As an employer of roughly 2,400 people across multiple states, the HR platform iSolved screens scores of applicants on a daily basis. And almost every week, one of those applicants is fake, Amy Mosher, the company’s chief people officer, explained to HR Brew.

Fraudulent candidates can employ a multitude of tactics, with varying degrees of technological sophistication. While fake job listings target the job candidate with the aim of stealing money or obtaining sensitive, personal information, fake candidates target employers. The most common ploy in Mosher’s experience, is a “no call, no show,” which involves a new hire failing to clock in, but still quoting a company for billable hours.

“They’ll be terminated after three or five days, but you already have their bank details. And from an employment perspective, you better pay them,” she said, as some states require workers to be paid even if they fail to show up. California, for example, allows the absentee worker to collect payment if the circumstances for the absence meet a certain threshold.

Mosher explained how her company saw a rise in fake applicants during the pandemic as workforces migrated to remote setups. Initially, the uptick caught her and her team off guard, but through collaboration with iSolved’s IT department and some refining of its remote recruiting process and ATS, the company established a protocol that she said ferrets out bad actors with regularity.

“I haven’t had anything come through that really got us at all, in the last three years,” she said.

How does the fake applicant scam work? There is a wide breadth of methods, with certain scammers going as far as to employ deepfake technology, the FBI warned last year.

Keep reading.—SB

Tech recruiters are going through an uncertain period with Meta, Twitter, and Microsoft all reducing their talent acquisition teams over the last few months.

But a new report from LinkedIn seems to show that recruiters are increasingly acting like compasses at their organizations. They’re not steering the ship, but they’re certainly guiding it, working across other HR functions to help companies succeed.

Valuable asset. While 53% of recruiters polled said they expect their budgets will stay flat or even decrease this year, the data indicates that this doesn’t mean recruitment is any less valuable. The function is driving results for larger businesses, and 87% of in-house recruiters said that talent acquisition has become more of a strategic function over the last year.

“Recruiting professionals have never been able to make a bigger impact than right now. You used to be able to say, ‘These hires helped our company.’ Now you can say, ‘I changed the makeup of our company, I changed where we work, I changed what we look for, and I changed how we hire,’” said Brett Baumoel, VP of talent acquisition at Microsoft, in the report.

Cross-functionality. The report highlights learning and development and employer branding as key areas where recruiters can have a deep impact on employers.

LinkedIn found that recruiters have to understand what their employer brand says to candidates if they want to be competitive. Flexible work arrangements, fair compensation, and good managers are the fastest-growing priorities for candidates, and should be communicated to them in the recruiting process.

Keep reading.—KP

Everybody’s working for the weekend...but what if the weekend doesn’t exist?

In a world where the four-day workweek is gaining popularity, one country tried to make it easier for citizens to work more. It didn’t go so well.

Where in the world? South Korea is known for its music and cinema, but also for its long workweeks. The country already has a 52-hour maximum workweek, and its citizens work more than almost any other nation, according to OECD. Nevertheless, Labor Minister Lee Jung-sik wanted to raise the maximum to 69 hours as part of a strategy to address the country’s labor shortage caused by an aging population, Vice reported. The plan would have increased the maximum number of overtime hours allowed from 12 to 29.

While that may sound like too much work and not enough play, Yoon claimed it would improve citizen quality of life, according to NBC News. The government posited that the more a person is allowed to work, the more overtime-enabled PTO they would receive, therefore allowing extended leave. South Koreans weren’t buying it, and trade unions and young people criticized the government, saying it would harm an already overworked population. The nation’s workaholic culture is already blamed for numerous deaths every year, and young people are pushing back against the “live to work” way of life, CNN reported.

Employers in South Korea expect employees to work longer hours to accommodate more work, rather than taking on the expense of hiring extra employees, Lee Jong-sun, a professor of labor relations at Korea University told the Washington Post. “Hiring new people means more benefits, insurance, and more wages. It’s more expensive,” he said.

The pushback against the proposal ultimately succeeded, and on March 16, Yoon said President Yoon Suk-yeol had “ordered government agencies to reconsider the 69-hour proposal,” according to Vice.

Keep reading.—KP

Today’s top HR reads.

Stat: 153,000 workers in the tech sector have lost their jobs since the start of this year. (MarketWatch)

Quote: “These fully remote workers are being slowly asked to return to the office, or being moved offshore…US wages are very high so moving fully remote workers to Mexico, Philippines, or India can generate huge cost savings.”—Nicholas Bloom, Stanford economist, on the slight dip in fully-remote workers in the US (the Wall Street Journal)

Read: Recent research has found that worker surveillance tactics disproportionately affect young workers, women, and ethnic minorities. (The Guardian)