Proxy Interviews: How to NOT be its victim when hiring freshers during campus placements
When virtual is the norm, and a chunk of corporate’s human capital comes from campus recruits, you can’t afford to ‘mis-hire’ because of such malpractices.
Imagine paying big bucks to someone you did not even hire and someone who promised you skills they don’t have. Imagine the impact it will have on the overall quality of your workforce. So yes, you heard that right. It is possible that your new hire is not the same as the one who gave those interviews and assessment tests.
Interview scams in the form of proxies are more predominant than ever. The worst bit is that “Proxy Interview Support” is a legit and lucrative business. We are not saying it; you can google and see for yourself. You’ll have an awful lot of options, along with tons of YouTube videos. According to Gartner’s report, 89% of companies are moving to virtual interviews for recruitment. Hence, when in-person interviews are slowly becoming extinct, you can’t afford to be in a haze to the virtual processes. While hiring might be getting increasingly automated, campus recruitment is still being done manually.
So, how does a company ensure absolute transparency and legitimacy in interviews? While we can simply say that automation is the answer, we’d rather like to unveil the ‘need’ to incorporate AI to battle such malpractices in campus hiring because that’s where a major part of your human capital would come from.
Table of Contents
- What is a proxy interview, and is it that threatening?
- How prominent are they?
- How is Superset’s AI impeccable and nearly impossible to fool?
- Why is automating their campus hiring a need for enterprises?
1. What is a proxy interview, and is it that threatening?
E.g., Shantanu Singh has applied for a role at your company and somehow managed to clear the initial screening rounds. He now has to sit for an interview and answer some tough questions. He fears he’ll be unable to get the job and gets someone else to appear for the interview. They are smart, articulate, knowledgeable, and just the right fit. Except: they are not the original Shantanu Singh. You roll out the offer letter, and he quickly accepts. Now the Shantanu you hired has all the skills, except the Shantanu who comes and works on the job knows next to nothing about his role. This is how proxies work.
Now it’s been three months into the job for Shantanu, and he has not been performing to your expectations. He is incompetent and laid-back. You have been suspicious all this while, but because you didn’t record that interview, you can’t go back and cross-check. The cost, time, and effort that went into his hiring and training were all in vain. Now you again have to put all your time and money into hiring another person for the same role. Saying that all of this is scary and threatening seems axiomatic to me. You, as a recruiter, would know better and rather be more equipped to understand the consequences of such a situation.
2. How prominent are they?
Since you have come this far in this blog, we are pretty sure you must have googled at least once about proxy interviews. So, we need not blabber more on this aspect. We’ll let you decode it for yourself. Having said that, let’s corroborate our view. This article rightly mentions how agencies that provide proxy interview services earn up to ₹15,000 per interview.
“Interview is ours, the job is yours.”
“Real-time and 7+ years of experienced IT professionals will support you.”
“We’ll ensure you always get the best result”
“Get Best Interview Proxy by Industry Experts”
“Proxy Interview Support in India from USA”
Just a few examples of what the ads of such companies look like.
Furthermore, this NY Times article dives deeper into the petrifying rabbit hole of deceiving employers and proxies in interviews. It also talks about the deeper psychological theories that urge these candidates to lie, cheat, and do everything they can in an interview without understanding any ethical or legal implications.
But wait, hang on.
It’s great that you have understood the menace that proxy interviews are. We’ll now tell you how you can choose not to be a victim of this and, of course, be a smart employer.
3. How is Superset’s AI impeccable and nearly impossible to fool?
Let’s first give you a brief background if you’re new here. We at Superset are working towards revolutionizing the way campus placements are viewed through automation. How are we doing this? We are building a network of the biggest enterprises and campuses, using our client footprint of more than 24,000 colleges and 1 million students.
Read More: https://medium.com/superset-blog
Now, coming back to the subject matter.
Visualize how you use the Face ID to unlock your phone. Face ID is a flawless biometric method and the chances of it being fooled by a random person are one in a million. Our product not only has a Face ID but a more mature version of it that scans applicants’ faces at every stage of the application and notifies the employer in case of any red flags.
Our product captures the images of candidates during:
- Registration
- Test assessment
- The actual video interview
Hence, this ensures multi-level deduplication and uniformity. You can let the AI match the previous photo to restrict impersonation or block flagged students. Or, through a single click, you, as a panelist, can verify the student.
To give you a larger picture, our product allows multi-person calls, and you don’t need to schedule the interviews manually. While conducting a virtual recruitment drive, all your interviews are automatically recorded and stored.
4. Why is automating their campus hiring a need for enterprises?
Absolutely. There are no two ways about it. Hiring freshers every year is an indispensable talent acquisition project for any enterprise. There are loads of operationally heavy tasks, and incompetent course recruitment can cost you a lot of money and effort. Getting the right talent demands planning the right hiring process.
To conclude, the world of Gen Zs has a sea of talented individuals. But with them, some do leverage technology for more harm than good. If the most in-demand fresh graduates exist, those who fudge resumes and hire proxies to get through interviews or assessment tests also exist. Up your game, automate your campus recruitment, and enhance your human capital for the deeper welfare of the company.
Wanna know more about Superset’s enormous corporate client base? Click here.
