The great DevOps hiring scam
You’ve heard this story right? You start up a video interview thinking something’s just a bit off… The video feed is really laggy, and while your memory isn’t perfect you could swear the candidate’s accent is a little… different today from the first time you talked. And that headset, with the big mic right in front of their mouth, it’s distracting. But all this aside, your candidate has all the right answers and, on the pair programming part of the interview, code just flies from their fingers. This is exactly who you’ve been looking for — “hire them now!”
And you just got scammed — tricked into hiring an imposter. The person you just interviewed wasn’t on screen, they were tapped into the call pretending to be your new hire.
Turns out, it’s actually a pretty big business.
There’s a whole industry out there that guarantees landing a job. They’ll craft a candidates resume, and use a little bit of technnology and a few simple tricks to get through the interview. They tell the candidate, “Don’t worry, once you’ve got the job it’s actually pretty hard to get fired — so you’ll have time to pick up skills.” It’s a predatory industry, largely playing on more junior professionals that want a good, honest job, but need some help landing the gig. Personally, I think most of them don’t realize it’s unethical, and many probably think the “service” is legit.
The first time I heard about this I thought it was silly. I mean, what’s the end game here? You end up getting a job, only to be fired a few weeks later when your employer figures out you’re a fraud? Who would do that, right?
And then I ran into my first scam interview.
All the signs where there — video and audio quality where laggy and poor, the candidate was wearing a headset with a huge mic so I couldn’t see his mouth. I could tell the voice was different — and just didn’t match what I was seeing. When whoever was speaking got really animated, my candidate was just sitting there like a lump. And “whoever was speaking,” well, there was a third party on the call — an “Otter.ai” that my candidate claimed was “just my transcription service.” Honestly, it was pretty obvious, and when I called him out on it he panicked — and hung up. I never heard from him again.
We got lucky. It was a poorly executed attempt. I know there are more experienced scammers out there and our talent management team has run into them. Here are a few tips we’ve learned along the way when it comes to online interviews, and how to avoid the “Great DevOps Scam.”
Set the ground rules ahead of time
An interview is a very personal thing. You should be getting to know your candidate — and that means a good quality interaction. Make sure your invitation sets some guidelines:
- Video and audio quality need to be good. If it’s not, the interview will have to be rescheduled. It’s not that hard to find a local WeWork or internet cafe with good bandwidth.
- Eye contact is important. It’s got to be a video call — and your candidate’s face needs to be unobstructed. No large microphones, no dark lighting.
- No third parties or tools. Don’t allow anyone else on the call, no transcription software, and no recording. For example, don’t allow an Otter.ai “participant” in the meeting — it could too easily be a third party, posing as the candidate or feeding them answers.
Restrict the meeting invite
Your Zoom, Google Meet, or Teams invitation should be restricted: It should be passworded, and the invite itself should not allow forwarding to other people. If your platform supports it, you can even prevent participants from seeing who’s been invited or who is online.
Keep it flexible
Keep the interview topic flexible, rather than letting a candidate know ahead of time if it’s a technical, cultural, or management interview. Purely from a practical point of view this lets you take the interview wherever it naturally goes — but from a strategic perspective, it makes it that much harder for a scammer to set up conditions for a successful fake interview.
Call it out
Probably the most important tip is to call out anything suspicious.
People are generally conflict averse, and calling someone out on an interview may seem like conflict. I’d argue that it’s not — it’s actually more empathetic.
Consider the impact of hiring the wrong person. It’s a mess for everyone, the candidate included. It can lead to months of degraded performance as your team suffers from not having the right person. It’s stressful for everyone involved, including the new hire — who, let’s face it, probably just wants a good paycheck and will likely be killing themselves trying to learn years of DevOps skills in a matter of weeks. And the stress of undoing a hire and trying all over again will be looming over everyone.
So, if you see any of the warning signs call it out. If the video isn’t good enough or the audio is laggy, say so. Tell your candidate, “I’m sorry, the video feed just isn’t good enough for us to conduct a quality interview. Let’s reschedule so you can have time to find a place with good internet.” If they have a huge mic blocking their mouth, say so: “It’s really important that we have a good, face-to-face interview. It’s really hard for me to connect with you because of your microphone. Why don’t we reschedule so that you have time to set up a quiet place for the interview?”
Use a service
You can also take it up a notch and use an interview proctoring service. There are several out there, with a variety of offerings. Basic services include scheduling software and AI that looks for warning signs. More full-service companies will actually take a 360° panorama of the candidates location, ensure it is free of stray electronics, and use specialized browsers that prevent the candidate from running “suspicious” software (for instance, having Zoom running separately from the interview).
Bottom line, hiring a new team member is hard. It’s exhausting going through lots of interviews. It takes a huge amount of energy to ask great questions, listen for the right answers, and make a good connection. Don’t compromise on any of it — this is one of the most important decisions you’ll be making, so treat it as such.
Originally published at https://blog.bosslogic.com.
Cover photo by Plato Terentev.
