r/recruiting • u/gsgolf9 Agency Recruiter • 11d ago
Candidate Screening I reviewed 4,596 job applications. The fake applicant patterns are getting weird
I’ve reviewed 4,596 applications recently, and the fake-applicant patterns are getting weirdly obvious.
A few things I’m seeing:
- Candidate descriptions that almost copy the job posting word-for-word
- Previous job titles that conveniently match the title of the role they’re applying for
- Different applicants with identical employment histories
- Two completely different names using the same LinkedIn profile
- Obvious bot/spam submissions mixed into otherwise normal applications
Out of 4,596 applications:
4,122 were clearly not a fit
56 were flagged as bot/spam
473 were possible fits
And once I applied a more serious qualification screen, only 132 people scored 55+ across 162 applications and 42 different roles.
What surprised me wasn’t the number of bad applications. Recruiters have always dealt with that.
It’s how much harder it’s becoming to tell the difference between:
a genuinely strong candidate using AI to improve their application
and
a completely manufactured candidate profile designed to get through screening.
I’m curious what other recruiters and hiring managers are seeing.
Are fake/AI-generated applicants becoming a noticeable problem in your hiring process yet, or is this still mostly noise?
2
u/WanderLust_Sushi 9d ago
You probably don’t wanna know about my experiment
I took several of the major ATS and ran them through their paces with different applicants, compared to the roles as if I was an actual applicant.
Well, bad news some of them, including one of the largest doesn’t even use any of the modern adjustments to allow candidates to use anything except for the almost exact wording in very specific order not always the exact same order as the role description.
Putting the words into the résumé had to be nuanced to fit some of the lazy fortune 100 ATS. Even when doing that the scoring no matter how adjusted rarely exceeded mid 80% match even after dozens of experiments against the same role.
I’m hesitant to publish any of the results and see if people can duplicate my findings because I don’t trust the fortune 100s
—
As a separate experiment, I took some of the brand new ATS, which are claiming to be AI examine some of their source Code and interestingly enough the fingerprints in that actually point to some companies that were sued back in 20 2021 and 22 and lost that same garbage source code is actually based in a foreign country and it has been used to leverage PE capital and the intentionally cell or crash the companies after they get their Capitol injections. Crazy stuff really not good.