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The article discusses the challenges faced by employers and job seekers in the current hiring landscape, where generative AI tools contribute to an influx of fake resumes and scams, making it difficult to identify genuine candidates.
AI 生成摘要
本文探討了當前招聘環境中雇主和求職者面臨的挑戰，生成式AI工具導致大量虛假履歷和詐騙充斥，使得辨識真實候選人變得困難。
Challenging technology to serve the public good.
Hello World
Red flags that both job seekers and employers should watch for, in an era of AI slop and application scams
By
Andrew Losowsky
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Hello world,
My name is Andrew Losowsky, and I’m Product Director & Editor at The Markup and CalMatters. A few months ago, we wanted to hire a new engineer. Hiring is always a lengthy process, but this time I had to wade through what felt like an ocean of generative AI slop. Fake and exaggerated resumes have always existed, but now, thanks to the rise of AI tools, it’s incredibly hard to know who is even real.
I get why people use AI tools to find work. Job hunting is exhausting. Every employer wants to feel special, but applying takes so long that, according to a recent report, 65% of jobseekers use AI automation tools to find work, including some that promise to “tailor your resume for each role.” And why not, if employers are using AI to screen resumes anyway? (We don’t do this.) However, there’s also been a lot of reporting over the past year about fake candidates for technical roles.
Investigating how AI is impacting society, from powerful language models and machine learning to the spread of AI slop.
Within 12 hours of posting the role, we received more than 400 applications. At first, most of these candidates seemed to be genuine. However, as the person who had to read them all, I quickly saw some red flags, which were all clear indicators of inauthenticity:
These suspicions were reinforced by the answers that these inauthentic candidates gave to questions on our application form. As part of our hiring process, we asked applicants why they wanted to work with us and which projects they were most proud of. We didn’t prohibit using AI to help write applications, but what we received went a lot further than using it for guidance around phrasing or language.
After less than a day, we removed our ad from ZipRecruiter, Glassdoor and Indeed.com, and relied on our own outreach to get applicants. Following this, the flood of probable inauthenticity slowed to a trickle.
I was curious about our probably fake applicants, so I followed up with some of them.
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Several candidates said they had worked for PixelFyre Code Labs, “an information business helping all businesses succeed,” whose web address goes nowhere and seems only to exist on LinkedIn. One of them said he couldn’t discuss his past journalism work because “most of the work was under NDAs or white-label partnerships.” I tried to set up a phone call anyway, but he never responded to multiple emails. “Due to NDA” was a common refrain from suspect candidates when questioned about their experience.
One person’s resume showed relevant experience but contained several of the red flags I mentioned earlier. By chance, I happened to have a professional contact at a company listed on his application – and, to my surprise, my contact not only confirmed the candidate’s past employment but also highly recommended him, so I set up a video interview.
During the interview, the candidate’s answers were evasive and generic. When asked why he wanted to work for us, he said, “I want to work for you because you’re doing cutting-edge technologies… You’re a fast company growing ‘fastly’, and I’m looking for new experiences.” He said he lived in Morrisville, N.C., and when I asked what he liked about the town, he said “The temperature — the weather is amazing.” Any specific places or things to see there? “No, just the weather.” What’s the weather like today? “It’s cold all the time, it feels freezing today, yes.” The temperature in Morrisville that day was 82 degrees.
I later shared a screenshot I had taken of the candidate with my contact at the publication. “That is definitely not the same [person] we’d hired,” he said.
Our job ad also got picked up and shared by scammers. Someone made a fake email address similar to ours, then sent generic technical “tests” containing our logo to jobseekers, while linking to our job ad. Completing these tests led to a fake contract signed by someone claiming to be our CEO – it was at this point that the scammers requested financial information, saying they needed it to issue payments. I shudder to think what would have happened to anyone who handed over their banking details. Based on what I know about AI, creating these scams at scale is probably pretty easy.
Despite our travails, we got lucky. We had a stellar shortlist of actual people whose experiences matched their applications. We landed a fantastic new team member (welcome, Matt!), and learned a lesson: if you’re hiring a remote engineer, be prepared to wade through a lot of slop.
Sincerely,
Andrew LosowskyProduct Director & EditorThe Markup and CalMatters
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We posted a job. Then came the AI slop, impersonator and recruiter scam
From the series —
Hello World and Artificial Intelligence
Andrew Losowsky
Product Editor / Director of Product
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