Recruiter Yulia Sitnikova shared her experience of selecting candidates on LinkedIn, among whom she found a significant number of Koreans.
Recruiter Yulia Sitnikova shared her experience of selecting candidates on LinkedIn, among whom she found a significant number of Koreans.
«My „first time“ was candidates from North Korea. I posted a vacancy, and within a few hours I already had the first 25 applicants. But more than half looked strange — the pages were created a week ago, no recommendations, zero activity. The location is a European country, education is somewhere in Asia. Candidates respond quickly, take tests, everything looks perfect,» said Yulia.
Previously, according to her, the same «candidates» often did not turn on the camera — or turned it on so that only a piece of their face was visible. «The resume is good, the answers are logical… but something is wrong,» the specialist says.
Yulia went to Google and opened a «rabbit hole.» «It turns out that North Korean programmers are often behind such fake profiles.
This is a whole state strategy: „IT hubs“ are being created, where specialists work remotely for foreign companies. The goal is twofold — to earn foreign currency and gain access to internal systems and data. A kind of „Korean outsourcing“ that finances the regime. They are given fake documents, European accounts to receive salaries,» explained the recruitment specialist.
Yulia adds: «As a recruiter, I feel responsible for the security of the process. That’s why now I have a new test question at the interview: „What do you think of Kim Jong-un?“ — The interview ends instantly,» she said and added that when she described this case on social networks, other recruiters started writing to her — some candidates even used filters to look more European.
There are over 140 comments under the recruiter’s post. The people of Aitutaki are amazed by such ingenuity and admit that candidates from North Korea are no longer news.
«My boss likes to conduct pre-selections and intros himself. That’s what 70% of DPRKs say. Among the checks, he asks to wave his hand in front of his face. Immediately, the AI filters start floating,» said the Principal Tech Lead & Architect.
Iryna Voronova, Senior IT-recruiter, says that these candidates probably went through some kind of wild training and are disguised. «Those who have been in IT for a long time know that correspondence is a priority. I’ve already ‘eaten the dog’ in these correspondences, I can hear it with my nose… They write, then send CVs. They are all like: Ivan Shvydchenko or Maryan Khodchenko. Almost all of them graduated from the Kyiv Polytechnic University, live in Kyiv on Hrushevskoho Street… They are incomparable. If I have time and inspiration, I start a dialogue. The result is that they disappeared for some reason… Interviews without video are a separate topic. They all began to be introduced about eight years ago. One person is interviewed, the other is trying to get a job. This already concerns not only the candidates we are talking about now. But also all those who live in the territory of the former CIS… But they all communicate differently, you can recognize them by their correspondence right away…», she notes.
IT Recruiter Nazariy Bekhmetyuk has found his own way to filter such candidates. «There are a lot of fake profiles that are «burned» for many reasons. There is education in Singapore or Vietnam, the same fake jobs.
My first message to the candidate is in English, and if he is Ukrainian according to the documents, I switch to Ukrainian in the correspondence, usually they immediately merge as soon as they see Ukrainian. But there are «indestructible» ones who go to a translator somewhere and try to answer in nightingale, and it looks scary, like it’s funny. From the extreme — «Thank you very much, I think we can become closer,» he shares .
And IT expert Max Shishkin said that the co-founder of his US company exposed an entire network of North Korean developers working on Upwork accounts. «There will be fewer missiles, I hope,» he noted.
