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AI fakers exposed in tech dev recruitment: postmortem

2025-03-12, Pragmaticengineer
https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/ai-fakers
#Deepfake #ITWorker

Contents

AI fakers exposed in tech dev recruitment: postmortem
A full-remote security startup nearly hired a backend engineer who doesn’t exist, after a candidate used an AI filter as an on-screen disguise in video interviews. Learnings for tech companies
Imagine you’re the cofounder of a startup hiring its first few software engineers, and there’s a candidate who smashes the technical interview, and is the only one to complete the full coding interview – doing so with time to spare. Their communication style is a bit unconventional, but this could be explained by language differences, and isn’t a red flag. So, the promising candidate gets a thumbs up, and pretty soon they’re on screen in a non-technical final interview with the other cofounder, via video.
Then things get weird. Your cofounder pings you mid-interview to report that the candidate from Poland speaks no Polish whatsoever, and also that there is something just not right about …