Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hi, everyone. You've got questions and we've got answers. Welcome to today's live BELA Asks episode. I'm Julia Boyes here with Erica Salmon Byrne, the chief strategy officer of Ethisphere and the Executive Chair of BELA
The Business Ethics Leadership alliance is an organization, is a community of organizations who are committed to maturing their ethics and compliance programs and strengthening their ethical culture.
One way that we're able to do that is through the BELA Asks part of the Ethicast, where we answer questions that are submitted through the Bella concierge service. Bella members send us their frequently asked questions and we're able to give them guidance really uniquely catered to their question.
Hi, Erica, how are you doing today?
[00:00:59] Speaker B: I am doing great, Julia. And you and I had a really, really hard time today selecting which concierge request question we wanted to take to BELA asks because for whatever reason, this year, the Bella community came out of the gates the new year swinging with excellent questions. So we had eight questions that rose to the level of what are we going to take to? Bella asks. And you and I had a really hard time selecting our favorite.
[00:01:26] Speaker A: I know, right? I feel like 2026 is just going to be a wonderful year of questions. Yes, I agree, but why don't we jump right in?
The question we landed on today, Erica, is how can I manage increasing levels in candidate and employment fraud?
[00:01:42] Speaker B: Yep, yep. This is such a great question, Julia. And the reason that I think it rose to the top of the list for you and I this week was it is a reflect of three overlapping pieces of the Venn diagram. So there is obviously a very tight labor market right now. We've been reading lots and lots of news pieces about hiring slowdowns, you know, companies electing to slow walk, hiring more and more people, trying to figure out, you know, what is my next situation look like with AI, which makes it easier than ever to, to. To augment. We'll put it, we'll use that word to augment your credentials.
Of course, the increased use of AI tools in screening. So people are trying to figure out how to navigate the AI side of the equation. And then of course, one of my favorite topics, which is the relationship between human resources and the ethics and integrity team, because that is going to be a key piece of the solution to this puzzle. So just a level set for everybody in terms of what we're talking about when we talk about rising levels of candidate fraud. So, so what we, what the research is saying right now is that we are seeing high rates of resume falsification a 50% growth year over year, according to a few of the different resources that I ended up checking.
Fake profiles. So a lot of the research right now is saying that by 2028, we will see that one in every four online profiles is not going to be real, deep fakes. So, you know, people actually like literally not being who you think they are when they go through the interview process and then using some of these tools to practice some of the screening answers in such a way that you are not getting a really clear picture of the candidate that you might actually end up hiring and considering how expensive it is to hire and considering how expensive it is to hire the wrong person. Right. So we've been talking about some of these stats for years. You know, turnover in a particular employment role, on average, it's about 150% of the base salary of the role you're filling in terms of the cost you're looking at from a turnover perspective. So this is a real challenge.
And solving it is going to require the concerted coordination of three critical groups inside your organization. Your HR team obviously has to be heavily involved. So what sort of things are they putting in place at the very front of the end of the process to make sure that the people that are being brought in to interview for open roles are who they say they are? Right. They're not North Korean IT actors that are, you know, trying to access your confidential information. Lots of news out there about that particular phenomenon.
And they really, you know, they, they, their skill set and their backgrounds match are actually what is reflected in the, in the paperwork. So understanding what your HR team already has in place is going to be a key piece of this puzzle. The second piece, the second group that you are going to need to make sure that you're closely preparing for this new ecosystem that we're all living in is your hiring managers.
So, you know, what sort of tools are you giving your hiring managers to if they are video interviewing candidates, checking for indications that you're not talking to who you. You think you might be talking to, how well trained are your hiring managers on the signals of deep fakes?
What are you, what kind of background checks and reference checks are you doing? Are you making sure that those aren't potentially falsified? How are you checking for resume falsification? Those are some of the things that we're going to have to get smarter and more coordinated about because the tools that are out there, just like with expense reporting fraud and other places, the tools that are out there are making it easier for people to present themselves as somebody other than who they actually are. And then once those folks are inside your organization, you're obviously going to have a harder time dealing with the consequences of a mismatch.
[00:05:38] Speaker A: It's disheartening, but I feel encouraged that this is going to help really strengthen cross functional collaboration within organizations.
[00:05:45] Speaker B: Yep, it should. And the other. The last thing I will say, and Julia, it would not be a. Bella asks if I don't find a way to potentially slide in or to. To eventually rather slide in. A reference to storytelling.
Don't shy away from telling the people inside your organization some of these stories. It can be, you know, the difference between talking about resume falsification or deep fake falsification of who you actually are. It's a, it's an intellectually interesting story. Right. People are going to be like, oh, yeah, yeah, that's probably not great.
Talking about the consequences of hiring a North Korean, you know, employee that is, is. Is one of these rings of IT workers that are trying to get jobs with, with companies.
That's a very different, very real case study that you can use and should use with these cross functional partners to say, okay, let's unpack this. Like, how would we catch somebody who was involved in this? What were the signals that were missed by the company that ran into this particular issue? And how would we potentially look for some of these indications that this is a situation we're getting ourselves into? Are our hiring managers prepared? Is our screening process prepared?
Where are the gaps and the things that we need to bolster?
There's enough out there about how this kind of thing happens. Use those stories to try to figure out how to navigate this challenging new world.
Yeah.
[00:07:21] Speaker A: Well, Erica, thank you so much. I feel like this is a great question to kick off 2026 and to everyone out there, we really hope that you send us your questions.
If you're looking for resources, please visit ethisphere.com/resources or we're here for you. And we're very, very excited to continue. BELA asks into 2026.
All right, take care, everybody. Thank you.
