:
12:24

around or trainings, I should say, train recruiters better to source through the inbound applications, to identify fake applications and fake applicants. I think it really does come down to training. Right? Because with these bots, these AI appliers can apply to a 1,000 jobs. These AI bots can apply to thousands of roles.

Stefanie Fackrell:
12:51

Right? And I think with inclusive hiring, we don't wanna just rely on referrals because everybody typically looks the same. As you said, everybody looks the same. They went to the same schools. That's not inclusive.

Stefanie Fackrell:
13:03

That is shutting a whole swath of talented people out that didn't have access to get into whatever school or into whatever network. So I think organizations are really going to have to start training recruiters to source effectively from these inbound applications. AI is probably gonna have to be implemented also to weed through AI generated resumes. You know, there's all these funky little things that you can train a system to do to look for indicators. Right?

Stefanie Fackrell:
13:40

But, yeah, we don't wanna undo everything that we have put in place. Right? Because then we're gonna be back to the 19 fifties, sixties, seventies, and everything will be undone, and that's just not where we wanna go. And AI can do a lot of cool things, but this is sort of this is sort of the conundrum that needs to be worked to with a new technology. Right?

Rhona Pierce:
14:03

Yeah. I I think, yes, we just like companies are leveraging AI to do all of the things that we don't want to do or that take up too much of our time, candidates are just using it to for the same purpose. They don't want to be applying to jobs. They don't wanna be filling out these long applications where you're asking 20,000,000 questions that are irrelevant and things like that. So I think the harder you make your interview process, the more of these things that you will end up seeing.

Rhona Pierce:
14:41

Absolutely. And it sounds it sounds so weird because it's like our natural reaction of as humans is, Oh my gosh, I got scammed. Let me make it harder. And my approach is, actually, let's make it easier because the harder you make it, the more of this we will end up seeing. I want to move on to something I saw on TikTok, and I will play the the video for those watching on video.

Rhona Pierce:
15:17

But for those listening, basically, there is a company, and I will not name them because they need absolutely no more publicity than what they're getting. But there is a company who is an AI tool that basically you open it during the interview. Right? And it tells you the answers. So they have multiple TikTok videos with great hooks about, like, oh, my I can't believe how what my sister was doing for an interview.

Rhona Pierce:
15:48

For some reason, it's always your sister or your brother. I don't know. But I guess that works for them. And it's basically an engineer during a technical interview sitting there and you see on the screen where their interviewer is asking them the question and then they're restating it and AI is literally telling them what to say and they can read off the screen. What do you think about candidates using AI to answer technical questions?

Rhona Pierce:
16:18

Does it feel resourceful or is it deceptive?

Stefanie Fackrell:
16:21

I mean, it's both. But you're only doing yourself a disservice if you are gaming the system to get a role where you actually might not even be qualified to do the job because you can't answer the basic questions. Right? And I think whoever this well known company is that I'm gonna now have to go Google, I think they're doing a disservice. They are selling they are preying on unemployed, stressed out, desperate job seekers and selling them a service that's actually a disservice to the individual and the company that they're interviewing with.

Rhona Pierce:
17:10

Yeah. And there's so many ethical implications to what they're selling. I don't know about legal. I don't think this company is in the US, to be honest. So that's a whole other level of, legally, you probably can't do anything about it.

Rhona Pierce:
17:26

But if you were the recruiter on the other side of this and, really, I think this is gonna happen way more to hiring managers than to recruiters. But if you were on the other side of this, how would you address it? Or would you even address it with the candidate? I'm very direct.

Stefanie Fackrell:
17:44

So I probably would direct address it directly because, you know, interviews, it's real time. Right? If there's these long pauses, if I love repeating and reiterating a question to clarify, but to deceive the individual that's interviewing you, I would probably call the candidate out and disqualify them from the interview process. But then again, that could probably go back to bite, you know, the company that I'm working for because we don't unless we have a policy that says you cannot use AI, it's gonna happen. So I think that that's gonna be something that companies are gonna need to start implementing in their kind of candidate outreach, maybe on their websites, you know, FAQs for interviewing, you're not allowed to use AI, your camera will have to be on at all times.

Stefanie Fackrell:
18:40

Another colleague of mine in the HR space, she had this very situation happened to her a couple of weeks ago. And she rejected the candidate immediately. And now she's thinking through, which is very invasive, but do we have to put something in place to VPN into the individual's screen as they're interviewing to make sure that they're not utilizing AI? So that to me is a little invasive. I think it it should be, you know, here are here's what we expect when you're interviewing, like, code of conduct while you're interviewing, something like that.

Stefanie Fackrell:
19:18

I think companies will definitely have to start putting in place.

Rhona Pierce:
19:21

Yeah. And I agree with you. I think, really, the solution and I saw one company do it. I believe it's Greenhouse. I will double check on that and add the link in the show notes.

Rhona Pierce:
19:32

But they have a full blown policy, and the policy is two sided because it explains to candidates how they are using AI, and it explains to candidates what they find appropriate as far as using AI. Because I think it's not realistic for companies to be like, you cannot use any type of AI. That's not gonna happen. People are gonna use AI for their resume. People are gonna use AI to practice interviews and, like, prep and all of these things.

Rhona Pierce:
20:00

I think even, say, you have to have your camera on is a way of excluding especially neurodiverse candidates. And I had a full episode with Tamika Allen where we spoke about this. I think that's not the solution. I think the solution is to have your policies in place and ask, like, get more creative with the questions, but not in a, like no offense. I know you used to work at Google, but not in a,

Stefanie Fackrell:
20:27

like No offense. Google type of Done there, done there.

Rhona Pierce:
20:32

Type of gotcha questions. It's more of, like, let's ask, 1, the real questions that we need for this job, and let's train our interviewers to really know how to dive deeper. And let's understand that there is a possibility that someone will use AI. Because if you VPN into your comp your computers, which, by the way, I would absolutely never interview at a place that asked me to VPN into my computer. I actually left a remote job because they said they were gonna start tracking what we were doing.

Rhona Pierce:
21:10

And I'm like, guys, no. No. This is not where I wanna work. So I would definitely not do it for an interview if I left a job after 2 years because that's what they were trying to start doing. And I suspect I'm not the only person that thinks this way.

Rhona Pierce:
21:26

So if you want top talent, which is the word the buzzword everyone likes to say, Top talent has self respect, and they're not going to let you tap into their personal computer, which you do not own for the promise of a job. That is unrealistic. What is more realistic is that you train your interviewers to be way better interviewers and ask better questions and understand that there is a risk that someone might use AI to answer the questions. And that's just something that we're gonna have to deal with now.

Stefanie Fackrell:
22:06

You know, and I I am a big fan of AI for preparing for things. Like, if here's the job description, what might I be asked and come up with my stories? Right? It it allows for preparation upfront, but, yes, using it in an interview gets a little more tricky, especially for technical roles. Right?

Stefanie Fackrell:
22:26

Like that's just and that seems to be where the issue really is. Right? I don't think everything I've heard is for kind of engineering and IT type roles, nothing in human resources, you know, nothing in marketing or sales. So but, you know, interview training, which I'm sure you know, is always sort of, like, the last thing that companies really focus on. But, you know, maybe this is incentive, again, to get interviewers trained up and calibrated and really understand the lay of the land now and how it's going to be impacting their particular organization.

Rhona Pierce:
23:08

Yeah. I really think that's that's really the path forward and how we move in the new landscape of hiring and the what I'm I'm loving the bot versus bot era of hiring. That's what I'm calling it. I'm loving it. Maybe I'm loving it because I'm not actively don't have a 20 to 30 rec load.

Rhona Pierce:
23:32

Right. But I'm loving it because of the power is shifting. Everyone is using the resources that they have at their disposal. But I think if we really get back to basics, go back to building relationships, go back to strong interview training, and have policies in place, understand and let people know what is acceptable and what's not acceptable so that when they do the things that are not acceptable to you, you can reject them with no repercussions. Well, you know what I mean.

Rhona Pierce:
24:10

Like, no messy legal

Stefanie Fackrell:
24:13

Right.

Rhona Pierce:
24:13

Repercussions because if we leave it up to and this is for the TA leaders, the HR leaders out there. If we leave it up to every individual recruiter, we're gonna see the things that we're seeing on these Reddit threads. I think there was another there was a reply to that thread where someone was saying, 9 out of 10, they're an Asian male with a very American first name and typically a Hispanic last name. Guys, we can't get into that. Like, just I won't even read the rest.

Rhona Pierce:
24:45

Just that line right there tells you what path they were going down, and that is absolutely me as a immigrant, as a woman, as a black woman, as a Latino woman. Like, this is gonna make it harder for us that are out here really wanting to get a job. Now you're gonna see people having to change their names, and there's people looking at LinkedIn profile photos to see if they look Guys, you don't know any of this. Yes. And there was we'll talk a little bit more about it later, about some of the other implications of why, other than the obvious, this is totally biased.

Rhona Pierce:
25:26

But going down this route of now saying, if they have this name or if they look this way, then they're most likely fake, It's not where we need to go. So we need to have policies. This needs to be a strategic approach to this that's happening because out of frustration, people will do the things that we're seeing.

Stefanie Fackrell:
25:49

I absolutely 1000000 percent agree.

Rhona Pierce:
25:53

So, of course, in the bot versus bot world, I said, let me ask ChatGPT how they would approach this situation and what's their solution for dealing with candidates that are catfishing. Like, as you can imagine, the answers were interesting. Some were good. I I won't dog on chat gbt, but some of the things were, again, let's do one way asynchronous video interviews with identity verification. I was like, what?

Rhona Pierce:
26:28

I even saw and I'm so sad I didn't save this post, but I saw someone now being request required for a background check before an interview.

Stefanie Fackrell:
26:38

I was reading some stuff like that myself when it came to these the solutions for how to curb this.

Rhona Pierce:
26:45

Yeah. And chat gpt also said, ask unexpected questions during the interview and try to catch people and stuff. And it's like also the things that the people on Reddit were saying, like not doing more inbound, just relying on referrals or outbound. Now they're doing detailed scrutiny of anyone who's not American looking or sounding. What does that even mean?

Rhona Pierce:
27:13

I know.

Stefanie Fackrell:
27:13

What does that mean?

Rhona Pierce:
27:16

What's your gut reaction to this? How would you approach the situation?

Stefanie Fackrell:
27:21

I mean, there has to be some sort of identifying parameters put in place. Not let me, you know, let me see your legal ID and your birth certificate. None of these like crazy things, but there has to be some, I don't want to say pre background check, because again, that's too extreme, but there has to be some way to identify that this person is who they say they are. I wish I had the solution to that. Obviously, again, with names, locations, we don't want to get into any discriminatory behavior.

Stefanie Fackrell:
28:00

Because, again, that's just ridiculous and wrong. I wish I if I had all the answers, I'd probably would be a millionaire sitting on the beach and not doing a podcast.

Rhona Pierce:
28:15

Same. Same. Yeah. I I've gone through as we've prepared for this interview, I've gone through many scenarios, and I I just go back to it's just something that you're going to 1, it's case by case. You're going to have to have different processes maybe for the different types of roles.

Rhona Pierce:
28:35

Because I've worked at companies where you have technical roles and you have non technical roles. Mhmm. Yeah. The bulk is technical. And there's always been a slightly different process, but it's usually after the screening.

Rhona Pierce:
28:49

So maybe you need to change your screening. Maybe there needs to be your application questions need to be a bit different. And, yes, again, understand that there's this is always going to happen. Your efforts can't be spent trying to catch the scammers. Right.

Rhona Pierce:
29:10

Your efforts need to be you need to double down on who you're looking for and ways to identify the qualified people for your company. Because if you try to go on this catch the scammer crusade, you're wasting valuable time and costing your company tons and tons of money.

Stefanie Fackrell:
29:33

I absolutely agree. And back to what you said that you love the spot versus spot, I do too because, again, it's going to give companies the opportunity to level up and train and figure out the solution to this really unique problem that we're facing right now. Right? There'll be something, hopefully not this big, but with the advance of technology, all of that, there's always gonna be a new problem to figure out the solution to. But this, yes, the bot versus bot is really needing companies to come up with a solution by leveling up trainings, getting creative, and how they approach these problems.

Rhona Pierce:
30:20

And this might not be popular, but you need to create a true community around your pipeline. Let's stop thinking about pipeline. It's true community. It's nurturing those candidates that have applied, that you've gone and sourced. It's not a, like, no longer, like, okay, have a rec, open this role, and get these people in.

Rhona Pierce:
30:46

You need to have relationships with these candidates, long standing relationships so that when you have roles, these people are primed for your roles. Because trust me, the scammers are looking for the quick in and out. They're not gonna be on your email list for months months or years and going back and forth with you and, like, you communicating with them online and all of that for a job. They're gonna move on to the people who think are are are making their process so hard that no scammer can get into it, but it's a quick, quick, quick. Those are the people that are gonna be flooded with this type of candidate.

Rhona Pierce:
31:27

When you create authentic relationships, those are the people that are going to win.

Stefanie Fackrell:
31:32

Well, and I think I know you when you're recruiting, I'm sure you prided yourself in building relationships with your candidates. And I did too. I still have candidates that I did that didn't get the job, but I built the relationship with them from, like, 13 years ago. So recruiting is, when it comes down to it, it is about relationships, and I think it's become very transactional in the recent in, you know, recent years, maybe since COVID. But, it has become very transactional, so we do need to get back to basics in that way.

Stefanie Fackrell:
32:08

And when I say this, people always look

Rhona Pierce:
32:09

at me like, no. The reason why it's become this transactional is because of remote work and because we need to do things at scale. Nope. And one, I've been doing remote hiring and remote work since 2017, which isn't that long. But, again, my entire career has been working distributed teams just because of the country that I'm from and all of that.

Rhona Pierce:
32:30

But the way to build relationships at scale, and again, people are gonna be like, oh, there goes Rona, is through content creation. Whoo. That's how you build relationships at scale. So we need to be smart as recruiters, as TA leaders and start living in the present. The yes.

Rhona Pierce:
32:52

You need to build relationships. You're not gonna build relationships like you used to in 1980 by going to all these local groups and all of that. The way you build relationships at scale in 2024 and beyond is through online communities, content creation, and in person. It's a mix of both things. Agreed.

Stefanie Fackrell:
33:17

Agreed.

Rhona Pierce:
33:18

So, something else I wanted to leave listeners and viewers with is other reasons why going towards strict hiring and, like, not doing inbound and checking their LinkedIn. Because I also saw people say like, oh, you need to check that they have LinkedIn verification and stuff like that. We can't rely on that for many reasons, and there was someone on Reddit that replied to this. And I think it it's it's a very good reminder, and it reminded me of many things, but it says, I keep my LinkedIn profile a job behind for personal safety reasons. My abusive ex doesn't know where I move to or where I work now, thankfully, and I'm trying to keep it that way.

Stefanie Fackrell:
34:08

Wow. Ouch.

Rhona Pierce:
34:09

That's true. Imagine us trying to go and exclude people and just do people who have a verification or have a photo on LinkedIn. There's a lot of people who can't do this. I've met people whose spouses work in law enforcement and they are because of their spouse's job, they are at risk, so they don't put their photos online or they don't have a LinkedIn profile or like online presence. All of these are things that we have to consider.

Stefanie Fackrell:
34:38

Absolutely. I'm not even verified on LinkedIn. So I probably could be considered a fake, a fake entity. But I just, yeah, I think there's so many different reasons why someone wouldn't like I've, I've worked with candidates that, you know, when I'm talking to them about their LinkedIn, they've given me these exact reasons like I am not into social media. I'm doing it for safety purposes.

Stefanie Fackrell:
35:03

I'm doing it because I've been discriminated against before. Right? So everybody has a story. And we shouldn't put everyone in a box that they have to oh, check LinkedIn. It's great.

Stefanie Fackrell:
35:14

Check, check, check.

Rhona Pierce:
35:15

And there's also a big thing. LinkedIn verification as of as I know as of today, doesn't work for trans Right. Folks. Right. Because if their name on their ID doesn't match the name that they're using, you can't get verified.

Rhona Pierce:
35:33

I had to change my LinkedIn to my full last name, which is hyphenated, which I don't go by because that's the only way to get verified because my ID says Barnett Pierce. That's how I have to use it. But anyone who knows me knows I go by Rona Pierce.

Stefanie Fackrell:
35:48

Right. Again, another so another problem that we need to figure out a solution in this new sort of landscape.

Rhona Pierce:
35:57

Yeah. Just go back to basics, build relationships, focus on skills, and really train your interviewers to identify these skills and stop worrying about catching the scammers because that's not how you solve this problem. How do you think that TA professionals can stay ahead of these tactics and, like, know what people are doing out there?

Stefanie Fackrell:
36:24

Like we've been doing. Right? Reading on Reddit, kind of putting your ear to the ground if there's any Discord communities lined. There's tons of candidate sort of communication areas. Right?

Stefanie Fackrell:
36:38

They have everybody has communities now. So I would just continue to put your ear to the ground, do your sleuthing, being nosy, and really understanding. Right? Because I think that's what a good recruiter or TA professional does is they're on the pulse of what's happening out there with, you know, compensation, benefits, all of those things. And this is another essential piece of the pie that we're gonna need to start focusing on.

Rhona Pierce:
37:07

Yeah. And if you're having trouble convincing your leadership that as a recruiter, you need to be in these communities, I call it infiltrating. Yes. But you need to be where your candidates are. This is a great reason to give them because if you're where they're, where they're hanging out, you will hear the things that they're doing.

Rhona Pierce:
37:31

Because when someone finds a quote unquote cool way to beat the system, they will share it with others. So one, you'll learn that, but also you will be part of the community. You will be a respected recruiter. You will know and have these relationships with people that aren't in your immediate network, but are still qualified candidates. So I think that's that's really the way forward.

Rhona Pierce:
37:57

Now we've been doing this for a while, but there's always new people entering our industry. What's one piece of advice you'd give to a recruiter just starting out who's navigating these new challenges?

Stefanie Fackrell:
38:12

If I were just starting out again, because when I started out again, I was thrown in into it. Right? I I looked for mentors, I looked for people that I worked with that I knew were doing exceptionally well, you know, just by listening, I know we're remote now, right? But I used to listen on the phone to people on the phone, how they approach their candidates, how they talked in the cubicles, right? What they knew was going on.

Stefanie Fackrell:
38:43

I would find someone that can mentor you and knows what they're doing and has been who is a trusted resource. And I would read everything that you can about what's going on, you know, on LinkedIn, on Reddit, on all these various sites and kind of get the lay of the land, listen to how people listen to the woes and complaints of job seekers to understand how you can be better and be an exceptional recruiter.

Rhona Pierce:
39:15

Amazing. After everything we've discussed, what's one key takeaway you want listeners and viewers to remember about this topic?

Stefanie Fackrell:
39:25

Well, with everything that's been going on, again, like, it's bot versus bot, it's candidate versus recruiter, there's so much tension and everything going on right now. I think everybody is doing the best that they can with the knowledge and resources that they have. We are in a new landscape, a new way of doing things, bot versus bot, as we've been talking about. So just, you know, it's a learning curve. Give people grace until we can figure out the best path forward.

Rhona Pierce:
40:01

Amazing. Anything that we didn't or that I didn't cover or didn't ask that you think people should know about this topic or any questions for me?

Stefanie Fackrell:
40:12

Oh, I do also wanna say, I think we've we said this, but just to reiterate, not everyone is trying to deceive you. I think we have to always go into building relationships and, you know, recruiting for our companies and just trusting that people are being authentic and not go in so skeptical. I think, you know, there's a lot of great talent out there that's really struggling and trying to get noticed. And so just always be generous and think people have the best intentions is what I wanna say.

Rhona Pierce:
40:50

And I think I hope that people are going to have questions or comments about this episode, you can go to throw out the playbook.com. And on the side, there's a way to leave a voice mail. You can leave a recording with any questions that you have. And who knows? If we get enough, I might convince Stephanie to come back on and do a q and a episode where we answer some of your questions.

Rhona Pierce:
41:18

But I really wanna hear what questions you have. And most importantly, I wanna hear what you've been doing out there on the ground in the trenches that has worked to solve this problem. Stephanie, where can listeners get in contact with you?

Stefanie Fackrell:
41:35

So I'm on LinkedIn, and then I have my own website where you can you can find me on LinkedIn, but, the website's www.disruptivehrspelledwithay.com.

Rhona Pierce:
41:49

Amazing. And I'll add all of those links to the show notes. Thank you so much for being on the show today and for being so candid and open.

Stefanie Fackrell:
41:58

That's been great.

Rhona Pierce:
42:00

If you want more actionable advice, like the advice shared in this episode, I write a weekly newsletter for TA professionals who want to take a more strategic approach to recruiting. You can sign up at throwouttheplaybook.com/newsletter. That's throwouttheplaybook.com/newsletter. The link is in the show notes.