How exposed is your hiring to fake candidates?
Score your process against 20 checks, from the moment a resume lands to day 30. You get a risk score, your exposure profile, and an action plan sorted by who owns it and how fast it can be fixed.
What counts as candidate fraud now
Candidate fraud is any attempt to get hired under false pretences: an inflated resume, an interview answered by an AI tool, a stand-in or deepfake sitting the interview, or a fully synthetic identity. Generative AI has made each of these cheaper. Gartner predicts that by 2028, 1 in 4 candidate profiles worldwide could be fake.
Polished inflation
A real person with an inflated story. Red flag: skills listed with no project behind them.
Scripted interview
Answers fed by an AI tool on a second screen. Red flag: a long pause, then a perfect paragraph.
Proxy or deepfake
Someone else, or an AI avatar, sits the interview. Red flag: lip movement lagging the audio.
Synthetic identity ring
Organised groups hired remotely under fake identities. Red flag: a request to ship the laptop to a new address.
The 20 checks in this scorecard
Grouped by the five stages where fraud gets in. Each is scored Always, Sometimes or Not yet.
01Application
- We compare LinkedIn profile age and history against the career the resume claims.
- We detect duplicate applicants: same phone, email pattern or near-identical resume text.
- We check resumes for hidden text aimed at AI screeners.
- We confirm past employers and role dates for shortlisted profiles.
02Before the first interview
- We verify government ID against a live selfie before the first interview.
- Camera on is mandatory in every round, and the invite says so.
- We take documents from verified sources, not uploaded scans.
03In the interview
- Interviewers ask about specific projects, not just skills and definitions.
- Interviewers follow up at least twice on key answers.
- Every technical hire does live problem solving with screen share.
- Interviewers run a quick liveness moment on video (a hand wave, a turn to the side).
- Interviewers know the tells: lip-sync lag, eyes fixed on an off-screen spot.
- Interviewers raise a detail from deep in the resume, unprompted.
04Offer and day one
- The final round is identity-matched, in person or with a fresh on-camera ID check.
- On day one, we confirm the joiner matches the person we interviewed.
- Laptops ship only to the verified address. Change requests get escalated.
- Background verification clears before access to production or client data.
05First 30 days
- We monitor new joiners for odd login locations and unapproved remote-access tools.
- Managers do video check-ins at day 15 and day 30.
- We have a written post-hire identity verification process with a named owner.
Questions TA leaders ask about fake candidates
How common is candidate fraud in 2026?
Common enough to plan for. In Checkr's September 2026 survey of 3,000 US hiring managers, 86% said their organisation faced at least one kind of hiring fraud in the past year, and 40% had interviewed someone later found to be using a fake identity, up from 31% a year earlier. Gartner predicts that by 2028, 1 in 4 candidate profiles worldwide could be fake.
How do you spot a deepfake candidate in a video interview?
Watch for lip movement that lags the audio, reluctance to pass a hand across the face or turn to the side, and a voice that sounds different on day one. The reliable fix is procedural: match government ID to a live selfie before the first interview, keep that reference image, and check the person against it again on day one.
What is proxy interview fraud?
A proxy interview is when someone other than the applicant sits the interview, either a more experienced person or an AI avatar. Checkr found 67% of US hiring managers ran into proxy fraud in 2026, up from 35% the year before. Identity-matched final rounds and day-one checks are the main defences.
Should companies go back to in-person interviews?
Not for every round. In-person rounds stop most proxy and deepfake fraud, but they slow hiring and shrink the talent pool to one city. A better balance is three checkpoints: ID plus live selfie before the first interview, an identity-matched final round, and identity checks again on day one and day 30.
Which industries are most exposed to fake candidates?
Technology hiring takes the largest share. Data from Bengaluru interview platform InCruiter puts IT and tech at about 60% of the fraud cases it flagged in 2026, followed by BFSI at about 15%. That makes remote technical hiring for banks and financial services, the core of many India GCCs, a high-exposure combination.
How is the Qfyre scorecard calculated?
Each of the 20 checks is weighted by impact from 1 to 3. Always earns full credit, Sometimes half, and Not yet none, giving a score out of 100. Four context questions set your exposure level separately, so a remote, tech-heavy, high-volume hirer sees the same gaps flagged as more urgent. Your answers stay in your browser.