More Interviews, Slower Hires: Why Adding Rounds Is Not Solving Hiring Fraud

As candidate fraud becomes more sophisticated, many organizations are responding by adding more interviews.

The instinct is understandable. When hiring teams are concerned about AI-assisted cheating, fabricated credentials, proxy candidates, or identity misrepresentation, another conversation can feel like an added safeguard. More interviews create more opportunities to test knowledge and uncover inconsistencies.

The problem is that more interviews are not necessarily creating better fraud detection. They are creating longer hiring processes, heavier recruiter workloads, and greater frustration for legitimate candidates, while sophisticated forms of deception continue to move through the process.

The numbers show how much interview activity has already increased:

• Hiring teams are conducting 42% more interviews per hire than in 2021, averaging about 20 interviews compared with 14
• Technical roles now require an average of 23.3 hours of interviewer time before an offer
• In an analysis of more than 19,000 live interviews, over 38% showed signs of AI-assisted cheating
• 61% of candidates displaying those behaviors still scored above the passing threshold

More interview activity is clearly creating more effort. The harder question is whether that effort is producing better evidence.

More Interviews Are Not Solving the Fraud Problem

Traditional interviews were designed to evaluate experience, communication, technical knowledge, and cultural alignment. They were not built to identify candidates who receive real-time answers from AI tools, use another person’s credentials, or are coached by someone outside the interview.

That gap has become increasingly difficult to ignore. 

Google and Amazon have both reintroduced mandatory in-person interview rounds for certain roles in response to AI-assisted interview manipulation. Their response shows how seriously major employers are treating the risk. It also illustrates the limits of relying on another interview alone.

An in-person conversation can make some forms of real-time assistance more difficult, but it does not validate credentials, establish identity continuity across earlier stages, or confirm who completed previous assessments.

Interview format matters. Verification still requires evidence beyond another conversation.

Every Additional Round Creates a Scheduling Tax

The cost of adding another interview extends well beyond the hour spent speaking with the candidate.

Every added round creates work before and after the interview:

• Recruiter coordination and scheduling
• Interviewer preparation and availability
• Candidate communication
• Feedback collection and calibration
• Internal follow-up and decision-making

When that effort is multiplied across every candidate in the funnel, the administrative burden grows quickly. 

Scheduling and hiring logistics already account for an estimated 38% of recruiter time. Every added round multiplies that work across the viable candidate pool, reducing the time recruiters can spend evaluating talent, advising hiring managers, and engaging strong candidates.

The burden extends to hiring managers. Technical and executive searches often involve several stakeholders, and technical roles already consume an average of 23.3 interviewer hours before an offer is made.

Every additional round should have a defined purpose and produce information the team does not already have.

This is happening while hiring timelines are already moving in the wrong direction. 60% of organizations reported an increase in time-to-hire in 2025, while only about 12% managed to reduce it.

Additional interview rounds are being added to a process that is already getting slower.

The Strongest Candidates Feel the Delay First

Qualified candidates often have other opportunities moving at the same time.

When another round adds days to scheduling, feedback, and internal decision-making, qualified candidates continue speaking with other employers. The organization may gather more information and still lose the person it wanted to hire.

Each interview should be designed to reveal something specific: capability, consistency, identity, judgment, communication, or another defined hiring signal. If the team cannot explain what new evidence a round is expected to produce, its value deserves another look.

What Better Interview Design Looks Like

Stronger fraud detection starts with how interviews are designed and connected across the hiring process.

Research analyzing more than 19,000 interviews points to several techniques that strengthen candidate verification within the interview process:

• Structured follow-up questions that require candidates to explain and expand on their answers
• Identity continuity across stages so teams can confirm consistency throughout the process
• Practical work samples that show how candidates reason and solve relevant problems

That finding should encourage hiring leaders. Improving the quality of interviews often provides greater value than simply increasing their quantity.

Before adding a round, hiring teams should be able to answer four questions:

• What specific signal are we trying to validate?
• What new evidence will this interview produce?
• Who needs to participate?
• Can that evidence be captured within an existing stage?

This keeps interview design focused on decision quality instead of interview volume.

Build Verification Into the Process

Fraud response becomes harder to manage when new tools and interview rounds are added as separate workflows. Recruiters move between systems, hiring managers wait for information, and candidates experience delays while those steps are coordinated.

Integrated verification keeps those signals within the hiring workflow, so teams can make decisions with fewer manual handoffs.

When structured interviewing, fraud detection, identity verification, and candidate evaluation work together, recruiters can see qualification and risk signals without managing separate manual processes.

The result is clearer candidate context, fewer handoffs, and faster decisions.

What This Looks Like

Scout™ brings structured video interviewing, candidate evaluation, fraud detection, recruiter insights, and identity verification into a single connected workflow. Hiring teams gain more context without continually adding rounds or managing separate verification processes.

MyScout™ supports the candidate side by giving legitimate professionals a clearer way to present and verify their experience earlier in the process.

For hiring teams, that means stronger signal with less unnecessary interview friction.

Before You Add Another Interview

Fraud deserves serious attention, and verification belongs in a modern hiring process. Every additional interview should still have a clear job to do.

Before adding a round, define:

• The risk or qualification signal it is intended to validate

• The evidence the team expects to gain

• The people who actually need to participate

• The time it will add to the hiring process

• Whether the same evidence can be captured earlier

Interview rounds that strengthen the decision should stay. Rounds that repeat existing information deserve another look.

Strong hiring infrastructure gives teams the evidence they need to identify qualified, authentic candidates without slowing every hire.