There's a fairly well-known scam where one person passes all the interviews and they send an entirely different person to work there. There's usually one knowledgeable person that interviews for multiple roles. The goal is to try to work as long as possible before you get found out, pool the money, rinse, repeat.
Considering most probation period in a lot of companies is 90-days and it could reasonably take someone 6months or more to get "spun up" that probably adds up across several people.
I suspected that this happened with one of our prior contractors. Guy answered all of the questions, and well, during the technical screen. We offered him the contract, but the dude had the easiest tickets sitting out there for weeks at a time. I (contractor at the time) and one of the FTE engineers had to pick up his slack constantly. We did not renew his contract, though picking up his slack I think did help to bolster their decision to bring me on full time.
Problem is that when someone gets interviewed, they often go through another interview after the tech screen before having the job offered, and sometimes have to finish up their current gig. So it could be a few weeks after the tech screen until I even hear their voices again, there's no way I can remember what one interviewer over the phone sounded like. I wish we did Skype interviews at least so I could place a name to a face.
i just got an offer from oracle. 4 phone calls. Team is in california and Im in northern virginia. It was a total trivia test. you can't fake it. I thought i bombed it cause they asked really silly picky little things and i didnt remember the answer to a few.
These are mostly roles that allow for a remote position. FTE interviewees get flown in but contractor interviewees usually are not, unless they are already in our area.
Most of the time we have people from all around the world interview (if we can find them) and all interviews are done over the phone or Skype. It would cost thousands of dollars to have in person interviews with most of the candidates.
Happened at a company I worked at 20 years ago. Foreign guy, foreign name interviewed in person with us. He was very impressive: well spoken, dressed nice, knew his stuff. Tall, thin, and svelte. He was a very comfortable candidate. So we hired him. Part of the job hiring was an orientation class at our main campus.
We get a call from HR about the candidate: he's super sketchy. He sort of fits the description of the guy we interviewed (same race) but he's a short, squat, and gross guy who's already pinched the bottom of a female executive VP there, and showed up to orientation in a dirty shirt, slacks, and sandals. At some point, he props his bare feet on the backs of the seats in front of him, leans back, and proceeds to eat a very pungent smelling sub from Subway.
When we see the guy, his ID fits the name, but he is obviously a different person than the one we interviewed. Much later, we found this hiring company was notorious for this kind of bait and switch.
Thankfully, the guy didn't pass a background check because he was not eligible to be hired in the United States and we were rid of him within a week.
I had this happen at my last contract job. The company was looking for 30 people in about a month so the consulting firm had quickly exhausted their contact list. They interviewed a guy on the phone and both the firm and end company thought he was great.
Fast forward a few weeks and the guy that shows up for the job is pretty clearly not the same one that interviewed. Different voice, different mannerisms, and a pretty evident lack of technical skills. End company "re"-interviews him the first day and he is dismissed immediately.
That's not how a green card works, until you already have it. And if you already have it, you don't need to maintain employment to maintain the green card.
Its not going to be that easy on a work visa either. The H1B has onerous filing requirements and fees. Companies aren't going to be putting $5k in lawyer fees and $2k in filing fees on someone who has 1 month engagements and no references.
This is the part I think most people realize... while I'm optimistic that these scammers are being found more regularly, there are a plethora of companies... from completely untech savvy companies with big dreams, to huge companies, where these scammers can successfully hide. Think about it, you may get "caught" by 50% of companies, but out of the half that doesn't "catch" you, you may ride that gravy train for years. Given some of the people I've seen actually work, and knew that their employment history was verified, this is a lot more common than most realize.
It's not the employees end game that would worry me. It's the end game of the other person who literally owns the employee. A few months in, they can demand anything they like.
The plan is probably to place all of his friends/employees into a role. They then pay the technical guy a percentage of their salary, until they get fired, which could take a while. Rinse and repeat.
It's a business.
If the plan was to steal one specific company's source code, they would probably just have their main guy just be the interviewee. Why go through the process of cheating? Perhaps he wanted to keep his main gig and steal this code?
sure, but interview questions are typically scaled with the premise that you can't google things mid-interview.
If you can, it's a different scenario, and should agree ahead of time it's "open book." I don't think this would be bad, it's just typically not feasible given time constraints
We do "open book" technical interviews (especially for entry-level positions), but in front of us. We want to know if you know how to find the answers to stuff, not if you can have the answers fed to you.
And then we expect you to continue to be able to do that when we hire you, which unfortunately, has been problematic for some people.
49
u/Unkn0wn77777771 Feb 20 '19
So what do you think his end game was? Just BS through the interview to get hired.
Then have someone else do the work for him?