Before my team evaluates whether a candidate is any good, we evaluate whether the candidate is a person or a ghost candidate.

That sentence would have sounded absurd in 2015. But it is simply how sourcing works now… at our firm as well as at every sponsor and CRO I talk to. Qualification review is the second step. But, ‘existence’ review is the first.

I am going to say it plainly: a fully qualified Clinical Research Professional can be screened out of a search without ever being assessed on experience, purely because something in the candidate’s application suggested the person might not be real.

Not because the recruiter was careless. But because the recruiter was doing their job in a market that has broken. The recruiter couldn’t tell the difference between you and a ghost candidate.

Here are the four most common things that may cause you to appear fake, along with fixes for each.

What Is Actually in the Applicant Pool.

A ghost candidate isn’t a job seeker who ghosted an interview. That is a different and much older frustration.

An AI ghost candidate is an applicant who doesn’t exist. The identity is fabricated, the employment history is fabricated, and increasingly, the face and voice on the screening call are fabricated as well. Behind it sits a person or an organization whose goal might be a fraudulent paycheck, access to your systems and study data, or something worse.

Our own intake numbers break it down like this:

• Roughly 60 percent of CRA applicants have falsified all or part of their qualifications.
• Approximately 20 percent are AI ghost candidates.
• And the remaining 20 percent are genuinely real people with real qualifications.

I have been accused of exaggerating with those figures, so it is worth noting evidence outside of our own firm’s statistics:

• Gartner predicts that by 2028, one in four candidate profiles worldwide will be fake.
• A 2Q2025 survey by Gartner of 3,000 job candidates found that 6% admitted to participating in interview fraud, either posing as someone else or having someone else pose as them in an interview.
• HR Dive quoted Jamie Kohn, Gartner HR Research Director, stating that it is becoming harder for employers to evaluate candidates’ true abilities and, in some cases, their identities, and that candidate fraud poses cybersecurity risks that can be far more serious than a bad hire. 
• One security firm that added fraud-detection tooling to its recruiting stack found that 23.2% of its applicants over a three-month window were flagged as a fraud risk.
• Huntress also stated that 17% of hiring managers have encountered candidates using deepfake technology at some point in their hiring process. 

Now layer clinical research on top of that. Our industry hires for roles with access to patient data, site relationships, and trial integrity. The downside of a fraudulent placement here isn’t an awkward first month. It is protocol deviations that nobody catches and data that nobody can trust. Why? Because while you may ‘hire’ and pay ghost candidates, they don’t work. 

Recruiters Scare Easily. Here Is Why That Matters to You.

I say this often, and I say it with affection for my own profession: recruiters scare easily.

That isn’t a character flaw. It is arithmetic. When four out of five applications carry something false, the cost of being wrong in one direction is enormous, and the cost of being wrong in the other direction is invisible to the recruiter.

If I advance a fabricated candidate, I have very likely compromised a study, exposed a client, and maybe even damaged (or ended) a client relationship I have spent years building. But if I pass over a real candidate… I will very likely never know I did it. 

So the scanning eye gets jumpy. It has to. And a jumpy eye doesn’t give anyone the benefit of the doubt. If there is a flag, I move on to the next application because there are 400 more behind yours, and one of them will be easier to trust.

That is the environment your resume lives in. Your competition isn’t the other qualified CRAs. Simply put, your competition is the reviewer’s doubt. 

Four specific things feed that doubt. Here they are, in the order we tend to hit them.

First: Vagueness.

Years-only date ranges. Job titles that could belong to anyone. “Responsible for site management and monitoring activities” with nothing underneath it. No protocols, no phases, no indications, no site counts, no problems solved.

Nothing real. Just buzzwords and a lot of… unsupported claims.

You may think you are being economical, or keeping a document clean, or protecting confidential study details. But what a fraud-aware reviewer registers is an application that has no verifiable content in it.

Fabricated applicants are vague for a structural reason: there is nothing real behind them to be specific about. So generality reads as absence, and absence reads as fake or fraudulent. This is also why my firm will not advance a resume carrying year-only dates. “2020 to 2021” can describe twenty-four months or two days, and in an industry built on documentation precision, choosing to be imprecise about your own timeline is a signal all by itself.

The fix: get exact. Month and year on every role, every time. Name the phases, the therapeutic areas, the indications, the number of sites you were responsible for, and the specific mess you cleaned up. Where confidentiality genuinely blocks a detail, describe the shape of the work without the identifier. Specificity is the least expensive credibility available to you, and the ghost candidates and fraudulent applicants structurally cannot copy it.

Second: Inconsistency.

Your resume says Senior CRA II. But your LinkedIn says Senior Site Manager. Your resume has you starting in March 2021. But your LinkedIn has you starting sometime in 2021, which turns out to mean July. A contract role appears in one document and vanishes from the other.

You would call all of that trivial. But to a reviewer running a fraud check, mismatched self-reported details are significant. A fabricated identity is assembled rather than lived, and assembled “things” don’t always line up. So when your own job search assets contradict each other, you have handed the reviewer the exact artifact they are trained to look for.

Inconsistent details across assets shut down candidacies quietly and often, and almost nobody who suffers it ever learns that it happened. They just hear silence. 

The fix: make it match. Tell the same story across all of your job search assets. Same titles, same months, same roles, and same sequence. Then keep them synchronized, because they will drift every time you update one and forget the other.

Third: Volume Behavior.

An automated applicant fires a generic resume at hundreds of postings, attaches a templated note, and never engages with a human. That footprint is one of the loudest fraud signals in the system.

Now describe the mass-applying job seeker. Generic resume, hundreds of postings, templated note, no human engagement.

The two are indistinguishable from where we sit. And clinical research is a small industry. Sponsors talk to CROs, CROs talk to staffing partners, and the same names surface again and again. Applying to everything doesn’t make you visible. It teaches an entire network to categorize you as noise, which is precisely the treatment the bots are getting.

The fix: go narrow and be traceable. Fewer applications, aimed at roles you genuinely want, with materials that show you actually read the posting. A tightly targeted search protects the professional brand you spent years building. It also produces the one behavior no script generates: evidence of a specific human making a specific choice.

Fourth: No Human Trail.

This is the one experienced professionals miss most often because it feels unfair.

A ghost candidate has no history that anyone can trace. No genuine network, no mutual connections, no former colleague who recognizes the name, no recruiter who has previously spoken to them, no LinkedIn presence with actual activity on it, or a profile so thin it might have been built last week.

An accomplished CRA who has spent twelve years heads-down doing excellent work while never engaging publicly leaves the same empty trail. From my reviewer’s chair, a real person who exists nowhere and a fake person who exists nowhere look identical.

The fix: build the trail. Have real conversations with real people in your target space… before you need something from them. Reconnect with the CRAs, study managers, and site coordinators who watched you work. Get known by a recruiter or two who specialize in your niche. A referral doesn’t simply help you stand out…it lifts you out of the fraud filter entirely, because a person is now vouching that you exist.

What This Adds Up To.

Exact. Provable. Consistent. Traceable.

Those four qualities aren’t a personal brand exercise, and they aren’t about becoming louder or more polished. They are the four things a fabricated applicant structurally cannot produce, which is exactly why they work.

Look at what each fix requires of you. Precision. Evidence. Coherence between what you say across your job search assets (LinkedIn, Resume, and Cover Letter). Actual relationships with actual humans. Every one of those is something a genuine, experienced clinical research professional already has. The material is there. But most of you simply never had a reason to make it visible, because for twenty years the market didn’t demand it.

The market demands it now.

The Hiring Manager Wants You.

I will say the encouraging part directly, since job seekers hear so little of it. The hiring teams on my side of this are not looking for reasons to reject you. They are exhausted, they are working through a pool that is mostly noise, and they are desperate to find the real 20 percent. Every one of these four fixes makes it easier for them to say yes to you.

We see both sides of this at craresources every single day: the sponsors and CROs drowning in fabricated applications, and the genuinely qualified professionals who cannot understand why their experience isn’t landing.

Both problems are the same problem. And they have the same solution.

If you want help turning your resume from a list of duties into actual proof, and building a LinkedIn presence that gets you found rather than filtered, that is the work we do with clinical research professionals in transition. As always, let us know how we can help.

To Your Success,
Angela Roberts, Managing Partner of craresources

The post Four Reasons a Real Candidate Reads as a Ghost Candidate (and How to Fix Each) appeared first on craresources.

The reason your application pile keeps thinning while the talent you actually want stays exactly where they are.

Your last CRA job post pulled in 87 applicants. You called three…but you hired none.

The talent shortage is the easy explanation. But it is also the wrong one.

I have been saying this since 2017, and the noise around CRA hiring has only gotten louder. There isn’t a shortage of high-quality, experienced CRAs. But there is a structural reason the best ones aren’t sitting in your application pile. And once you see it, your whole hiring strategy has to shift if you want to attract those high-quality CRAs.

There Is a Name for What Your Best Candidates Are Doing

It is called job hugging, and it refers to the experienced professional who has outgrown the role they are in but stays anyway because leaving feels riskier than staying. In clinical research, that risk calculation is sharper than in most industries, and the result is that good people sit still for years.

The dynamic plays out differently depending on whether you are hiring a perm CRA or a contract CRA, but it produces the same problem for you.

For your perm roles, the high-quality, experienced CRAs you want are currently employed somewhere else, and they are job-hugging. They have privately outgrown their role and are quietly thinking about their next move, but they don’t apply to your post out of fear. Word travels in our small industry, and the cost of being caught looking, and therefore putting their current position at risk, outweighs the appeal of a new and exciting position.

So they stay where they are, and your post never reaches them.

For your contract roles, the picture is different, but the gap is the same. The best contract CRAs aren’t applying to your post for an entirely different reason. They don’t have to. Their reputations precede them, and they move from one project to the next on the strength of referrals, networks, and relationships built over a career. They are hired before they are searched for, often before the previous engagement has even closed out.

Either way, the people you actually want are not in your application pool. The perm CRAs are quietly staying put. The contract CRAs are already engaged elsewhere. And the math doesn’t change just because you posted the role again.

Why the Application Pool Looks the Way It Does

The pile your post does generate is even harder to navigate than it looks.

In our CRA intake screening, we are seeing roughly 60% of applicants who have falsified all or part of their credentials, and another 20% who appear to be AI-generated ghost candidates. That leaves about 20% who are genuinely real with real qualifications… but may not be qualified for your position.

The published research confirms the direction. Checkr’s 2025 survey of 3,000 hiring managers found that 31% have personally interviewed a candidate using a fake identity. Greenhouse’s 2025 report found 65% have caught applicants using AI deceptively. Deepfake interview fraud jumped 1,300% from 2023 to 2024, and Gartner projects that by 2028, one in four candidate profiles globally will be fake.

What we are seeing in CRA recruiting is consistent with the broader pattern. In a small, specialized industry like ours, it is arguably ahead of it.

Now, layer the job-hugging insight on top. Most of the best people in that genuine 20% aren’t in the pool at all. They are still employed, sitting in roles they have outgrown, waiting for a different kind of conversation.

So when you measure your hiring health by application volume, you are measuring the wrong thing. You are looking at an application pile that, by design, probably doesn’t contain the candidates you actually want to hire.

What That Means for Your Hiring Strategy

Here are three shifts to consider.

First, change what you measure.

Application volume is a vanity metric. The number that actually matters is how many qualified passive candidates have been engaged. One conversation with a real, employed, experienced CRA who is considering a move is worth more than fifty applications from the pile.

Second, build a sourcing model that reaches people who are job hugging.

That means referrals from your existing team, LinkedIn outreach with substance behind it, and partnerships with firms whose job is to maintain relationships with high-quality talent across the industry.

Third, make it safe for a job hugger to talk to you.

This is the one thing most hiring managers get wrong. A job hugger and an active applicant aren’t the same person, and they therefore won’t respond to the same approach. When you treat a confidentially referred passive candidate the way you would treat a job post applicant, you will lose them.

What does “safe” look like in practice? The conversation is exploratory, not transactional. You don’t ask them to apply to a specific req in the first meeting, you don’t request references that could touch their current employer (at least not until a written offer is extended), and you don’t ask them to interview during business hours from their office.

How do you tell someone who is job-hugging from a typical applicant? The signals are clear once you know what to look for. They came to you through a referral or a trusted partner, not the apply button. These candidates will also tell you up front that their search is confidential. Their timeline is slower than urgency-driven, often shaped around vesting, bonuses, or study completion. And their language is exploratory (“what would have to be true for me to consider…”) rather than urgent (“I really need this role”).

The practical answer for most hiring teams: work with a partner who already has these relationships. Reaching passive candidates and building trust with employed professionals is a full-time discipline. It is also the reason firms like ours exist.

What’s Next

If your application pile keeps producing the same disappointing result, the pile isn’t the problem. The strategy that relies on the pile is.

I challenge you to evaluate two things. What are you doing to engage the CRAs who aren’t applying because they don’t have to? And what are you doing to make a confidential conversation with a job hugger feel safer than staying where they are?

As always, let us know how we can help. But I will leave you with one last thought: If you keep recruiting the same way, you will keep getting the same application pile. What do you have to lose by trying a different approach?

To Your Success,
Angela Roberts, Managing Partner of craresources

The post The Best CRAs Aren’t Applying to Your Job Posts. Here Is Why. appeared first on craresources.

Originally published April 28, 2017. Refreshed for 2026 with current data.

I wrote this article in 2017 because I was reading too many industry pieces claiming a “concerning global shortage of experienced CRAs.” Drug Discovery and Development had reported 14,000 open CRA positions on Indeed.com alone. The narrative regarding a broken CRA hiring process was getting louder, and I disagreed with how people were diagnosing the problem.

Nine years later, I still disagree. The fraud, the noise, and the structural sourcing problem have all gotten significantly worse, and the shortage explanation has only gotten more popular.

There isn’t a shortage of high-quality, experienced CRAs. There is a structural reason hiring managers aren’t effectively navigating the CRA hiring landscape, and the reason hasn’t changed in nearly a decade. What has changed is that the structural problem now sits inside an application pool so noisy that even good hiring teams cannot work their way through it.

I will let that sit a moment, and for the sake of saying something contrarian, I will repeat it. There isn’t a shortage of high-quality, experienced CRAs.

The Three Reasons That Held Up for Over Nine Years

First, the “build it and they will come” model doesn’t work for high-quality CRAs.

This statement was true in 2017, and it is true now. The caliber of CRA you actually want to hire isn’t sitting at home refreshing job boards. Their reputations precede them. They move from one assignment to the next on the strength of referrals, networks, and relationships that took a decade (or more) to build. The way to engage them is to know when their current project is wrapping up and reach them before someone else does.

And the only way to do that is to already have a relationship with them.

For perm roles, the equivalent reality plays out differently but ends the same way. The experienced CRAs you want are currently employed somewhere else, doing solid work, and quietly thinking about their next move. They aren’t applying to your post either, because in our small industry, the cost of being caught looking outweighs the appeal of your position.

Either way, they won’t see your post… because they aren’t looking for it.

Second, the candidates who do apply are increasingly problematic.

This was the polite version of what I observed in 2017. In 2026, the data is brutal.

In our CRA intake screening, we are seeing roughly 60% of applicants who have falsified all or part of their credentials. This means fake employment, fake education, or fake references. Additionally, we are seeing another 20% who appear to be AI-generated ghost candidates. That leaves about 20% who are genuinely real professionals with real qualifications. But …that doesn’t necessarily mean they are qualified for your particular position.

The published research confirms the direction. Checkr’s 2025 survey of 3,000 hiring managers found that 31% have personally interviewed a candidate using a fake identity. Greenhouse’s 2025 AI in Hiring Report found that 65% of US hiring managers have caught applicants using AI deceptively. Deepfake interview fraud jumped 1,300% from 2023 to 2024. Gartner projects that by 2028, one in four candidate profiles worldwide will be fake.

What we are seeing in CRA hiring is consistent with the broader pattern. But it is important to note that in a small, specialized industry like ours, it is arguably ahead of it.

Third, high-quality CRAs are passionate about their work, and they gravitate toward companies that respect that passion.

This was true in 2017, and it remains the deciding factor in retention. Companies that treat CRAs as nameless monitors hired to hit metrics have high attrition. Companies that align with the deeper purpose of the work, making a difference for patients, build the kind of reputation that draws top talent without ever posting a job.

Don’t misread me. Metrics matter. Budgets matter. Timelines matter. High-quality CRAs understand all of that, and the best ones manage it as well as anyone. But their passion sits with the patients, and they will choose the company whose passion sits there too. Every time.

What Has Changed Since 2017

Three things, and all three make the case sharper.

The first is volume.

The 14,000 open CRA positions stated on Indeed in 2017 look quaint now. Job posting volume has multiplied, and a meaningful percentage of those postings are ghost jobs. Research from 2024 and 2025 estimates that 18% to 27% of online job listings are ghost jobs, posted to maintain a pipeline presence, signal growth, or test the market rather than to hire. When you measure hiring health by application volume against open requisitions, you are measuring noise against noise.

The second is AI.

In 2017, the candidates I called “problematic” were either always looking, under-qualified, or falsifying credentials. The fraud was manual and detectable with a careful reference check. Now AI generates polished, ATS-friendly resumes that pass keyword screening, deepfake technology fakes interviews, and synthetic identities clear background checks built for a pre-AI world.

The infrastructure most hiring teams use to evaluate candidates was designed before any of this existed.

The third is post-COVID hiring dynamics.

The clinical research labor market has been through several rounds of disruption, including hiring slowdowns at major CROs, reorganizations across mid-sized pharma, and quiet project shelving. The result is that the experienced CRAs you want are even more inclined to stay where they are than they were in 2017, because the cost of a wrong move feels higher than ever. We call that job hugging, and it is its own full conversation.

What the 2017 Two Questions Look Like in 2026

In the original article, I challenged hiring managers to evaluate two things. I am going to keep them because they still apply, but I am updating them for the current reality.

One: What are you doing to engage the CRAs who aren’t applying because they don’t have to?

This was the question in 2017, and it remains the question. The answer requires sourcing from networks, referrals, and trusted partners, not from your application pile. Reaching passive, employed, high-quality CRAs is a full-time discipline. If your team is not built for it, hire a firm that is. CRA hiring is important enough to have a specific focus on it.

Two: What is your reputation as a Hiring Authority signaling to the candidates you want?

Your brand reaches CRAs long before your job post does. The companies whose names get whispered as “good places to land” build that reputation through how they treat their teams, how they handle protocol problems, how they pay, and whether they protect the passion their CRAs bring to the work. None of that is marketing. All of it is recruitment.

In Closing

I had over 12,000 seasoned, tried-and-true high-quality CRAs in our network when I wrote this article in 2017. We are at well over 21,000 today, and the discipline of maintaining those relationships has only gotten harder and more valuable.

If you are still hiring through the application pile and still telling yourself the problem is a talent shortage, I would gently suggest the problem is not the talent.

As always, let us know how we can help. If you keep recruiting the same way, you will keep getting the same results. What do you have to lose by trying a different approach?

To Your Success,
Angela Roberts, Managing Partner of craresources

The post Let’s Stop Saying There Is a CRA Shortage and Start Focusing on the Real Issue appeared first on craresources.

Why the Job Market “Trust Gap” is an Existential Threat to Clinical Research

This week was very much like most: my team and I flagged twelve fraudulent candidates. These weren’t just “embellished” resumes or slightly padded dates. These were sophisticated, coordinated attempts to bypass the vetting process for high-stakes clinical trial roles like Clinical Research Associates (CRAs) and Mid-level Management.

And what makes this scarier?

For most clinical trial hiring managers at small to mid-sized pharmas, biotechs, or medical device companies, these twelve individuals would have looked like the “perfect” hires. But in today’s market, the “perfect” resume is often a mask for a catastrophic risk.

The Anatomy of the Job Market “Trust Gap”

We are currently operating in what I call the 80% Noise Market. Based on our internal data and the current landscape of the Clinical Research sector, the applicant pool has fractured into three dangerous tiers:

• 60% are Falsified: These candidates have faked all or part of their experience, education, or references, often using sophisticated digital footprints that appear legitimate at first glance.
• 20% are AI-Generated: These are “ghost candidates.” They don’t exist but are AI-driven personas designed to farm interviews or collect sensitive company data.
• The “Real 20%”: These are the genuine professionals with real credentials. AKA…these are the ones you want to evaluate and qualify.

If your internal HR team is drowning in hundreds of applications, they aren’t just looking for a needle in a haystack. They are trying to identify a real needle in a pile of five hundred high-quality fakes.

Why the “Fast Hire” is the Enemy of the Safe Trial

I have spent over three decades in the hiring seat, including a decade in leadership at IBM. Before co-founding our firm, I was an executive at IBM, leading projects involving over 17,000 people.

I know the pressure you are under. 

When you have a clinical trial to monitor or a department to scale, an empty seat feels like a bleeding wound.

However, in the Clinical Research world, a “bad hire” isn’t just an HR headache. It is a liability that can tank your company.

Let’s look at the Clinical Research Associate (CRA) role. CRAs are the primary line of defense for patient safety and data integrity. They operate with high independence, so a fraudulent CRA hire can go unnoticed for months, but the damage they leave behind is permanent:

• Patient Safety & Ethics: An unqualified person may miss protocol deviations or fail to verify informed consent. This isn’t just a paperwork error; it’s a direct threat to human lives.
• Data Integrity Failure: If the FDA or EMA identifies that your Source Data Verification (SDV) was handled by someone with falsified credentials, they won’t just ask for a correction. They can reject your entire dataset.
• The “Rework” Multiplier: The cost of a bad hire is often cited as $50,000. In Clinical Research, it is 10x that. Every site that a fraudulent CRA monitored must be re-monitored by a qualified professional. You are paying twice for the work and losing months of progress.
• Regulatory & Legal Fallout: We are seeing an increase in “negligent hiring” lawsuits. If a fake employee harms a study participant, the company faces millions in fines, and in extreme cases of GxP non-compliance, leadership can face criminal charges.

Finding the “Real 20%”

So, how do you navigate a market where 80% of the entries are noise?

It requires moving away from “Active” applicant pools and leaning into Passive Sourcing and Niche Partnerships. The high-quality, mid-career professionals you need are those with the resilience and adaptability to thrive in a startup or mid-sized environment. And guess what? They aren’t usually spending their time in a sea of AI-generated applications.

They usually don’t apply at all. Instead, they are working, being referred, and being vetted by people who know how to spot the “formulaic” interview answer and the “mismatched identity” red flags.

At my agency, we don’t just “find” candidates; we verify the unverifiable. We use our three decades of hiring expertise to protect your trial, your data, and your reputation.

You don’t have time to be a fraud detective, but you do have a clinical trial to run. Let’s make sure the people running it with you are the real deal. Don’t let a ‘ghost candidate’ become a regulatory nightmare. Message me today to learn how we identify high-quality CRAs in a market full of noise.

Sources and Additional Reading

• PharmiWeb: Recruitment Fraud Risks Report: Analyzes the “Applicant Avalanche” and the rise of automated/fake credentials in Life Sciences.
• CCRPS (Center for Clinical Research Practice): Their “5 Strategies to Prevent CRA Fraud” lists the specific red flags of candidates using generic “Formulaic” interviewing.
• FDA: GCP Inspection Findings & Data Integrity: Official reports highlighting how data integrity failures lead to trial rejection and market delays.
• ACRP: Elements of Fraud and Misconduct: Professional standards defining the red flags and ethical requirements for CRAs and monitors.
• U.S. Dept. of Justice: The Jessica Palacio Case: A case study on the criminal indictment of a study coordinator for falsifying clinical trial data.
• Inop.ai: True Cost of a Bad Hire: Quantitative research on the financial impact of hiring failures in specialized technical roles.
• Crosschq: Quality of Hire Report: Statistics on candidate misrepresentation and the “Trust Gap” in modern screening processes.
• Resume Builder: Candidate Survey: Data showing the percentage of applicants who admit to falsifying details on resumes and during interviews.

The post The Ghost in the Clinical Trial: A Needle in a Pile of Fake Needles appeared first on craresources.

Many job seekers find that avoiding ghost jobs and job scams is proving to be more challenging than the actual job search. So how do professionals find a job that is hiring? I mean actually hiring? 

FlexJobs and MyPerfectResume (MPR) conducted a survey that reported one of the biggest challenges faced by 55% of job seekers is ghost jobs, which are posted positions that really aren’t hiring. 

This same survey stated that at least 25% of people have fallen victim to job scams. 

So what are some warning signs that can help you avoid fake jobs and scams?

How to Protect Yourself

Here are some common job scams you should be aware of.  

Fake Jobs and Companies

We have been blogging about fake companies for over a decade. From our perspective, fake companies allow fake candidates to have an employment record. 

But what about real candidates? How do you spot a fake company? Heck, why does a fake company want to attract candidates to begin with? 

The quick answer is that fake companies post fraudulent job posts in order to gather your personal information. Sensitive information…which could lead to financial loss or identity theft. 

We provide a lot of advice regarding the importance of researching the company before the interview. And, we talk about researching the company before applying so you can tailor your resume. Now, I recommend researching the company to confirm it is real. 

Upfront Fees

The increase in remote positions has increased the amount of fraudulence surrounding ‘remote’ work. One very popular scam is to offer candidates a fake remote job. Once the candidates are tricked into believing they have been hired, they are asked to pay fees for equipment to be shipped out to them. 

But of course, the equipment never arrives. Employees should never be asked to pay a fee in order to start a job. 

Applicant Tracking System (ATS) Services

There is a lot of buzz about artificial intelligence (AI) and how important it is for resumes to meet ATS standards. 

And because of this buzz, a new scam has surfaced. Scammers who pose as recruiters will tell job seekers their resumes need to be updated or they won’t be found via AI or ATS scanning programs. These fake recruiters refer job seekers to a fraudulent service (for a fee, of course) that will revamp the job seeker’s resume. 

Yes, job seekers can be overlooked if important keywords are missing from their resumes or cover letters. And yes, to be ‘found’, you must include relevant keywords in your resume. But populating your resume to be found is an activity you should take for every application. There isn’t a “one-time” magic fix and you certainly don’t need to pay a service to make your resume “ATS compliant.”

You just need to take the time to incorporate relevant keywords into your resume and we show you how to do that here (free of charge). 

Staffing Agency Scams

Staffing agencies and third-party recruiters like ourselves never charge the candidate a fee. We earn our fees from the hiring entity. Meaning, that we are paid by the hiring company once you are placed with them. 

So if a staffing agency promises a placement once you pay a fee, abort. They aren’t real and they do not have a job that is hiring.

In Conclusion

If it sounds too good to be true, dig a little deeper. Even when you confirm the company posting the position is real, ensure the email domain used matches. 

For example, our domain is craresources.com. Valid team members will use an email address that ends with that domain (@craresources.com). But scammers may use a slight variation such as carresources.com. Fraudsters will leverage the reputation of a real company, real job board, or reputable social media site to trick job seekers so pay attention to the details. 

Because if you are scammed, you will lose more than a job opportunity. 

We would love to hear from you – what job scam scenarios have you heard about? 

The post Help Me Find a Job That Is Hiring appeared first on craresources.

Do you believe that Fake CRA Applicants really exist?  If you are a hiring manager, I can guarantee more CRA candidates are lying to you than you realize. My goal is to provide Interviewers and Hiring Managers with a checklist of things to keep in mind when evaluating resumes. Please feel free to download this Checklist to Prequalify CRA Applicants!

When we first started noticing the trend of fraudulence, we identified that approximately 21% of our candidate pool had falsified all or part of their credentials. In 2023, my team estimated that over 40% of applicants who apply to our open positions are fraudulent. Today (December 2024)? We are seeing a 60% fraudulence rate.

I should note that I am speaking about true applicant fraudulence…not just the mere embellishment of qualifications. We classify CRA fraudulence as a CRA candidate who has completely falsified all or part of their credentials. This may include the falsification of their employment history, stating they have a degree they haven’t actually earned, or even providing fake references.

Tips on how to Identify Fake CRA Applicants’ Resumes

Career Builder published a survey showing that 75% of Hiring Managers have caught a candidate lying on a resume. This is almost a 20% increase from their previous report, which showed 58% of candidates had been caught lying.

Along those lines, the SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management) published results from a survey that stated 85% of the 4,000 hiring managers surveyed uncovered a lie on a candidate’s resume or job application during the screening process.

Some of the trends we have identified are easy to spot…but others are more difficult to quantify. Here are some things to carefully consider when reviewing CRA candidate resumes and job applications.

My last thought…

As you review CRA resumes and job applications with the above checklist in hand, remember that you are looking for trends. There are a lot of gray areas and truthfully, honest CRAs can make some of these mistakes. For example, a lack of supporting digital footprint will not necessarily keep us from progressing a candidate but finding a fake company listed on their resume will.

Need help? Contact us – we are here to help!

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Diploma mills have been in operation for decades. Just last December, a story reported that non-accredited Florida nursing schools sold 7,600 fake diplomas. Defendants linked to the Palm Beach School of Nursing participated in a scheme to sell phony academic credentials so that individuals could apply for a nursing license without completing required clinical instruction and coursework.

Another jarring story broke several years ago when CBS outed physicians holding fake degrees from Corllins University, a known diploma mill.

Imagine your mother or child being treated by someone who purchased an MD or nursing degree instead of earning it! 

The Trend of Fake Degrees

While the above reports are frightening, they represent an ongoing trend. Unfortunately, it is easy for individuals to represent they have a degree when they don’t. It is fast and relatively inexpensive for individuals to purchase a bachelor’s, master’s, or doctorate from diploma mills. Diploma mill applicants are not required to complete coursework, and while some diploma mills require the individual to complete a quick “life experience” survey, the only firm requirement to obtain a degree is to pay the fee. 

Havocscope is an online organization that monitors black market products and activities, and they report that selling fake diplomas as a ‘product’ is currently a 1 Billion dollar industry! They also state that bachelor’s and master’s diplomas can be purchased for around $500. And according to John Bear and former FBI agent Allen Ezel in “Degree Mills: The Billion-Dollar Industry that has Sold Over a Million Fake Diplomas”, it is estimated that more than 50% of individuals claiming to have earned a PhD purchased a fake degree from a diploma mill.

The most frightening aspect of someone falsifying their education is that a 3rd Party Background check may not identify degrees from Diploma Mills. 

What are Diploma Mills?

Diploma Mills operate without supervision from a state or authoritative agency, therefore they do not meet educational standards. Some of these institutions will claim accreditation from non-recognized agencies to make them appear valid. However, don’t let an ‘accreditation’ fool you as there are hundreds of fake accreditation agencies, which makes it more difficult to tell which educational institutions are real.  

Get Educated is currently tracking more than 300 active diploma mills. The FBI established a dynamic Wikipedia site that tracks over 400 Diploma Mills with another 300+ websites offering counterfeit diplomas.

Many diploma mills look authentic because most of them have a professional-looking website. They also have staff who answer phones and verify the Job Seeker “earned” the degree listed on his/her resume, making it virtually impossible for a 3rd Party Background check to identify the degree is fake. Some of these diploma mills even have online databases where you can enter the Job Seeker’s name and instantly “validate” the degree purchased.

How Do You Spot A Fraudulent School Or Degree?

Accreditation is important. 

Valid educational institutions should have proper accreditation. For example, in the US, when a job description requires a degree, the unspoken requirement is that you have obtained a degree from an accredited university.  

Said differently, a bachelor’s from a non-accredited university (or a university accredited by a fake accreditation agency) will not qualify you for a position that requires a bachelor’s degree. In the US, most often the accreditation expected will be from a regional agency. The six regional accreditation boards in the US are:

• • MSA – Middle States Association of Colleges & Schools
  • NASC – Northwest Commission on Colleges & Universities
  • NCA – North Central Association of Colleges & Schools
  • NEASC – New England Association of Schools & Colleges
  • SACS – Southern Association of Colleges & Schools
  • WASC – Western Association of Schools & Colleges

You may also see educational institutions with national accreditation, but these aren’t viewed to be as rigorous as the regional accreditation agencies. The three most common national accreditation agencies are: 

• • Distance Education & Training Council (DETC)
  • Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges & Schools (ACICS)
  • Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges (ACCSC)

There are also specialty accreditation agencies for theology training programs and careers governed by state licensing boards. 

While it is good advice to be familiar with the types of accreditations available, the easiest way to tell if a US-based educational institution is accredited is to contact the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) or the US Department of Education (USDE). We use the US Department of Education’s Database of Accredited Postsecondary Institutions and Programs (DAPIP) to validate someone’s US Degree.

Confirm the educational institution offers the degree. 

Once you confirm the school is accredited by a valid accreditation agency, verify that the degree is offered by the institution. For example, a CRA candidate listed a Bachelor’s in Chemistry from a small school I hadn’t heard of. After confirming the school was accredited on the DAPIP site, a quick phone call confirmed the school doesn’t offer a Bachelor’s in Chemistry. 

Demand Clarity

The Government Accountability Office reports that their: “ability to identify degrees from unaccredited schools is limited by several factors. First, diploma mills frequently use names similar to those used by accredited schools, which often allows the diploma mills to be mistaken for accredited schools. For example, Hamilton University of Evanston, Wyoming, which is not accredited by an accrediting body recognized by ED, has a name similar to Hamilton College, a fully accredited school in Clinton, New York. Moreover, federal agencies told us that employee records may contain incomplete or misspelled school names without addresses. Thus, an employee’s records may reflect a bachelor’s degree from Hamilton, but the records do not indicate whether the degree is from Hamilton University, the unaccredited school, or Hamilton College, the accredited institution.”

Always ask for additional information when a candidate lists an institution that has a similar name to others. For example, there are over twenty valid institutions with ‘Cambridge’ in the name, but according to the FBI’s listing of Diploma Mills, there are three that are known to be fraudulent. 

You also want to demand clarity when a candidate lists an educational institution but no degree, a degree without a year of graduation, or a degree without a specific area of study. Examples include:

• • Faber College; 1989 – 1992 (what degree?)
  • Faber College, BS Chemistry (what year?)
  • Faber College, Bachelors of Science; 1992 (BS in what?)

Other things to watch for:

Always compare degrees listed on the Job Seeker’s Social Media profiles to what they have stated on their resumes. You should also compare older resumes to newer ones. We often see where the candidate will change their degree in order to appear more competitive. 

International degrees can be tricky. Unfortunately, no single authority oversees the recognition of foreign degrees in the US. And while we have several clients who accept foreign degrees, we have just as many who don’t.

While I would NOT recommend you refuse candidates based on the origin of their degrees, I do advise that you be extra diligent when validating degrees obtained in other countries. 

Resources to Help Identify Diploma Mills

The key is to know what to look for and what questions to ask to validate the Job Seeker’s education. Here is a listing of the resources referred to in this article: 

• • US Department of Education – Diploma Mills and Accreditation Resources and Publications. 
  • The US Department of Education’s Database of Accredited Postsecondary Institutions and Programs (DAPIP)
  • Wikipedia’s list of unaccredited institutions of higher education.
  • Get Educated’s current list of active diploma mills.
  • Wikipedia’s list of unrecognized higher education accreditation organizations.

Quick Note About Certifications

Many clients and candidates ask about certifications. I am a fan. But be careful because there are many fake organizations offering certifications. I ran across one the other day that was charging three times as much as an industry-known certification from the ACRP, SOCRA, or IAOCR…and they didn’t even define the CRA role correctly. 

It is smart to obtain an industry certification or accreditation but stick with reputable organizations. 

Need Help?

Reach out to craresources. We are happy to help where we can!

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Unintentional Discrimination:

In today’s podcast, we team up with a tenured CRA professional and trusted colleague, Mashaan Guy, to discuss an undesired side effect of the candidate fraudulence we are experiencing in this industry.  I am going to call this side effect unintentional discrimination. And to define the term, unintentional discrimination happens when unconscious biases or stereotypes held by companies or hiring entities negatively impact folks within certain protected classes. 

In layman’s terms, what I am finding is that instead of employing robust hiring processes that are better equipped to catch fraudulent candidates, companies are instead making broad brush decisions that may be ruling out certain groups of people. 

Unfortunately, I see honest CRAs getting caught up in this.  

So what I want to do today is address those Honest CRAs who may be making simple mistakes on their resumes that make them look fraudulent. 

Listen to Secrets of a CRA Recruiter on:

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Many hiring managers feel employment verification and background checks are a waste of time and money. Alternatively, other clinical operations managers feel an employment check protects them from candidate fraudulence. Our firm feels performing a background check is necessary for certain roles. We also believe you should always verify a candidate’s past employment…

…BUT, to properly leverage these tools in order to ensure accurate results, you need to understand each of their flaws. 

Our approach to performing employment verifications is why we can identify that roughly 60% of our applicants are fraudulent. Our process has enabled us to see that currently six out of ten applicants are falsifying all or part of their credentials. You will be surprised how many of these fraudsters can successfully sidestep a typical employment check. 

If you and your hiring team believe a typical employment check will keep you and your team safe from fraudulent candidates, your approach to hiring is faulty.

We recently updated an article outlining how fake job applicants can pass a background check. In this very special podcast, our leadership team digs deep into why properly performed employment and background checks are worth the time and money. We openly discuss the flaws of both approaches and provide tips that will help your team be more diligent in identifying top talent…

…all while avoiding fraudulent candidates.

Listen to Secrets of a CRA Recruiter on:

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As we continue the discussion on how to identify fake job applicants and applicants representing a fake background, I am constantly asked, “But why not just call and verify past employment?” Seems like a reasonable question, doesn’t it?

Many Clinical Operations Managers who are aware of the candidate fraudulence epidemic feel they are protected because their company does background checks. I agree that you should do background checks. But conducting background checks and employment verifications isn’t always going to protect you from candidates who present a fake background or job history. 

Here’s why…

The Existence of Non-Existent Fake Companies

Never assume the companies listed on candidate resumes are real businesses. And be aware that these ‘fake companies’ have folks who will answer the phone and “verify” employment. We first noticed this trend in 2010 when candidates from certain “companies” consistently failed our competency assessments. As we dug deeper, we realized the companies didn’t exist and that the candidates were fake job applicants who were using these bogus companies to represent monitoring experience they didn’t have.

To date, we have identified 47 of these phony companies…with an additional 119 classified as highly suspicious. The trend of candidates using fake companies on their resumes is one of the most elusive and alarming trends we have seen.  

Why?

Because it is sometimes hard to identify that a company is fake (which is why we have so many categorized as highly suspicious). These shell companies have websites, and the individuals who establish these counterfeit companies trick Google into assigning locations to them. Business Insider first reported on this issue in 2015, not only confirming what we were already seeing in our industry but also blowing the whistle on an organization that admits to creating hundreds of phony companies.  

And don’t underestimate how committed these fraudsters are. Not only do they have staff members who answer phones to “verify” employment, but for an additional fee, they will provide positive references from “past supervisors”.

How to determine if a company is real:

It is easier to confirm that a company is real than it is to prove it is fake. However, there are specific steps you can follow that will provide insight into a company’s validity.  

Check State Registrars.

As a rule, if you have never heard of a company, you should search for its registration. If a company has legitimately been organized, it will be listed on the appropriate state’s registry. However, realize that companies do not always have to register their business where the business resides. For example, our company’s headquarters is in Florida, therefore, our business is registered with the state of Florida and can be found on Florida’s Division of Corporations site. But we were once registered in Georgia and would also be qualified to register in the state of Delaware. 

So, while you want to start with the state where the company’s headquarters is located, you may have to broaden your search if you want to rule out fraud. 

This brings us to Manta and OpenCorporates.

If searching the Secretary of State or Divisions of Corporation site for the state where the company resides doesn’t yield results, consider using the Manta Business Directory. Manta scrapes each state’s corporation database and also allows companies to register with them directly. While not as reliable as the Secretary of State listings, it can be a good resource if you are unsure which state a company may be registered with.

One of my personal favorites is to use OpenCorporates.  Their database consists of filed corporations across the globe and is extremely accurate. However, if you use this resource often, you will be required to pay a membership fee. But if you hire CRAs, the fee is worth it. 

What isn’t likely to be found:

Fictitious Names and Trade Names can be difficult to trace. For example, while you can easily find our corporation name on our state’s corporation site, you won’t be able to find our trade name. This means that while trade names are required to be registered, they aren’t easily searchable like corporation names are. Much like single-member LLCs, they can be difficult to track down and even more difficult to prove as fraudulent. 

What happens if you can’t verify that the company is real?

If you are unable to verify the legitimacy of a company through a corporation search, you can certainly research its online activity. 

Start with a LinkedIn presence. While not all valid companies have LinkedIn, if the company does have a LinkedIn presence, you will be able to gain insight into its validity. Start by assessing how fleshed out the company’s profile is. Then, take a look at the individuals who are connected to it, along with their titles, etc. You should know that anyone can build a fake LinkedIn company page and have many people connect to it, but real people will be posting as well as sharing information about company milestones. LinkedIn companies also include an Insights tab that will show a history of employees connected to it.   

If the company is a sponsor claiming to conduct trials in the US, you can also check out clinicaltrials.gov. Just be aware that not all studies are required to be on this government site. You can also search for press releases, and check out other resources such as Crunchbase. 

We also keep a history of companies we can’t verify (note the 119 companies I referred to as ‘suspicious’ at the beginning of this section).  Let’s just say that trends will start to reveal themselves if you just track history. 

Even if the Company is Real, Be Diligent in Background and Reference Checks

I am finding more and more companies failing to conduct thorough reference and background checks. And here’s the problem…often, the operations managers don’t know these important steps are being skipped or side-stepped. 

If you are an operations manager, find out what the background and reference check processes are.  We provide some important items to consider in a different article, but here are a few important things to confirm.  

See if there is a financial threshold for background checks. 

I just spoke with someone last week who told me their HR would only pay for a ‘first level’ employment verification. Some of our larger industry CROs and Sponsors require a verbal employment verification, and background check companies will charge extra for that extra step. 

In this particular instance, my friend told me that she had gut churns when interviewing the candidate and was counting on the employment verification to either confirm or deny her suspicions. She didn’t know human resources wouldn’t conduct an employment verification if it required an extra charge. Unfortunately, sidestepping this employment verification resulted in a bad hire. She later found out that the individual had never worked with the large CRO represented on his resume.  

Being thorough in the background check would have avoided the situation.  

Find out if there is a limit to how much your company will spend on any aspect of the background check. Keep in mind that a thorough background check goes well beyond a criminal history and employment verification analysis. If there is a threshold set for any portion of the background check, either obtain permission to exceed that threshold or speak to your leadership about alternative methods of obtaining a thorough result. 

Always do both. 

Companies will often skip reference checks, but as noted above, background checks aren’t always effective. Because of our experience with fake job applicants, we actually put more stock in reference checks if done properly.

Especially when it comes to confirming the experience of contractors. Just know that background checks aren’t going to be effective in some instances, and reference checks aren’t effective in others. Do both, and you will increase your chances of confirming the candidate’s qualifications. 

Reference checks should always be verbal. 

Why? For two reasons. First, references can be easily falsified. Fake job applicants will go to great lengths to represent someone as a past clinical operations manager when they are really a sister, a wife, a friend, a colleague, or someone from their ‘fake company’ arrangement. 

Business emails can be spoofed, so even if the candidate is using an email from a well-known company domain, don’t assume it is valid. Create a reference template that includes open-ended questions that cover hard and soft skills. Then, verbally speak to each reference. Verify the candidate’s title, the dates they worked together, and the company where they worked together. Then, dig into the reference questions. Be sure to listen with your ears and with your gut. Pay attention to what they are saying as well as their pauses while also tuning into energy shifts. If you are ‘using your gut’ during these calls, you will be able to feel it if something is amiss.

This brings me to the second reason why you want to check references verbally. People are more likely to be forthcoming with the truth when in a verbal discussion versus responding to a questionnaire through email. When you ask a direct question, honest people will want to answer it. They may still pause, but they will still be more honest with their answers.  

Was the Company in Operation when the Candidate ‘Worked’ there?

I just had an applicant whose resume showed she was employed by a company two years before it was formed. We also consistently see folks state they worked for a company after it was no longer in business. Always make sure the candidate’s employment dates align with when the companies were active so that you can catch fake job applicants who claim they worked for a company before or after the company existed.

We have also seen a strong trend where candidates list multiple companies on their resumes that did exist but have been acquired or gone out of business. This act alone doesn’t necessarily mean fraudulence, but digging deeper to verify employment can be a challenge. And in some instances, impossible. 

In Conclusion

You are probably thinking that being thorough with background checks (especially employment verification) and references is a lot of work.

It is.

We analyze every candidate who crosses our threshold using the above steps. Every time. Being thorough in our approach is how we have been able to identify that approximately 60% of the candidates applying to our open positions are fake job applicants. This qualification process is time-consuming and can be overwhelming. But it is important because our practice of being thorough has enabled us to build history on candidates and identify fake companies. 

It takes time to identify those candidates who are valid. And while it isn’t always possible to prove that a candidate is fake (until it is too late), knowing who is ‘real’ and truly qualified is extremely important.

Make sure you and your leadership team are diligent because fake job applicants can pass a background check. If you see something that seems off and would like our advice, just let us know. We are here to help! 

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