Zip, the digital financial services company, discovered a handful of suspicious candidates who had slipped through its hiring process. Like most, the company’s hiring model had always assumed a baseline level of trust: that the applicant is who they claim to be, that the interview is a direct interaction, and that a polished presentation signals real capability. In a remote-first environment and as candidates increasingly use AI for both legitimate and deceptive purposes, those assumptions are becoming harder to sustain.

“We didn't hire any bad actors, but I took it personally when they got past us because we do have a really strong structure,” said Hannah Rodriguez, Zip’s Head of Talent Acquisition, Canada & Americas.

Zip is investing heavily in growth and expansion, with much of its hiring focused on engineering and product delivery. Among other things, the company is hiring AI engineers, leaders, and builders while competing for talent against companies like Anthropic that can often win on brand and compensation alone.

In a fast-moving environment like this, the company came to see recruiting not just as an entry point for talent, but also as an entry point into its security model.

The answer at Zip has not been to throw more automation at the problem. It has been to engage a cross-functional team that includes legal, IT and talent acquisition, and to invest heavily in training the talent function.

“TA's moved into this first line of defense position,” Rodriguez said. “What we're doing is upskilling the TA team and all of the hiring teams to differentiate between AI-generated polish and genuine depth.”

Rodriguez will be participating in an online panel discussion on application fraud tomorrow, and she’ll be co-presenting with Rory Herriman, Zip’s CTO/COO, on the same topic at the upcoming ERE Recruiting Innovation Summit in May.

“I'm very excited about our Summit session. I think it's a bit different because it is the head of TA and our CTO making the same argument in the same room,” Rodriguez said. “When we started building our relationship, it was really about more rigor and perfecting the foundation. So, what are we doing well? What are we missing?”

Zip is not alone in seeing the problem this way. Anita Chandrasekhar, Global Head of Talent Strategy and Operations at Zapier, described the challenge this way, “The number of fraud candidates we were starting to see coming into the pipeline was so high. Who are the real candidates?” For Chandrasekhar, the answer was a partnership with Ezra AI to identify fraud at an earlier stage of the hiring process so that their recruiting team could filter out the noise and focus on the strongest candidates.

Not everyone agrees that candidate fraud is this big a problem. The inestimable John Sumser believes that much of it is manufactured by background checking companies. I understand the skepticism, and it’s certainly a convenient marketing position. But in conversations with TA leaders, this issue comes up repeatedly.

I’d love to hear from the TA practitioners and leaders in our community. What are you seeing?

— David

P.S. If you found this newsletter valuable, chances are your colleagues will too. Feel free to forward it along—and if it landed in your inbox by way of a friend, you can subscribe here to get the next one directly.

Featured Story

Findem’s Glider AI Acquisition Isn’t Really About Hiring. It’s About Data.

The ever-insightful Matt Charney breaks down Findem’s acquisition of assessment company Glider AI, it’s second in the last four months. The deal is all about data integrity and owning trustworthy hiring data end to end. (ERE)

More Recruiting Insights

Payscale’s 2026 Gender Pay Gap Report. Payscale’s 2026 Gender Pay Gap Report finds that women in the U.S. earn $0.82 for every $1.00 men earn on an uncontrolled basis, and $0.99 for every $1.00 on a controlled basis (same job and comparable factors). It also notes that the gap widened in 2026 after years of narrowing, and highlights that pay gaps are significantly larger for mothers and for many women of color. (Payscale)

Is Taste the One Thing A.I. Can’t Replace? In so many of the conversations that I have with TA Leaders, a familiar refrain comes up: “AI can’t replace the human touch.” Tech workers are now actively embracing their own version of this mantra and working on developing good taste as a quality that AI will not be able to quantify. (NY Times)

Meta begins laying off hundreds of employees across five divisions. Meta is cutting hundreds of jobs across multiple divisions, including recruiting, as it reshuffles teams while continuing to pour money into AI and data centers. Earlier this month, reports leaked that raised the possibility of a much larger move, with Meta considering layoffs of up to 20% of its workforce to offset rising AI-related costs, though Meta publicly called those larger-cut reports “speculative.” (NBC)

OpenAI reportedly plans to double its workforce to 8,000 employees. In the same week that Meta is cutting hundreds of roles and even floating the possibility of much deeper reductions, OpenAI is reportedly moving in the opposite direction, planning to nearly double headcount from about 4,500 to 8,000 by the end of 2026. The contrast captures the moment: AI is eliminating jobs inside mature companies looking for efficiency, while creating jobs inside the firms building the models and the enterprise adoption machinery that powers the AI boom. (Engadget)

Conferences

ERE Recruiting Innovation Summit

Atlanta, GA
May 5-6, 2025

The ERE Recruiting Innovation Summit is a practitioner-led event built for talent acquisition leaders who want real answers, not hype. Now that the updated agenda is live, this is your chance to explore the sessions, speakers, and conversations shaping the future of recruiting.

Join us for practical sessions, meaningful peer connection, and live Ask Me Anything office hours with speakers. If you care about where recruiting is headed and want ideas you can put to work immediately, you belong in this room.

(ERE Recruiting Innovation Summit)

Webinars

Outbound is Back: How Lean Teams Win Without Burning Out

March 25, 2026 | 2:00 PM EST | 1 Hour

We will walk through a repeatable outbound system for lean recruiting teams: build strong lists, use real signals to prioritize who to contact, write relevant messaging, and run a cadence that stays consistent without overwhelming candidates. We’ll also cover guardrails like deliverability basics and frequency caps to protect employer brand, plus what you should be measuring to succeed. (ERE)

Detecting and Defending Against Candidate Misrepresentation

March 26, 2026 | 2:00 PM EST | 1 Hour

In this webinar we will tackle the rise of fake applicants, from AI-generated resumes and deepfake interviews to third-party test takers. We’ll cover practical tactics such as screening “traps,” interviewer training, verification tools for technical and non-technical roles, and legally defensible documentation. (ERE)