"The Guy Who Started Today Is Not The Guy We Interviewed": This Employee Is Wondering What They Should Do
Recently, a user wrote in to r/AskHR to ask the HR people of Reddit to weigh in on a truly bizarre workplace problem. In a nutshell, they said that the person they interviewed and hired for a job was not the same person as the guy who showed up to work a few weeks later.
They wrote, "I helped my team interview a candidate a couple weeks ago. By 'helped,' I mean I asked all the questions and engaged with the candidate while my bosses worked on their own projects and half-listened. I really liked the guy. He was outgoing and quick, knew what he was talking about to a very high level, and his experience matched."
"Now normally, I wouldn’t mention ethnicity or physical characteristics as it does not ever factor into my opinion of a candidate. But since it is relevant here, the guy was (I believe) Guatemalan and had a slight accent. He had black curly hair and a stubble. He was also average height."
But they got quite a surprise when this new hire turned up for work. "He was scheduled to start today, so after a morning meeting, I swung by his new office to say hello and welcome him to the team. But when I get there, all I see is some tall white guy with wavy brown hair. The nameplate on the door had Josh’s first and last name, so I asked the guy if Josh was in, kind of assuming he was the IT guy helping set up."
"The guy said HE was Josh, and the kicker is he also said, 'It’s great to see you again,' and used my name — I hadn’t yet introduced myself. He said it with what I would say is a Midwestern accent. I couldn’t interrogate it too far because he was called into some onboarding thing, but I was really confused."
And stranger still, they say that nobody else seems to have noticed: "I ran into my boss afterward, and he said he had a nice conversation with Josh this morning, and he feels reaffirmed that we made the right choice. I said, 'That doesn’t seem to be the guy we interviewed.' I don’t know if he thought it was a joke, but my boss said, 'You’re a quick judge of character, but time will tell if you’re a good one,' then laughed and then walked away."
"No one else seems to have noticed that it’s a completely different guy. I haven’t brought it up outright to anyone yet, but I want to because this is weird and seemingly fraudulent. I just don’t know how to bring this up to a superior or HR. So, I guess that’s question one. Question two is has anyone in HR heard of something like this before? I would think y’all have protocols in place to ensure this doesn’t happen."
In the comments, people shared similar stories from their companies and offered some advice on how to handle the case of the interview impostor.
One person wrote, "So far this year, we have caught three or four people doing this in a company of about 30k. It’s becoming more prevalent, but I can’t imagine how or where they are finding these people to interview for them. It’s crazy!"
In response to a question from another commenter, they explained that they work in tech. They continued, writing, "In each case, it happened to be someone who participated in the interviews (not usually the hiring manager) who raised a flag that something was off (candidate looks significantly different, voice/accent completely different, some of them had zero technical knowledge of things they were tested about during the interview, etc) which triggered the investigation.
Only one has admitted to it. All others had to go through the investigation process. One was terminated due to absolutely abysmal performance. I mean, the guy had no business being in an entry-level role, let alone in the senior position that he was 'hired' for. It was truly baffling. Like if you are going to do this, at least do it in a field you moderately understand and have a chance of succeeding in!"
Another person shared, "One time, when I was hiring for a temporary project, we had someone show up on a Zoom call and move their mouth silently as someone spoke from behind them. Faked résumés are also rampant. At this point, I can pretty much immediately point out the sentences that are going to return five different résumés if I paste it into Google."
And there were even more tales of impostor new hires lip-syncing for their lives, like this one: "Happened to my team. A guy interviewed well and showed up on camera to meetings for the first week or so.
But after that, he stopped showing up on camera, the audio quality went down, and he sounded different. We asked him repeatedly to turn on his camera, but he always had 'technical issues.' Eventually, the tech lead was able to get him on camera, and the original guy showed up. But she said it was obvious that the dude on camera was lip-syncing with the person speaking, as the audio and video didn’t match up. The smoking gun was when the person speaking said something under his breath to the guy on video and the lips of the video guy didn’t move."
One HR rep shared that their company has changed its interview policies because of these kinds of situations. "We have to take screenshots now during video interviews so we can validate it’s the same person that starts."
Another rep agreed, saying, "I work for a large tech company; we have this problem all the time! So much so that we have started taking screen shots and recordings of candidates during interviews so we can confirm they are the same person at various points after we hire them."
Another person said, "We had a similar situation years ago where the new hire looked nothing like the candidate we hired. Some careful questioning, and she mentioned that she had on a much different wig (from long brown to short black). With the more extreme differences you noted, you may be misremembering. However, I would be looking through Josh's LinkedIn contacts to see if there is someone on there who matches who you interviewed."
Someone else said that something similar happened to them because they'd changed their appearance a bit for the interview. "I once got a job and turned up to my first day and my boss thought I was a different person. I wasn’t. I’d taken my piercings out, put makeup on, done my hair, and dressed up. Then, on day one, I turned up as normal me."
While some questioned whether the poster may have mixed up interview candidates. "Are you 100% positive that you didn't confuse Josh with one of the other candidates? Was his interview in-person or virtual? I've heard of this happening during Covid, with virtual interviewing being so prevalent, but the fact that Josh seemed to recognize you would give me pause."
Another asked, "Are you sure you didn’t just remember the face/accent of another of the five interviewees? Or have you never seen this dude before and he wasn’t even one of the five people you interviewed?"
And another warned that not raising red flags about "Josh" could be a security risk for the company. "Depending on the industry you work in, this is a relatively common tactic to gain insider access to a company to perform cyber attacks or spying. I would trust your instinct and try to escalate the issue."
Ultimately, most people in the thread advised this employee to bring their concerns to HR so the company can look into them, like this person who wrote, "I would talk to an HR person and let them investigate."
Has anything like this ever happened where you work? How would you handle this situation? Tell us what you think in the comments.