The HR Gap: First in Line, First Fooled
August 15, 2025
No AI. Just a dinobaby being a dinobaby.
Not long ago I spoke with a person who is a big time recruiter. I asked, “Have you encountered any fake applicants?” The response, “No, I don’t think so.”
That’s the problem. Whatever is happening in HR continuing education, deep fake spoof employees is not getting through. I am not sure there is meaningful “continuing education” for personnel professionals.
I mention this cloud of unknowing in one case example because I read “Cloud Breaches and Identity Hacks Explode in CrowdStrike’s Latest Threat Report.” The write up reports:
The report … highlights the increasingly strategic use of generative AI by adversaries. The North Korea-linked hacking group Famous Chollima emerged as the most generative AI-proficient actor, conducting more than 320 insider threat operations in the past year. Operatives from the group reportedly used AI tools to craft compelling resumes, generate real-time deepfakes for video interviews and automate technical work across multiple jobs.
My first job was at Nuclear Utilities Services (an outfit soon after I was hired became a unit of Halliburton. Dick Cheney, Halliburton, remember?). One of the engineers came up to me after I gave a talk about machine indexing at what was called “Allerton House,” a conference center at the University of Illinois decades ago. The fellow liked my talk and asked me if my method could index technical content in English. I said, “Yes.” He said, “I will follow up next week.”
True to his word, the fellow called me and said, “I am changing planes at O’Hare on Thursday. Can you meet me at the airport to talk about a project? I was teaching part time at Northern Illinois University and doing some administrative work for a little money. Simultaneously I was working on my PhD at the University of Illinois. I said, “Sure.” DeKalb, Illinois, was about an hour west of O’Hare. I drove to the airport, met the person whom I remember was James K. Rice, an expert in nuclear waste water, and talked about what I was doing to support my family, keep up with my studies, and do what 20 years olds do. That is to say, just try to survive.
I explained the indexing, the language analysis I did for the publisher of Psychology Today and Intellectual Digest magazines, and the newsletter I was publishing for high school and junior college teachers struggling to educate ill-prepared students. As a graduate student and family, I explained that I had information and wanted to make it available to teachers facing a tough problem. I remember his comment, “You do this for almost nothing.” He had that right.
End of meeting. I forgot about nuclear and went back to my regular routine.
A month later I got a call from a person named Nancy who said, “Are you available to come to Washington, DC, to meet some people?” I figured out that this was a follow up to the meeting I had at O’Hare Airport. I went. Long story short: I dumped my PhD and went to work for what is generally unknown; that is, Halliburton is involved in things nuclear.
Why is this story from the 1970s relevant? The interview process did not involve any digital anything. I showed up. Two people I did not know pretended to care about my research work. I had no knowledge about nuclear other than when I went to grade school in Washington, DC, we had to go into the hall and cover our heads in case a nuclear bomb was dropped on the White House.
The article “In Recruitment, an AI-on-AI War Is Rewriting the Hiring Playbook,” I learned:
“AI hasn’t broken hiring,” says Marija Marcenko, Head of Global Talent Acquisition at SaaS platform Semrush. “But it’s changed how we engage with candidates.”
The process followed for my first job did not involve anything but one-on-one interactions. There was not much chance of spoofing. I sat there, explained how I indexed sermons in Latin for a fellow named William Gillis, calculated reading complexity for the publisher, and how I gathered information about novel teaching methods. None of those activities had any relevance I could see to nuclear anything.
When I visited the company’s main DC office, it was in the technology corridor running from the Beltway to Germantown, Maryland. I remember new buildings and farm land. I met people who were like those in my PhD program except these individuals thoughts about radiation, nuclear effects modeling, and similar subjects.
One math PhD, who became my best friend, said, “You actually studied poetry in Latin?” I said, “Yep.” He said, “I never read a poem in my life and never will.” I recited a few lines of a Percy Bysshe Shelley poem. I think his written evaluation of his “interview” with me got me the job.
No computers. No fake anything. Just smart people listening, evaluating, and assessing.
Now systems can fool humans. In the hiring game, what makes a company is a collection of people, cultural information, and a desire to work with individuals who can contribute to the organization’s achieving goals.
The Crowdstrike article includes this paragraph:
Scattered Spider, which made headlines in 2024 when one of its key members was arrested in Spain, returned in 2025 with voice phishing and help desk social engineering that bypasses multifactor authentication protections to gain initial access.
Can hiring practices keep pace with the deceptions in use today? Tricks to get hired. Fakery to steal an organization’s secrets.
Nope. Few organizations have the time, money, or business processes to hire using inefficient means as personal interactions, site visits, and written evaluations of a candidate.
Oh, in case you are wondering, I did not go back to finish my PhD. Now I know a little bit about nuclear stuff, however and slightly more about smart software.
Stephen E Arnold, August 15, 2025
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