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

(www.cnbc.com)
182 points arizen | 9 comments | 09 Apr 25 12:39 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | 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. filoleg ◴[09 Apr 25 14:00 UTC] No.43632224[source]▶
i am wondering, how would that even work for any subsequent jobs, past the first set of multiple jobs done at once?

A pre-employment background check (which you typically do after accepting an offer and right before starting the job) would clearly show all your previous places of employment (for up to 7 years at the very least), along with the timelines. How would one explain that to the employer?

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2. alexanderchr ◴[09 Apr 25 14:16 UTC] No.43632420[source]▶
What kind of background check would reveal all previous employers? Where I’m from a background check usually consists of checking one or two (candidate provided) references and possibly googling their name for red flags.
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3. alabastervlog ◴[09 Apr 25 14:46 UTC] No.43632735[source]▶
The credit reporting agencies can provide a list of prior employers. And comp.
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4. MichaelZuo ◴[09 Apr 25 15:23 UTC] No.43633163[source]▶
That’s just some rando googling away.

How does that have any relation to a real agency, staffed with competent experts that specialize in background checks?

5. alexanderchr ◴[09 Apr 25 16:14 UTC] No.43633745{3}[source]▶
Interesting, never heard of this service being provided here (EU), not even sure it would be legal, but makes sense. Apparently they get the information from credit card/mortage applications.

The overemployed crowd is two steps ahead though: https://old.reddit.com/r/overemployed/comments/10el4ll/remov...

6. filoleg ◴[09 Apr 25 17:22 UTC] No.43634734[source]▶
Every single work backround check I ever had in the US included that. I do not think it lists all former employers ever tho, only those from the past 7 years iirc.

In fact, I got a copy of it back too, where it listed even some of the jobs I didn’t list myself because I didn’t think they were relevant (e.g., the grocery store job I had the summer before college, 5 years before the SWE position I was getting background checked for).

One time, it even had an interesting tidbit that got flagged. A former employer of mine didn’t exist anymore at the time of the background check (the company got absorbed into another international corp and then closed down all offices in the state I worked in, thus ceasing to exist both legally and physically). So the background check report mentioned there was an indication of me having worked there, but they couldn’t reach out to the company to verify my exact employment dates.

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7. const_cast ◴[10 Apr 25 00:19 UTC] No.43639383{3}[source]▶
The 7 years you're referring to isn't criminal background check, which is what we generally think of when we say background check, it's credit reporting. And it's extremely unethical, in my opinion. It's outlawed in a few states.

It doesn't just show your employment for the past 7 years, it also shows your comp, your debts, your defaults, everything.

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8. filoleg ◴[10 Apr 25 00:33 UTC] No.43639457{4}[source]▶
My criminal checks were on the exact same report as this one, I only ever applied for one.

It didn’t have my reported salary or debts. I know because I requested a copy of the report my employer got (which afaik is a legal requirement to provide one upon request, so it was as simple as clicking a button).

In general, I have no issues with my employer knowing my previous compensation once i am employed there. At no point in my interviews in over a decade at different companies was I ever asked what I made in terms of comp before, only what I wanted to make. And the background check only comes after the offer is already agreed upon, signed, and I already started working there. So I don’t see a problem there.

9. FireBeyond ◴[10 Apr 25 04:50 UTC] No.43640722[source]▶
You can opt out of The Work Number (Equifax's 'employment verification' service), but you have to do it via snail mail.