01
What surveys found
Two surveys asked people directly. One asked candidates what they had done, the other asked hiring managers what they had seen.
| Finding | Who was asked | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 6% took part in interview fraud | 3,000 job candidates. They posed as someone else, or had someone pose as them. | Gartner, via HR Dive, August 2025 |
| 35% saw someone else in the interview | 3,000 US hiring managers. Someone other than the listed applicant took part in a virtual interview. | Checkr, 2025 |
| 1 in 4 profiles could be fake by 2028 | A Gartner forecast for candidate profiles worldwide, not a survey result. | Gartner, via HR Dive, August 2025 |
Checkr sells background checks and paid for its survey. It publishes how the survey was run.
02
What hiring platforms report
Assessment and interview platforms publish how often their own systems flag a candidate. The rates are high and rising.
| Platform | Flagged | Measured on | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| HirePro | 45% in FY26, up from 32.4% in FY22 | About 1 million assessments and 100,000 interviews, India | Economic Times, October 2026 |
| CodeSignal | 35% in 2025, up from 16% in 2024 | Proctored assessments. 48% in Asia-Pacific, 27% in North America. | CodeSignal, February 2026 |
| Fabric | 38.5% | 19,368 AI-led interviews, July 2025 to January 2026 | Fabric, 2026 |
Fabric attributes 45% of its flagged cases to dedicated answer tools such as Cluely and Interview Coder, and 34% to the voice mode of a general assistant such as ChatGPT.
03
Cases on the record
- More than 100 US companies hired North Korean IT workers. Two US nationals were sentenced for helping workers pose as US residents in remote IT jobs. The scheme earned more than $5 million and cost the companies at least $3 million in legal and repair costs. US Department of Justice, April 2026
- Infosys paused hiring tests for about 20,000 candidates. It found candidates who had arranged for someone else to take the test, and held the tests back until identity checks were stronger. HR Katha, June 2026
04
The tools are funded
Software that answers interview questions for the candidate is sold openly, by subscription, and investors have backed it.
| Company | Raised | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Cluely | $20.3 million | Wikipedia, citing press reports |
| Final Round AI | $6.88 million seed | PR Newswire, January 2025 |
We leave out the user counts these companies publish. They are the companies' own claims and none has been checked by anyone else.
05
How employers are responding
Many are going back to the room. Gartner found that 72.4% of recruiting leaders now hold interviews in person to combat fraud, and Google, Cisco and McKinsey have each brought back an in-person round. Computerworld, August 2025
In the same Checkr survey, 38% of managers said their team uses fraud-detection software. Checkr, 2025
An in-person round is not open to everyone. A staffing firm's client may never meet the candidate, and a panel spread across countries cannot share a room.
06
What these figures do not show
- The platform figures are flags raised by each vendor’s own software, on its own platform. Nobody has audited them.
- Most were measured on tests and AI-led screening rounds. We found no published figure for live interviews run by a person on Zoom, Google Meet or Microsoft Teams.
- A flag is not proof of cheating. The surveys report what people said, and the court record covers only the cases that were prosecuted.
- We do not repeat figures we could not trace to a source, however widely they are quoted.