Welcome to The Hero 🗞️. This is approximately a 2.5-minute read.
🤯 Why AI candidate fraud is out of control in 2026
👹 The North Korean operation that infiltrated 300+ US companies
🪤 The 30-second move that catches what your process can't
TL;DR
Gartner projects that by 2028, 1 in 4 candidate profiles worldwide will be fake.
Someone with zero technical skill can build a deepfake that passes a video interview in about 70 minutes.
This isn't a future problem. It's in your pipeline now.
👻 The Candidate Might Not Be Real
This year, you're going to interview someone who doesn't exist.
Shoot…
You probably already have - and didn't even know it.
The resume will be clean.
The LinkedIn will look lived-in - photo, history, connections.
The video call will happen. A face. A voice. Answers to every question.
All of it…
Can be faked now.
And the sad part? It's not even hard.
Building a deepfake that passes a video interview takes about an hour - and zero technical skill.
That’s crazy…
Now just think about how hard it’s going to be to tell in two to four years 👀
The full breakdown is just below - don’t miss it! 😉
Links of the Day:
🔗 Best Links
🧩 Skills-Based Hiring
The State of Skills-Based Hiring 2025 Report (link)
Skills-Based Hiring: The Ultimate 2026 Recruiter’s Guide (link)
🔎 Find Candidates
25 Employee Retention Strategies to Reduce Turnover & Keep Top Talent (link)
12 Effective Employee Retention Strategies in 2025 (link)
🎯 Candidate Experience
11 Candidate Experience Best Practices To Elevate Your Recruitment in 2026 (link)
Best Practices for Attracting Quality Talent (link)
🎤 Interviewing
How to Build Effective Executive Recruiting Strategies in 2026 (link)
Transform Interviewing into Strategic Talent Selection (link)
📰 News
2026 Hiring Statistics: Challenges, Trends, and Lessons Learned (link)
🎭 A Fake Is Just a Performance
Here's what every fake candidate has in common.
It's rehearsed. Which means it isn't real.
The resume was written in advance.
The profile was built in advance.
Even the face and voice on the call are generated from a setup the fraudster prepared ahead of time.
A fake candidate is a performance. Sometimes a really good one.
But every performance has the same weakness:
It falls apart the second you go off-script.
Think of the kid who memorized the answer key but never learned the subject.
Ask a question from the study guide - flawless.
Ask one that isn't - and he freezes.
AI is the exact same.
🧙 The Move
Make the candidate do something live they couldn't have prepared for.
On camera. In the moment. No warning.
Like:
"Grab the closest book and read me the title."
"Wave your hands in front of your face."
"Pick something up next to you - show me, and describe it."
Make them do something unscripted on camera. Ideally something that requires physical movement across the camera.
A real person does it without thinking.
A deepfake glitches.
A script-reader stalls.
A voice clone answers a half-beat too late.
You're not grading the answer.
You're watching for one thing: is there a real human on the other end?
⚠️ One caution - don't turn every interview into an interrogation.
Most of your candidates are real people who earned none of your suspicion. Save the move for the roles and moments that matter.
To Sum It Up…
A fake can copy everything about a real candidate - except the ability to think on its feet.
The resume, the face, the voice: all rehearsed.
So don't test the rehearsal. Break it.
And To Wrap It Up…
You can't out-read a deepfake.
But you can out-surprise it.
HOW WE CAN HELP?
There are a few ways:
Or you can just reply to this email.
I reply to absolutely everyone who writes me back 🙂
