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Comment by reallymental | Hacker News Reader

Oh the old bait and switch works very well for telephone interviews. Remove them ideally.

Perhaps a solution to this could be to give the interviewee something that only he can give the interviewer back when they meet. Something that the interviewee cannot pass onto the 'real' candidate who will appear on the first day. On the other hand, fining the real candidate is the worst way possible, it has to be better than that.

It can help prevent this attempt of 'baiting and switching' to a lesser competent candidate in the first place.

The attitude should change from 'Oh I can give this test, I'll pass it for sure and you can pay me $X for it', to 'Screw that, they'll find out immediately that it wasn't me.'

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> Perhaps a solution to this could be to give the interviewee something that only he can give the interviewer back when they meet.

A video call as part of the hiring process, instead of a phone call, solves the solution trivially. Since we're talking about software engineers, which are (supposedly) used to these tools, there are no associated costs (I refer human, not monetary ones).

Not always. You can have someone off camera feeding answers into a IM window. It makes it easier to spot when something is off, but it's not fulproof.

Yes, I did mention that they should remove the telephone interviews ideally.

I should have added the fact that skype would solve the issue as well.

But to this day, I don't understand why companies do a telephone interview. Its certainly not cheaper than a skype interview.

Maybe you could argue against a video call by saying that the person might grow a beard/shave their beard, put on weight/ lose weight, change their appearance drastically by the time they come to the first day on the job. Or the interviewee might be at their current job when they are interviewing for the next, so that might throw some people off the process. Thirdly I think some research somewhere might have said that a skype interview is more daunting, and hence less people will apply for the job/qualify to the next round as a result of the stress it causes and the telephone interview is just less stressful on the candidate.

All possible, all equally rubbish reasons imho.

> fining the real candidate is the worst way possible

I fail to understand why this is unacceptable. If I take a test for you, we both get in trouble.

They pay a non-decent amounts to these test takers, because they are desperate, and most likely not very well off. So they're already in the red when they appear for the job they are not qualified for.

Some do this because they think that the job market is skewed against them, and might also have the sentiments that these 'seats' within the companies are reserved for 'rich people' or the 'upper castes', when that's hardly the case. Bear in mind some companies/universities/schools only hire from a certain caste, that is a thing. One's caste is clearly mentioned in the Ration Cards, not sure if it's the case on the Aadhar Card.

Fining them for an opportunity they thought they were going to get by 'gaming the system they were gamed out of' is just kicking them repeatedly, and does no one any good.

> They pay a non-decent amounts to these test takers, because they are desperate

And because the consequences are low. Anticipated shame [1] is an observed determinant in cheating frequency.

> does no one any good

It deters cheating. This does the honest test takers, e.g. those without the resources to pay "a non-decent amount" to cheat, a favor. It does employers, by being able to better trust exam results, a favor. And as a result, it does the entire economy a favor.

[1] https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/46025357/bf0...

Edited: Added link

Fining them is a way, I agree with you on that. But it's far from the best way.

The paper you provided[0] also goes on to talk about the future actions of an offender who has been caught in the act previously.

> It should be noted that being caught cheating in the past does not necessarily provide an accurate measure of high perception of being caught cheating in the future.

I'll concede to cherry picking for my arguments, but even anecdotally, cheaters will cheat, cost is an afterthought. People negatively affected (caught cheating and fined) will only remember the part about being fined. From their perspective, the organisation has just exploited them more, and you have just bred more resentment for your organisation within this community.

[0] https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/46025357/bf0...

If fraud is rationalized with group identities then it is even more important to keep the price for cheating high, because the cost is also higher when group identities are involved. When the seeds for prejudice are already there, the main victims of that kind of fraud are not the would-be employers but all the involuntary peers who share the same marker.

Oh god I have no clue where this is coming from. I have never heard being hired based on caste. Are you sure about this or even have anecdotal evidence? Or you just heard this from someone?

Unlikely though it possible that I am living in my own bubble since I haven't applied to shoddy places ever so who knows.But as someone living here it really amuses me and seems hard to believe.

In our case he was so bad we were able to fire him first day fortunately. I still don’t understand how he thought it was going to work

Sometimes the hire is nothing more than a body at the desk that gives VPN access to an offshore worker. Larger companies often ave a more "into the fire" approach and are more vulnerable for this type of scam.

Edit: I'm really interested in who downvoted my comment, considering it's based on something I've personally seen happen multiple times.

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