Hi everyone,  
  
Sharing this as a cautionary note in case it helps someone else.

This happened a month back. Someone reached out to me on LinkedIn claiming to be from a fairly large U.S.-based investment firm for a role that was highly relevant to my background.

Naturally, I did my diligence. I checked the person’s LinkedIn profile - it looked genuine. The firm itself wasn’t a household name like Sequoia, but it was established and credible enough on paper. Since the role aligned well, I asked multiple clarifying questions about the position.

The recruiter then told me I’d need to go through an AI-based interview process and sent me a link via email through a platform called Canditech (which I hadn’t used before).

The first red flag: the email didn’t come from the firm’s official domain.

I asked the recruiter directly whether the email/link was legitimate, and he reassured me it was.

Still, something felt off.

It actually took me 5 working days to even agree to attempt another AI interview because I’ve had mixed experiences with AI interviews before. (Side note: my success rate in human-led interviews has been significantly better (3x+) than AI-led ones)

When I finally opened the link and filled in the initial section, the next screen threw an “Encoding/transcoding pipeline failure” message with bizarre instructions asking me to open Terminal on my Mac and run an FFmpeg command. \[Screenshot attached\]

Obviously, I was alarmed.

At first I wondered if it was just a technical glitch, so I decided to quickly message the hiring manager on LinkedIn before proceeding.

And that’s when things got worse.

The same LinkedIn profile that had contacted me had completely changed - different name, different details, different identity.

Clearly a fake profile.

I reported it immediately.

What shook me wasn’t just the scam attempt, but how sophisticated and patient these setups are becoming.

**For job seekers, the process is already mentally, emotionally, financially, and physically exhausting. To have bad actors exploit that vulnerability makes it even harder to trust opportunities.**



Recruiting scam via LinkedIn + “AI interview” platform