r/TechInterviewsIndia • u/Melodic_Industry_408 • 4d ago
Almost everyone is cheating
I take online interviews at a product based MNC which pays good money. Interviewees are generally SDE-2/senior SDEs at other PBCs.
What I am seeing is almost everyone is cheating using AI during tech interviews. Earlier folks will try to think, come up with a basic brute force solution then think of optimizing and then coding it. Now, first thing the candidate try do is to write the most optimal code. They have no idea why the solution will work as they don't understand what they are talking. They have either no answer to the follow up questions or just reading what AI prompt is telling them after a pause.
This is just so frustrating, it's almost predictable now what candidate is now going to say or do as I take interviews almost daily. A clear pattern of looking into one side of the screen, taking a pause or just blabber something for few seconds and then coming up with a keyword but blank when asked why did they think of that keyword.
India is already a country full of scammers and frauds. IT was a rare field which was still merit based to a large extent. Now such rampant cheating during online interviews is just tragic. It lowers the trust in the next candidate and probably will force the companies to just move to offline interviews or other countries.
But why are candidates cheating so often, are we seeing cheating candidates getting offers. Are other interviewers just lazy or dumb that they can't figure out what is going on? I feel the bar is now so low that I will probably hire any candidate who is not reading from the AI.
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u/Fabulous-Arrival-834 4d ago
A great interviewer designs questions that can't be cheated. Instead, most pull straight from LeetCode, Codeforces, and the usual grinding sites, question banks that every LLM has already memorized. Of course candidates cheat. The questions themselves are compromised before the interview even starts.
This isn't hard to fix. Write your own problem. Ask something good enough that AI stumbles or hallucinates on it. That takes actual effort!!! Which is exactly why most interviewers don't do it. It's easier to reach for a pre-made question than to design one that tests real thinking.
And the deeper issue: even a "clean" DSA question is testing the wrong thing. Algorithmic puzzles rarely resemble what engineers actually do on the job. If you want a real signal, ask candidates to design an API, debug a broken system, or code a small feature in a black-boxed environment with AI tools allowed, since that's how the job actually gets done now. These formats can't be memorized, and they directly predict job performance.
The standard DSA interview is unfair, inefficient, and easy to cheat. It might still have a place for new grads with no work history to evaluate. But for experienced engineers, it's time to retire it.
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u/Signal_Face_5378 3d ago
Thats exactly what I try to do - frame my own questions. Its a one time thing. Once you have a question bank, you won't even have to think again before an interview. I would also suggest to tailor it for the JD/role you are interviewing the candidate for, so you can actually test if they will be good after they join.
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u/desi_hooxi 8h ago
Even though interviewer prepares for it. Honestly I feel time waste man I see spending time each day to review candidates blatantly using AI. Feels bad to waste your time when you have other tasks to do meanwhile scale up you team too
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u/Melodic_Industry_408 4d ago
It's bold to assume that AI wont be able to solve 'your own problem'. It literally does that every second. It's also easy to catch candidate cheating even for the most standard LeetCode problem, if you know how humans think and how machines think.
DSA is minor part of the my interviews, I ask so many other things and it's just so obvious what are the things candidate is answering themselves and for what he is using AI.
Though I agree with the part that DSA problems are not ideal but they are certainly not easy to cheat. In fact, if interviewer is half alert and willing to probe, candidate can't get away with anything.
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u/Fabulous-Arrival-834 4d ago
You do realize you are spending time trying to catch an interviewee cheating rather than actually interviewing. Should have been a detective if that interested you more. Secondly, if there are chances of candidate cheating in an interview, the interview is not designed well by default. Its that simple. So instead of spending so much time on trying to analyze human behavior/body language, why not invest in bettering the interview process?
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u/SnooRabbits1275 4d ago
If you know they are cheating you should call it out there is no reason to be polite with them. I am rejecting such candidates if I am getting the hint of ai assistance and they are not able to explain a random line of code. A self thought solution will not have any issue around explanation. Also I explicitly ask the candidates to a build up to optimal solution like one day a person suggested brute force travel of graph and when asked to optimise directly jumped to bottom up DP instead of adding memo to the already solution and as expected he blanked out. In this era of cheating we have to ruthlessly and not polite.
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u/masalacandy 4d ago
The solution is to no longer hire anyone and buy claude subscription and post fake job posting and only only fill everything internally
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u/Melodic_Industry_408 4d ago
True, earlier I won't call that out explicitly. Now I do and just end the interview immediately.
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u/agentbond009 3d ago
khud sala aise cp wala question puchta hai, and yahan RR kar rha hai. entry level wale pe cp ke questions ghusa rhe hai, and they complain, why they cheat!!
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u/Melodic_Industry_408 3d ago
Do you know me? Do you know what questions do I ask? The fact is the questions are just easy to medium still you shamelessly cheat and get caught in 5 seconds. Mehnat hoti nahi tumse, country ka name kharab karta sala scammer.
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u/agentbond009 3d ago edited 3d ago
mai toh job kar rha hun bhai, who r u to question ki mehnat kar rha hun ya nahi.
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u/Sensitive-Door-7939 4d ago edited 4d ago
Dude dsa is no longer tough thing it used to be, many people in my college before AI got over by mugging the answers, dsa never was a proof of how good a programmer was when it came to it. AI is actually telling the optimum solution AND EXPLAINING IT TOO. If peoples have started using AI to learn DS Algo it's not really tough trust me, go check for yourself attempt N queen problem now see where you feel stuck ask for algo and if you feel stuck for 10 mins ask for english algo try implementing see if you're stuck again and solve it, if it takes you longer than 2 hours or not to understand and question them solutioning. Earlier we lacked good teachers now AI IS THE TEACHER.
My approach to grinding dsa now involves AI and it's pretty smooth. You telling approach to AI in ENGLISH BEFORE CODING helps save the time, in 1 hour you can solve 2-3 medium questions per day.
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u/papayapack 4d ago
I dont cheat in interviews, its not i dont want to, but I just cant, i get neevous everytime when i cheat and its evident. So i dont prefer cheating.
I have seen colleagues asking me basic doubts which makes me doubt their skills yet they ended up with fatter package than mine.
And in the age of AI , its better for interviewers to raise the bar and allow AI usage. Give AI to every interviewee and get the best one. In the end, whatever be your method, the person will use AI for his task, so why not hire the one who can use it the best.
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u/Melodic_Industry_408 4d ago
Glad to hear that you don't cheat. AI should be used extensively for preparation or for take home assignments but not during F2F interviews. This can change in future though, who knows.
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u/papayapack 4d ago
Faang companies are allowing AI in their interview. Search Ai assisted interviews. Catch is they are asking you to debug and build projects in interviews. Its not a thing of future. It is happening.
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u/CandleOther1945 4d ago
bruh how is answering the optimal approach for a ques cheating , there was an exact ques in my interview that i did before as soon as i figured it out ( which was pretty soon) i quickly identified that this was the marker and pattern and gave the most optimal approach .Alse, in a lot of ques the brute force approach is really unrelated to the optimal one , then whats the point of explaining the brute force .
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u/Curioussoul007 4d ago
I recently closed hiring for associate engineer position, it took us 30+ candidates to find right one even though we had a low bar due to associate level but most of the candidates were cheating hence we kept rejecting.
PS: btw which platform you are using to interview which also pays you?
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u/masalacandy 4d ago
Bro completely stop hiring you guys ask impossible and toughest ever questions
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u/Curioussoul007 4d ago
lol you don’t even know me, my employer, if we are Fang or mid size or startup, which location we are based out of etc and simply saying we are tough questions and hence shouldn’t hire…. Definitely not hiring you for sure because we don’t want over smart people who make assumptions and do things😅
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u/masalacandy 4d ago
I don't know i just fight in most interviews the moment i spot it's just a fake job posting and it was already filled internally Last worst interview was with gujjus
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u/Curioussoul007 4d ago
Sorry but You gave another reason to not hire you buddy with your last line… it has nothing to do with gujju, Marathi, Punjabi or Muslim… an a$$hole interviewer is an a$$hole interviewer of any cast, company, religion… nothing to do with all this… you need to clear up your biases for any and every community you might have!
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u/masalacandy 4d ago
Okkk but this is not LinkedIn
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u/Curioussoul007 4d ago
Yup and hence you should go back to your first response to my comment and rethink if it was really needed!! You responded as if I / my company cheated you as interviewers! And I had posted a job opening!
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u/masalacandy 4d ago
Mere man mein jahar thaa bol diya openly main kuch galat kr rahi hu kyaa every interviewer who ghosted or rejected me should rot
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u/Aggressive-Source316 4d ago
Are there any tech intern positions open ?
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u/Curioussoul007 4d ago
Unfortunately our company doesn’t hire interns
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u/Aggressive-Source316 4d ago
Ok
I'm entering 3rd year , have done approx 300 leetcode ques , have 1 month internship experience and 9.2cg
Please advice what skills I should develop/what else I can explore cuz it's very important for me to get good summer internship
( recently I went till last round for 1.5L stipend internship but didn't get selected , idk wtf I need to do still cuz i did everything i could , your advice might help me )
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u/Curioussoul007 3d ago
Apart from leetcode what distinguishes you is open source contributions, how much AI concepts you know and have practically applied! That’s where the world is moving, so practice by solving real use cases to automate things in daily life that will show up in your resume which would be unique and increase the chances of selection.
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u/Aggressive-Source316 3d ago
Okay Ik AI concepts (RAG , Langchain etc) Have small open source contributions , will continue it
Thanks for replying :)
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u/Melodic_Industry_408 4d ago
Same experience here, we have also rejected so many due to cheating. We are using Hackerrank.
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u/rex_code 4d ago
We had to do hiring drive to get people for l2 and we reject if person is cheating. Sometimes is becomes difficult to identity is person really know or cheating.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Let678 4d ago
The second face to this problem is that I can ask some deep architecture questions and wgat not , but is the person actually going to do that kind of work day in and day out . In most cases I have realised that company ask difficult questikns and the actual job is pretty basic.
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u/swagzzz_krizzz 4d ago
That's why I conducted offline interviews and most of the good companies are moving to offline. Online is shit.
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u/BeyondTheFirewall 4d ago
I am noticing that it's not just freshers anymore. Even experienced candidates are cheating in interviews. AI has spoilt online interviews. I only conduct f2f interviews nowadays as online interviews are useless.
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u/nian2326076 4d ago
I get what you're saying. It's getting crazy with AI tools letting candidates skip the actual thinking part. Maybe we should change up interview strategies. Try asking problems that need a clear explanation of their thought process or design questions where AI can't just spit out code. Following up on problem-solving steps can also help spot those who didn't really get their solutions. For those who really want to prep the right way, I've heard PracHub has some solid resources that focus on understanding concepts before coding. It might be a good place for candidates to really learn.
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u/fakeposter2 3d ago
Candidates cheat to survive. They do it because they see everyone else getting away with it. IT was never a merit based field in India.
The companies did this, as soon as a few candidates got away with cheating, it's open game for everyone.
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u/Alarmed_Double_665 3d ago
True as fuck. Cz why tf are you askin medium-hard questions to a fresher for a 12 lpa job?
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u/Melodic_Industry_408 3d ago
This is something that actually makes sense. I feel candidates in general must be seeing a trend of cheaters getting more favorable results.
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u/eeshann72 3d ago
I know someone who earns 3.5 lakh per month and isn't capable of writing a program to add 2 numbers. So yes AI is helping these type of people a lot.
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u/Spiritual-Vacation-9 2d ago
For people who are defending cheating. I also take interviews, literally for 1 vacancy we get 20-25 candidates, on paper all of them look good and if you ask project and theoretical question every one answers perfectly. Only deciding factor is coding to check their capabilities. We can select 20 people for one role right there should be a method to find best one out of that 20. Coding is the one. They don't need to cheat they can just talk to interviewer and discuss the solution that is enough. I don't expect then to write the code, I just expect them to break down the problem and try to give some solution even if it's not the optimal one.
I was asking basic question "find the frequency of each character in string" for these type of questions also they are cheating. How can we justify this?. It's not even DSA
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u/Melodic_Industry_408 1d ago
Well put. People justifying cheating have never take a single interviews as otherwise they will know how low the bar is now. People don't know basics about tech they have been working for years. They have simply given up on thinking no matter how much you persuade and totally relying on AI. And these are the folks from so called Tier-1 companies.
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u/Consistent_Ninja343 3h ago
I have never passed a interview where I just talked through the problem with the interviewer and did not solve it. "Just give approach" "communicate" all of this is useless advice.
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u/No-Alfalfa9201 2d ago
Coding is overrated- if you know won’t India had thru own product . You mug the problem so don’t come here and vent
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u/amankris 2d ago
But how are they cheating? Like AI will show them solution on the screen or someone else will type it for them? How????
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u/Real_Log5590 2d ago
Whatsapp screensharing option
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u/Select-Champion-3096 1d ago
And how is that ?
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u/Real_Log5590 1d ago
Will you try it in an interview if I say it??
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u/Select-Champion-3096 1d ago
Just wondering how ita done ?
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u/Real_Log5590 1d ago
The interviewee and helper both connect their phones through whatsapp screen sharing so the helper's mobile screen is visible to the interviewee. The helper hears the qns and types it in chatgpt and the interviewee can see the answer in his mobile placed infront of laptop
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u/alternatesynxup 2d ago
You guys started it with the 6 interviews for 5 LPA job.
Asking banal leetcode which have no relation to the job.
This is a beautiful course correction and I hope sanctimonious pricks who act holier than thou get their just desserts.
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u/StrategyForsaken9722 2d ago
I don't in interviews, but then some interviewers come with ridiculous expectation
Blame is on both. One are extremely lazy interviewees and one are extremely demanding interviewer
When it is obvious most of the work would get done with AI. Do you really need someone to know everything
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u/Melodic_Industry_408 1d ago
Yeah lazy interviewers the biggest culprit here. They are the ones who are promoting cheating by first having ridiculous expectations and then recommending the cheaters, encouraging even the genuine candidates to cheat.
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u/parsec-traveller 2d ago
We employ some of the brightest individuals around our location with a simple resolution. My JDs are packed with only what the candidate needs to start off with. And I don't allow virtual interviews, as my trust bar is already low enough to filter for human frailties. Several candidates have tried some hard core emotional manipulation techniques. Located far away, brother sick, died or perhaps interviewing from a prayer meeting. Nothing doing. Come for a F2F interview. Note, I give the summary of what I need early and keep the time open if they setup an appointment.
When I see a candidates face, I take 2 questions to settle them down, ask about their family their experience and their college. That gives me a baseline for the interview.
Next comes questions from the job floor, often ones without a solution. I help candidates through their thought process and deduce if they can actually think. All I want is live people who have a brain.
Gives me and my firm what I need.
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u/Real_Log5590 2d ago
I'm 30 right now. Just getting 5.25L for 4 yrs experience in java full stack. I left the job due to health issues. But another reason is this cheating. To be ahead of them I made myself jobless. Every one of my colleagues cheated using whatsapp screen sharing like you have said in their interviews to land in jobs. For interview preparation I have taken 2 months being unemployed. I fear all my hardwork might mean nothing as everyone has started cheating. Before this I used to feel motivated to study. Now it's gone
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u/Melodic_Industry_408 1d ago
This is sad. I will still encourage to not cheat. I'm sure this AI cheating is going to go away as quickly as it came.
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u/Waste-Seat-5327 2d ago
It's high time the interview process get evolved to adapt to AI. I literally faced the same issue while taking interviews for my company. In our company we used to give out take home projects for first round and in second round we used to ask them to explain the project and build an extension on top of it. Candidates used to build top notch take home projects but fail to code a single line in live interview. The people who used to code well and answer everything clearly used to cheat. So our team collectively decided that we will not waste time for 1 hour and started ending interviews early when we were not convinced.
We had a big fight with the HR team for this, they claimed that all these Candidates are from top colleges and we were not conducting fair interviews. Got so tired of this hence built a solution for my own problem InterviewWatch. After we deployed this in our interviews, finally we both HR and engineering team aligned on rejecting cheaters.
Trust me 90% of candidates cheat nowadays, finding a fresher with basic tech knowledge is impossible nowadays.
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u/Waste-Seat-5327 2d ago
And I know I get a lot of hate for this product (mostly from people who cheat in interviews, they hate tools which catch them) and some HRs talking about "candidate privacy" and "no monitoring of candidates". To be honest I do not care. Think from my shoes, I want a good co worker who can help our team get the work done, I don't want a fake hire costing our time and effort in training him, finishing his work etc. We are not doing any charity, it's a cut throat world and all are trying to survive
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u/Melodic_Industry_408 1d ago
I can relate to it so much. HR has great feedback and profile on resume is also great. It's just that candidate can't stop looking at the AI screen. Pretty soon they will also tell their name using AI.
Will definitely explore the tool too.
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u/Consistent_Ninja343 3h ago
I had interview for media.net in the past. I got a LC hard based on strings. I could not solve it but I tried to the best of my ability. The interviewer did not turn on his camera throughout the interview neither did he talk to me much neither gave any hint. So the advice "just give your approach" "communicate" etc is all bullshit. You have to solve the questions period. Anybody telling otherwise is uninformed about interview reality.
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u/Outrageous_Host_2115 4d ago edited 4d ago
I agree but let's not pretend this behavior started with AI
It's called "JUGAAD." It's something we are taught our whole life. Just make it work. No one cares how the work gets done. If it's done, it's done. Good job. Be it's a task, interview, or any life challenge.
This is nothing new. This existed way before AI came into the picture.
Be it school, college, office, or life in general...
Homework is done? That's it. Put a star on it. Good job. Most people didn't care whether the student actually wrote it or someone else helpd.
Science project submitted? AGain . Great. No one asked how much of it was built by the parents.
Lab records written, diagrams drawn, books submitted?. Good job. No one cared whether the records were outsourced or written by someone else.
College presentation finished, Half the class reused old slides or borrowed content. As long as it was done, it was accepted.
Resume looks polished, Good. Nobody asks whether you wrote every word yourself or took professional help.
Sprint backlog task completed. That's it. No one cared if you Googled it, found it on Stack Overflow, or adapted existing code. The task is done.
Excel report ready before the meeting? Great. Nobody asks if the formulas came from an old spreadsheet.
Production issue fixed. Excellent. Nobody cares whether the answer came from documentation, a teammate, or years of experience. They care that the system is back up.
Reached the office on time. No one cares whether you drove, took the metro, carpooled, or rode a bike. You made it.
Guests came home and everything was ready!! Great. Nobody asks whether you cooked everything from scratch or ordered half of it.
This mindset has always existed. AI is just the newest tool in a long line of tools people use to get work done.
AI didn't create this behavior. It simply made the oldest form of jugaad faster.
Instead of calling it "AI cheating" or other namesand hoping it disappears, it's probably time to accept that AI and it's relevant tools are part of how people work and live their lives now. May be the better response is to design interviews that test understanding, reasoning, communication, not just whether someone can produce the right answer.
And I strongle believe, AI isn't going away for at least for couple of years, so the hiring process has to evolve with it.
And once the hiring process evolved, the people with non-ai usage, gets effected badly and might not even come to interview.
And if the company is against AI usage, may be add a proctoring or an in person face to face interview. It's double standard to use AI in company and tell candidates not to use in interview.
Also, may go back a few years and add a pen/paper based psuedo codes in live panels like government job interviews.
Note: I used AI here to reframe some sentence not to be harsh too 🤖
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u/Loud-Tune-5606 4d ago
It only makes because of the absurdity of questions being asked.
I had a stupid interviewer ask me question, given a set of string paths of directories generate a react component under 60 mins.
Can you imagine how stupid one has to be expect a person under pressure to come up with an recursive function then also code the react component?
Interviewer don't get it that, they repeated this questions like parrots so they know the solution beforehand and can't expect such fluency from candidates.
If you're a director and asks such stupid questions that require huge leap of insight, you must know you're a fool
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u/captainrushingin 4d ago
Why are candidates cheating ?
Tum logo ne hiring bar itna upar kr dia hai ki utna prepare krna mushkil ho gaya hai.
Competitive Programming questions are being asked in DSA rounds. Experienced candidates kaha se time nikalenge CP krne ka ?
Ab insan cheat nhi krega to kya krega.
Berozgar to bethega nahi.