Example: Alexey, hiring — when the candidate may be synthetic
Alexey is a composite character; the situation is ordinary. An example for The Economics of Trust — alongside the family protocol, but at work rather than at home. Checked: 2026-09.
Alexey is 39, leads a team of about 200 and hires remotely. Three finalists for an analyst role. One unsettles him: a flawless CV, a camera that occasionally "swims", smooth answers — but a pause and generalities when asked a follow-up about his own project. No evidence, just a feeling.
Once, this would have been written off as a bad connection and nerves. Now Alexey is not certain the person on the call is the one named on the CV.
Step 1 — Set the needle first (the trust compass)
The first question is not "does this look faked" but what do I lose if I am wrong.
- A hire gets access to client data and internal systems.
- The error is reversible only slowly and expensively: a dismissal, an access review, possibly an incident.
Depth: all three questions plus independent confirmation. Not because this candidate looks suspicious, but because the cost of being wrong is high. Alexey now applies it to every finalist, not only to the one who unsettles him.
Why this matters: the depth of checking is set by the cost of the error, not by how convincing the other person is. They control how convincing they are.
Step 2 — A second channel the candidate does not control
Not "ask them to fix the camera" and not "ask them to hold up an ID" — both are forgeable.
- Verification through a channel the company chooses: a call to a former manager reached through a contact the company found, not one the candidate supplied.
- A live task from the actual work, talked through aloud: not "tell me about your project" but "here is a real slice of our data — what is wrong with it and why".
- For the final stage, meeting in person, if the role warrants it.
Why: a standard document check confirms the document, not that the person on camera owns it.
Step 3 — The honest line (the perimeter)
Alexey wrote down three states and does not blur them:
| What exactly | |
|---|---|
| Confirmed | experience at two companies — confirmed through independently found contacts |
| Probable | the person on video and the person on the CV are the same |
| Unknown | who actually did the work he describes as his |
Why this is an honest answer: the temptation was to close "probable" as "yes" and keep the process moving. Probable is not yes; Alexey wrote out exactly what he had not checked.
Step 4 — A rule, not a one-off (trust inside the company)
Checking one candidate once changes nothing. Alexey made a rule for the whole funnel:
- The same depth for every finalist. Otherwise the check turns into prejudice: the person who "looks odd" gets verified, and that is really about their accent, their connection and their camera, not about authenticity.
- For roles with data access, independent confirmation of experience is mandatory.
- What candidates are told: the check is not hidden. A line in the job description explains how and why. An honest candidate loses nothing by it.
- A register: who was confirmed and at which stage, so nobody re-establishes it six months later.
How it ended
The candidate withdrew after being asked for a call with a former manager. No proof of fraud ever appeared — and that is a normal outcome. The goal was not to catch a fraudster but to avoid deciding on the basis of something never checked.
Why this is not paranoia
Gartner forecasts that by 2028 one in four candidate profiles worldwide will be fake — spanning everything from an AI-polished CV to a substituted identity at interview. The forecast has been reported widely in trade press, including HR Dive (2026).
Figures about the share of fakes "right now" are mostly published by vendors of verification systems — those are vendor claims, not independent measurements, and are worth treating as such. The Gartner forecast matters less for its number than for its direction: remote hiring has stopped being a place where the other person's identity can be assumed.
Next: the trust compass · trust inside the company · the Volume 3 workbook.