Fraudulent job applications with no discernible purpose. Have you ever seen them? Any idea of the motive? [closed]

manpreet Best Answer 2 years ago

Our company recently received two job applications into our applicant tracking system within a minute of each other.

If we had looked at either of these applications in isolation, we would have been very impressed with it, and we would certainly have done at least an initial phone screening of the candidate.

However, when we reviewed both applications in comparison to each other, it became clear to us that something hinky was going on. Further research led us to conclude that both applications were fraudulent (including fake applicant names) and submitted by the same person or people.

A lot of effort was put into these fraudulent applications. The content on the submitted résumés was detailed, relevant to our work, and impressive. Substantial effort was put into making the applications convincing. We're pretty certain that the fact that two application were submitted was an error, that in fact whoever did this only intended to submit once and made a mistake. Red flags only became obvious when the two applications were compared.

Because of the amount of effort put into this, we must assume that the person or people who did it had some real motive, but we're at a loss to determine what it is.

Have you seen anything like this at your company? Do you have any idea what the motive for it might be?

I've posted more details about this on our information security blog, including copies of the two résumés that were submitted to us, but as per Stack Overflow policy, I've included above sufficient details about the question that my question here stands alone.

manpreet 2 years ago

I had a similar situation when I was managing a team about 20 years ago.

Half a dozen CVs each with different names, but many of the individual job details were cut/pasted and in a different order. Again, it's only obvious when you have several to compare. The names were also distinctive.

Long story short, the recruiter raged and shouted at me after I turned them all down saying they were obviously faked. I think it was a shakedown alleging illegal racism in hiring. I just ignored it and declined further calls, and never heard from them again. Having said that, I did have solid grounds to refute any such allegations.