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

AI generated recruits are a fiction. That's not to say there aren't fake or bait and switch recruits but this idea makes no sense.

Some background. I'm a senior developer who has performed hundreds of interviews and seen dozens of questionable recruits long before AI. Typically the scam is that an offshore consultancy wants to place some roles to collect wages. Many of these agencies are from collectivist cultures, so in the mind of the agency, they all work in our project. This may not be true, but the agency sees the position as theirs, not the recruit's. So they typically don't the issue with putting recruit A in front of the interviewer and then slotting recruit B in after the position is secured. I've seen this done with A talking while B moves their lips on camera. Now with chatGPT (and earlier to some degree with just Google Search) we just see applicants eyes focused on something they're reading when we ask questions. All of this is just as easy as an AI generated applicant (if not easier) and quite likely to get the recruit hired.

A lot of this narrative is pointing the finger at China, North Korea and Russia/Ukraine. The best candidates I've fielded have been Ukrainian, Russian and Chinese. These are countries well known for their tech sectors. North Korea has executed the largest crypto heists in history. These are not groups who need to fake it.

So who does this narrative serve? It serves the RTO CEOs. This makes CEOs scared to hire remote workers and lets the ones who demand it have a reason.

If anything the panic around AI should reinforce the need to think critically about these things.

My experience was similar but with on/offshore companies in India. We just started requiring camera on (it was pre-pandemic) and it was obvious if candidates knew their stuff or were just prepped and/or reading responses. Most of those contracts were setup where the company was providing a "service" with fake cost recovery wordings if the service was not provided. Money only went one way, the contracts had wording about penalty payback but the reality after talking with people in finance was the financial process/systems weren't setup for that, lol.

Ways to combat bait and switch is to alter interview questions, add new questions to every interview, ask deeper level questions, and observe the candidate in how they respond. It should be a more conversational tone the entire time, random discussion paths pursued, especially if the candidate's interests perk up about something. Every candidate has a different background so getting them to talk about that and problems they solved and diving into those in detail should be a good gauge of ability.

A friend of mine - against my loud objections - hired some Pakistani offshore group to build an app for him around 2015 or so. $15k "estimate" but it was all time & materials not flat rate. They had an "office" with a "CEO" in NYC but no staff, just a PO Box. The whole thing was super fishy and I said as much but he didn't care because they were cheap.

Fast forward nearly 18 months into the 6 month contract, and about $40k later, there is no working app and the "CEO" says "well I would love to give you some of your money back but the contract has expired so I am no longer able to do that, we could sign another one for $20k to finish if you'd like."

I've worked with probably a dozen offshoring companies in my life in one way or another and every single one of them has been deceitful to the point of being fraudulent, and puts out some of the worst code you have ever seen.

I tell everyone considering it that if you can afford it, you're getting scammed in one way or another. You're better off going with a US-based firm that guarantees you'll get American workers who are physically in the US working on your product.

I'd rather hire Deloitte or Accenture for 10x the price - I know they offshore a ton but you'll at least have avenues to get your money back if they don't deliver.

<cough>Thoughtworks</cough>

Expand on the a little please. I’d like to know the background.