Tackling cheating in hiring: Insights and solutions

Cheating in hiring is an issue that can result in costly and time-consuming mis-hires that harm companies and honest candidates. In our recent white paper, “Do Cheaters Prosper? A Look at Cheating in Hiring Workflows,” we delve into the different forms of cheating, their impact, and how HireVue can help organizations detect and deter these behaviors while maintaining a positive experience for applicants making good-faith attempts.

It’s important to remember that cheating behavior is often fueled by fear and uncertainty. Getting hired is a high-stakes scenario and fear that they won’t measure up or will come off poorly can cause people to cut corners or take steps that are otherwise out of character. 

This is just another reason it’s important to provide the utmost transparency for applicants. 

Candidates who know exactly what will be expected of them can prepare adequately, perform their best in the interview or assessment, and ideally feel less motivated to cheat. Inform candidates what you’re measuring in your various interview and assessment activities, and be candid about what your company considers cheating (e.g. provide explicit instructions on whether or not to use ChatGPT).

Defining cheating in hiring

Cheating in hiring is tricky to define because there is a fine line between legitimate interview preparation and deceptive practices. For example, using a career coach, practicing with online resources, or even jotting down notes can be considered preparation. But where does it cross into cheating territory? For this discussion, we define cheating as “deceptive or dishonest actions taken by a candidate to misrepresent or embellish their knowledge, skills, abilities, or potential for the role.” 

Your organization should define cheating and share your standards for everyone taking an interview or assessment. 

Forms of cheating and their impact

1. Artificially enhanced answers: Using technology to generate or modify responses during interviews. The good news is that our data shows that ChatGPT performs poorly on our Virtual Job Tryouts (VJTs) and average on our AI-scored assessments. Top talent still shines through, indicating a low risk of misfires from candidates using these tools.
2. Shared responses: Some candidates might share answers to interview or assessment questions. Our study found that less than 1% of candidates had highly similar responses, suggesting that most applicants do not engage in this form of cheating. Equally, those flagged by this analysis typically received significantly lower assessment scores, suggesting no consistent advantage gained from this.
3. Impersonation: This involves someone else taking the interview or assessment on behalf of the candidate. Although common in some regions, this can be mitigated by including live interviews and requiring introduction videos.

Reducing cheating in hiring

Creating a good experience for candidates while meeting your business objectives is a delicate balance. Candidates need to feel like the barrier to entry isn’t too high to participate in the selection process, and employers need to gather enough information to make an informed decision. Over-indexing on anti-cheating measures can tip your process too far in one direction, but fortunately, HireVue tools and best practice workflows have mitigation built into their design in such a way that this is unlikely. 

Some of the ways you can start reducing cheating include: 

1. Multi-stage workflow validation: Incorporate live interviews to verify the candidate’s knowledge, skills, and abilities. Invite candidates to refer back to earlier responses during latter stage interviews.
2. Smart interview questions: Use questions that require candidates to apply their skills and experiences, making it difficult to use external tools or shared answers.
3. Coding challenge similarity scores: Use algorithms to detect similar code submissions and playback features to monitor candidate behavior during assessments.
4. Time-limited interview questions: Implement time-limited questions to reduce the chance of candidates using external resources, although this method has its drawbacks and should be used cautiously.
5. Transparency in the candidate experience: Clearly outline the hiring process and expectations to reduce fear and uncertainty, which can drive candidates to cheat.

The HireVue team is continuously researching and developing tools to mitigate cheating. Some of the areas we’ve explored or have slated for future investigation include: 

• Disabling copy and paste functions in candidate experience 
• Warning or removing the ability to change tabs during an interview 
• Additional interview data in the reviewer experience such as recording count, completion time, records of changing active browser tabs, etc. 
• Screen capture and image capture of the candidate during the assessment or interview 
• Candidate photo upload for comparison throughout interview workflow 

To learn more about our cheating mitigation work and research, download “Do Cheaters Prosper? A Look at Cheating in Hiring Workflows” or schedule a demo with a member of our team.