The candidate sailed through three rounds of interviews 鈥渨ith flying colors.鈥� What happened next might have drained the color from the faces of hiring managers and HR professionals everywhere.

They offered him the position. He accepted, went through on-boarding, showed up at his first real virtual meeting鈥攁nd it wasn鈥檛 the same guy. He literally wasn鈥檛 the person they鈥檇 interviewed. 

He didn鈥檛 look the same, didn鈥檛 talk the same, and most important of all, he didn鈥檛 have the job skills they needed. Unfortunately, SHRM says this isn鈥檛 an isolated incident.聽

As the number of virtual interviews has escalated thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, anecdotal evidence suggests the number of bait-and-switch situations like the one described above is also escalating. In fact, the writer of the article shared stories of not one but two bait-and-switch scenarios. s