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- A job interview scheme is on the rise where candidates are hiring proxies to sit in for them.
- Reasons for proxies range from being nervous or under-qualified, to criminals trying to steal data.
- Some "professional" proxies are charging up to $ 150 an hour to do job interviews.
Some job candidates are hiring proxies to sit in job interviews for them — and even paying up to $ 150 an hour for one.
In a recent Insider investigation into the "bait-and-switch" job interview that's becoming increasingly trendy, one "professional" job interview proxy, who uses a website to book clients and keeps a Google Driver folder of past video interviews, said he charges clients $ 150 an hour.
The proxy was approached by Aamil Karimi, who works at cybersecurity firm Optiv as a principal intelligence analyst. Karimi, who posed as a job seeker to talk to the proxy, told Insider's Rob Price that the "bait-and-switch" trend has been on the rise because of more work-from-home jobs and overseas hiring.
The "bait-and-switch" interview works like this: a job candidate hires someone else to pretend to be them in a job interview in hopes they will secure the job. When the job starts, the person who hired the proxy is the one to show up for work.
In his investigation into the trend, Price examined the many reasons why someone would want to hire a stand-in for their job interview. Maybe the person is "awkward or nervous," or isn't completely fluent in a language to perform well. Most of the time, Price wrote, the candidate is straight up under-qualified or unqualified for the job they want.
Most fields where the trend is happening are non-managerial and non-creative, according to the investigation. And in the IT field, where a lot of the proxies are getting candidates jobs, those fake hires are gaining access to important information that can damage a company's reputation or clients.
With an increasing amount of job interviews happening over the phone or video chat due to remote work environments, the "bait-and-switch" trend is getting easier, experts told Price.
Read the full investigation here.
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