This post first appeared on John’s Try Harder is Not a Strategy LinkedIn Newsletter.

I've been writing about the risks of candidate fraud since January 2024. Things are moving quickly, and in my recent talk at LinkedIn Talent Connect in San Diego, I decided to focus on the TA leader's role in driving candidate quality and quality of hire, which now includes a big focus on reducing fraud. TL;DR - just want the slides? Here you go.

The context for my talk had a lot to do with many changes ahead for us in TA:

• Execs Want Quality Hires & Less Regretted Attrition

• Candidate Fraud and Cheating is Harder to Detect

• TA Teams Are Getting Overwhelmed with Applicants (Many Duplicates + Fakes)

• Roles Are Evolving - New Skills, New Profiles, AI Handling Transactional Tasks

• WGLL (what good looks like) & Quality of Hire Needs More Leadership + Future Focus; Misalignment!

• Human Soft Skills are More Important

• HM and Interviewers (Still) Need Coaching & Training (included in my list of 10 things TA leaders need to be doing now to address fraud and candidate quality risks)

• We Want/Need TA to Play Larger Role in QoH

• Recruiting Teams Are Shrinking (Economy + AI + HM Self Service)

• Legal, Tech, Security Teams are Paying Attention to TA & our Tech

• AI’s Role in Assessment is Being Defined Now (Courts)

• Return to Office + Fraud Risk = Return to In Person Interviews

In my two workshops, we discussed leadership-level strategies to define “what good looks like,” reduce fraud risk, enable hiring managers, and elevate recruiter impact at the assessment and decision stage.

DOWNLOAD THE SLIDES HERE: http://www.recruitingtoolbox.com/Quality-2025

Where do you see the biggest opportunities for TA to step up and lead around reducing candidate identity fraud, reducing cheating (what is cheating now, anyway?), and raising the bar on quality?