Even though many reports suggest that the U.S. labor market has cooled, employers are often still struggling to find top quality talent. In many industries, while there may be a large number of job applicants, few meet all of the hard- and soft-skill requirements necessary for the position.
While running short-staffed for months or longer with open roles can place a lot of strain on an organization and its employees, hiring the wrong applicant can also have major negative impacts on a company. Disengaged, underskilled, or even dishonest employees can do more harm to an organization than simply leaving the position vacant.
This creates a tall task for hiring managers. It can be daunting to sift through hundreds or even thousands of applicants for open job positions. While automation can help with the filtering process, there is still the need for human involvement to carefully evaluate candidates.
Part of the evaluation process is being alert to red flags that can send signals that the candidate is not all they appear to be. Here we take a look at some of the biggest red flags hiring managers and HR teams should be on the lookout for in the hiring process—some clear and some more subtle.
Resume Gaps
This is one everyone who has ever applied to a job has probably heard before. Applicants are often exhorted to have good reasons to explain large gaps on their resumes.
“One red flag is when a person has gaps in their work history that they can’t explain well, “ says Adam Young, CEO of Events Ticket Center. “These gaps can make you wonder how reliable they are and how committed they are to their old jobs.”
Some applicants may have good reasons for such gaps—taking care of a sick family member, spending time with a new baby, etc. But often the reason can be more troubling, such as being terminated and not being able to find another employer within a reasonable amount of time.
Generic Cover Letters and Resumes
Just as employers review large numbers of applicants for a single open position, workers looking for a job might apply to large numbers of jobs as part of their job search. That’s completely understandable and reasonable on the part of the applicant.
However, many employers are turned off when they see resumes and cover letters that are very general and not specific to the company or position. That level of generality suggests a shotgun approach to job applications and an applicant who is not likely to be genuinely passionate about a specific role.
“First and foremost, I always look for skills and qualities that are right for the job. People who apply who know about our business and what it needs are more likely to be able to help our field service business. A well-written resume that shows off these skills is a good sign,” says Draven McConville, founder and CEO of Klipboard. “On the other hand, I need to be careful and avoid cover letters and resumes that are too general and don’t fit any job. These generic applications often show that the person isn’t interested in working for our business and that their level of commitment might not match up with ours.”
Plagiarism, Fake Information and Other Scams
Another way some applicants try to scale up their job search is to simply plagiarize a cover letter or other documentation and submit it as their own as part of an application. Similarly, applicants may fabricate information on their resumes and cover letters.
It’s important for recruiters to be vigilant in confirming applicant information before making a hiring decision. It takes a lot of time and money to hire someone, so it’s important to make sure that hiring decisions are based on truthful and accurate information.
The potential for plagiarism or deception is more common these days with the digital environment and the proliferation of a wide range of generative AI (GenAI) tools. Fortunately, the same technology also offers some potential solutions.
“To separate authentic applications from potentially fraudulent ones, it is recommended to use online tools that detect plagiarism or cloned information,” says Jason Wise, editor of EarthWeb. “This step confirms that the information given is genuine and not sourced elsewhere.”
Use of AI in Applicant Reviews
To help cope with the tremendous volume of applications many organizations receive, companies are increasingly turning to technology to help ease the burden, and generative AI is a key piece of that strategy. These tools can take huge amounts of data (like resumes and cover letters) and evaluate them against employer-specified criteria to help whittle down the list of applicants to those best suited for the role, at which point human involvement can be more focused.
“GenAI’s impact on the application vetting process is promising because it focuses on objective criteria, which reduces human prejudice,” says Wise. “This development has the potential to transform how we evaluate applications, resulting in a more egalitarian and fair recruiting process for all.”
It’s crucial to point out, however, that while GenAI may be able to remove humans from the applicant review process at a particular point in time, those GenAI tools themselves are built by humans, using large language models (LLMs) also based on human inputs. In other words, while GenAI itself isn’t human, it was created by humans and feeds on human-generated information, meaning GenAI can easily absorb biases inherent in its inputs. In fact, some argue that GenAI can be even more biased than human reviewers.
By some estimates, it can take on average 41 days to fill an open position and as much as six months for an employer to break even on a new hire. It’s crucial for hiring managers and employers to get hiring right, and a big part of getting it right means looking out for red flags. That can be tricky with the sheer volume of applicants many organizations see, but it’s an essential part of the hiring process.
Especially in an era where digital tools are clouding the creation of content of all kinds, it’s important for HR leaders, recruiters, and hiring managers to be alert to the red flags that can indicate that candidates aren’t really who they say they are.
Lin Grensing-Pophal is a Contributing Editor at HR Daily Advisor.
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