Is anyone who they say they are? And how can you tell? In the online dating world, a "catfish" is someone who creates a fake persona using stolen photos, fabricated bios, and carefully curated lies to trick someone into a relationship.
It's such a common phenomenon that MTV built an entire reality series around it: Catfish, a show dedicated to unmasking people who aren't who they claim to be online.
But beyond Tinder and Instagram, catfishing is also infiltrating the world of work.
This article explores the rise of corporate catfishing in more detail, including why it’s becoming more common, and how hiring managers, recruiters, and job seekers can cut through the noise to uncover the truth.
Corporate catfishing, also known as career catfishing, happens when employers or candidates misrepresent themselves at any stage in the hiring process.
According to Monster's data, 13% of job candidates admit to catfishing behaviours, including exaggerating their background or qualifications for a role. Usually, it’s an extension of the "fake it till you make it" idiom, suggesting that if they elevate their abilities, they'll eventually have the chance to develop them and be successful in the role. The question is: how much are they inflating their expertise in their resumes and interviews? And when does a white lie cross the line into blatant deception?
One particularly extreme example of career catfishing comes from a North Korean cyber operation. In a real-world case that reads like a spy thriller, a North Korean IT worker posed as a software engineer to gain employment at a U.S.-based company. Using a stolen identity, AI pictures, and false credentials, the individual was able to secure work and access internal systems, allegedly to siphon sensitive information and generate illicit income for the North Korean government.
But not all catfishing is this covert, or international. In fact, the most common form might be happening much closer to home, inside your own hiring process.
While job seekers may bend the truth, employers are also guilty. Locked in a war for talent and a race against time to fill seats quickly, they want to attract the “best of the best” using any means possible. Often, this may mean overselling the company’s culture or misrepresenting the scope of a role using glamorised job descriptions.
These exaggerations may not sound like much, but they’re prevalent and they profoundly impact the employee experience. Monster’s data finds that 79% of workers have been catfished into taking a job that didn't live up to the description provided by the recruiter or hiring manager. Of these:
Strategic Information Security Director Jeremy French warns that deception now runs in both directions:
“Employers can't tell if candidates are real, candidates can't tell if opportunities are legitimate, and both sides are suspicious of normal hiring practices. I've seen companies spend weeks interviewing fabricated people, while good candidates waste time with fake companies that have professional websites.
Traditional HR screening wasn't designed for this level of deception. Both employers and job seekers need to evolve their verification processes and cross-reference multiple data points before moving forward.”
So, why is suspicion and detective work now a staple of the hiring process? Why must companies and candidates resort to searching for clues of wrongdoing rather than use the hiring process to discuss strategy and skills that could take the business to the next level?
Hiring Hub’s CEO Mark Rothwell describes the situation as “a real erosion of trust in the hiring process, with both sides guilty. The root issue is everyone’s under pressure. Candidates feel they need to embellish to stand out, and companies are desperate to attract top talent in a competitive market.”
The consequences of this pantomime are felt on both sides of the hiring table.
It doesn't take long for a new hire to realise they've been sold a dream that doesn't match reality. According to Nectar HR's retention and turnover study, one in three employees will quit within their first 90 days if the role fails to meet expectations.
The ripple effects of employer catfishing include:
Still tempted to indulge in catfishing? Mark Rothwell provides a word of warning: “You might win the hire, but you’ll lose the employee.”
On the flip side, candidates who embellish or outright fabricate details on their CVs also play a risky game. The potential consequences include:
As digital footprints grow and verification tech improves, lies are easier than ever to tell and quicker than ever to detect. Candidates risk being blacklisted or losing out on future opportunities altogether.
91% of employers now use AI to streamline hiring, and 84% of candidates rely on it to find roles or enhance applications. So, it's no leap to ask: is AI quietly fuelling a wave of corporate catfishing?
The answer: it depends entirely on how it’s used. You see, AI is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it can help candidates articulate their experience more clearly, improve formatting, and optimise CVs for applicant tracking systems. But on the other hand, it just as easily fabricates candidates’ experiences and can generate entire career histories that the applicant can’t actually back up.
But is AI all bad? Not necessarily. Hiring teams need to weigh up the probability of candidates using AI in their applications and determine whether that's a positive demonstration of their technical abilities or whether it's a giant red flag. Mark Rothwell gives some valuable advice to candidates:
“In the recruitment sector, we are starting to see a turn in perceptions of AI when it comes to using it to edit your CV. Luckily, as long as AI is used correctly, it can actually be beneficial when job seekers are creating their CV. My one piece of important advice to job seekers is that you add a human touch to the AI-written content.
Read through and edit any words that don’t sound like you. If you use certain language or jargon on your CV but sound completely different in an interview, this is a huge red flag to the employer.
It is essential that you can back up your experience and skills in an interview to avoid any unnecessary embarrassment and potentially losing out on the job opportunity.”
Whether AI-powered or manually deceitful, catfish applications are commonplace in the modern hiring cycles. While hiring managers might try to combat this by adding another tool to their tech stacks, there are several human-centric steps you can try instead to bolster your gut-check.
Candidates who must often apply for 100 to 200 different jobs before securing a role are desperately frustrated by the distraction of catfishing. They don't have the time or energy to waste on employers who aren't what they say. Here's how jobseekers can weed out the companies incapable of delivering on their promises:
Corporate catfishing is a real sign of the times and a clear warning that trust in the hiring process is under serious strain. When candidates feel they have to embellish to get noticed, and companies feel they must oversell to attract talent, it's a symptom of deeper dysfunction. Without transparency, even the best hiring strategies collapse under the weight of misaligned expectations and broken promises.
“Transparency from day one is key. If you’re not showing candidates the reality of the role and the company culture, you are setting yourself up for failure and additional costs finding a new hire yet again,” says Mark Rothwell.
And that's where Hiring Hub can help. As a recruitment management platform, Hiring Hub enables employers to brief agencies once, manage every supplier in one place, and bring structure and visibility to the entire process. Whether you're working with your own preferred recruiters or tapping into a network of rated, reviewed specialists, Hiring Hub puts you in control of third-party hiring. You can be confident you're portraying an accurate version of your business, and attracting top-calibre candidates to it.
If you’re ready to rebuild trust and remove the smoke and mirrors from recruitment, start with how you hire. Book a free demo of Hiring Hub today.