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Fake job seekers are flooding US companies that are hiring for remote positions

(www.cnbc.com)
182 points arizen | 6 comments | 09 Apr 25 12:39 UTC | HN request time: 0.008s | source | bottom
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specialp ◴[09 Apr 25 13:31 UTC] No.43631863[source]▶
Another remote employment fraud that is much more prevalent is "Overemployment". You will get an applicant that is very skilled and hits the interview out of the park. But then when hired they are working many jobs and just trying to steal as many paychecks as they can until you fire them. They keep their first jobs resume clean and they all check out.

There is a Reddit community with over 400k members to show how prevalent this is [1]. There's lots of tactics like not allowing mentions on LinkedIn so they can't be publicly mentioned and seen by other unsuspecting employers, and just maintaining plausible deniability about why they can't make an on camera meeting. It is technically not illegal so it is very lucrative and hard to detect.

https://www.reddit.com/r/overemployed/top/

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1. _fat_santa ◴[09 Apr 25 13:54 UTC] No.43632149[source]▶
The term I've heard is "moonlighting" but same concept. As someone that's seen really smart guys at my company get sacked over this, my takeaway is you can do it but you gotta be real good to not get caught and don't be surprised if you're fired. There was one guy we had to fire over this and he had no remorse and took is super well. I could tell for him he understood this was part of the gig and probably had higher paying jobs to fallback on.
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2. yieldcrv ◴[09 Apr 25 14:10 UTC] No.43632354[source]▶
> and took it super well

I just close that company’s laptop and never think about them again.

There is no linkedin to update, no resume to update, no desperate dash or networking for another role.

Although there is less sympathy for being sacked for performance issues when thats the reason, the realities in my overemployment journey have been companies running out of runway for reasons not solvable by engineering direction, furloughs, government contracts where the top performers only lasted 5 more weeks longer than I did after being promised that the project was a 5 year contract, whole org adjustments, “we are going in a different direction” and more. Tech is not a stable sector. This is a far superior position to be in.

I’ve met expectations and gotten raises from simultaneous full time roles as well.

3. jdlshore ◴[09 Apr 25 14:18 UTC] No.43632447[source]▶
Moonlighting is working a second job at night (“by the light of the moon”). Overemployment is fraudulently charging two companies for the same hour of time.
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4. ordinaryradical ◴[09 Apr 25 14:58 UTC] No.43632891[source]▶
Salaried positions don’t pay by the hour but by meeting benchmarks, job accountabilities, etc. so I’m not sure “fraudulently” belongs in that sentence.
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5. b800h ◴[09 Apr 25 16:48 UTC] No.43634299[source]▶
That's the original meaning of the word, but it has come to be a synonym for overemployment.
6. const_cast ◴[10 Apr 25 00:15 UTC] No.43639363{3}[source]▶
I concur. The only reason it doesn't feel this way is because companies have been abusing the spirit and intent of salary for a long time. They effectively make it about time, and then don't pay overtime because they're exempt. Salary is basically just hourly but with a sweeter deal for the employer.

So, from the employer's perspective, it feels like fraud. But they've effectively been defrauding you for the past 100 years, by making you work salary when your job isn't a salary job. So, it's even. Well... not really. Still absurdly skewed in the employer's favor of course, but a little more even.