Skillfishing Undermines Hiring. What Can HR Do About It?

For recruiters and hiring managers, the challenge is not just identifying top talent, it’s separating real capability from well-crafted illusion.

When candidates present themselves as highly capable during the hiring process but fail to deliver once hired — a familiar but increasingly costly phenomenon lately called skillfishing — the organization loses time, money, and momentum.

Recent SHRM data underscores the scope of the issue. In a survey of more than 2,000 U.S. workers and HR professionals, 63% said they have worked with someone who looked great on paper but lacked the skills to perform once hired. Nearly 9 in 10 HR professionals said AI tools now make it significantly easier for candidates to appear more capable than they actually are.

“Every leader I talk to lately has a version of the same story,” said Alexander Alonso, SHRM-SCP, chief knowledge officer at SHRM. “You hire someone who looks extraordinary on paper. Elite degree. Impressive credentials. Perfectly crafted resume. Maybe even a polished portfolio or impressive references. Then they show up. And within days — sometimes hours — you realize something is very wrong. They can’t actually do the work.”

It’s not really new, but skillfishing, a version of “catfishing,” is happening more frequently and more convincingly than before, he said.

Event: SHRM 2026

Why Skillfishing Is Accelerating

While misrepresentation in hiring is not new, several forces are amplifying the problem, Alonso said. First, credential inflation has weakened the link between degrees and applied capability, leaving employers to assume competencies that may not exist.

Second, “candidates have become exceptionally good at presenting expertise,” he said. “Between portfolio websites, polished LinkedIn profiles, and rehearsed interview answers, people can signal mastery convincingly without ever demonstrating it.”

Third, AI has fundamentally changed how candidates present themselves. Tools can now generate sophisticated code, business analyses, and presentations in seconds.

“But generating an answer isn’t the same as understanding the work,” Alonso said. “The result is a growing number of employees who can describe the work without the faintest idea of how to do the work.”

Skillfishing is more than a hiring inconvenience — teams find themselves having to compensate for underperformance, needing to develop foundational skills, and restore trust in the hiring process. Perhaps most concerning, organizations begin to question whether traditional signals of expertise such as degrees, resumes, and even interviews can be trusted at all.

The Limits of Resume Screening

Resumes have become increasingly uniform, particularly as AI tools help candidates optimize language and formatting.

“We have been hearing concerns about this from employers,” said Lorna Erickson, hiring strategist and co-founder of Expert Interviewers, an interviewer training firm based in Kansas City, Mo. “In the past, some resumes would stand out over other resumes. Now, with AI, a lot of the resumes are looking the same. They look perfect. And that makes it harder for companies to select who to interview.”

This shift requires a fundamental change in mindset. “Interviewers cannot have assumptions going into the interview; they need to find the evidence they need during the interview,” Erickson said.

That transition may require significant upskilling for hiring managers. “Interviewers must be trained to help candidates explain their previous experiences in challenging situations; must be able to ask follow up questions, and practice consistency,” she added. “It doesn’t matter if someone is a referral or a friend: everyone should go through the same process to help get past assumptions.”

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Moving to Evidence-Based Hiring

For many organizations, the solution lies in shifting from intuition-driven hiring to evidence-based evaluation.

“Skillfishing is a new term but not a new practice,” said Victoria Gates, a veteran recruiter and co-founder of Expert Interviewers. “Some candidates have always performed in interviews, dazzling hiring managers. There is usually blame placed on the candidate or the technology, but the blame should be put on the people doing the interviews. Your interview process is not set up in a way to best evaluate candidates.”

Gates advocated for structured, evidence-based interviewing, not as a way to “catch” candidates in lies, but to systematically surface truth.

“Evidence-based interviewing is about designing the interview so that the truth is pulled out and exposed so it can be evaluated against what you are looking for,” she said.

That begins with clarity. “If you haven’t actually defined the skills you are looking for across the team, then how can you validate them?” Gates asked.

This includes creating standardized questions, aligning interviewers on skill definitions, and establishing clear evaluation criteria. “It’s basically an answer key to a test, and candidates are scored against that key,” she said. “That makes it clear, unbiased, and evidence-based.”

Equally important is transparency. “Explainable decisions are even more important in the age of AI,” Gates said. “If your decision is explainable then you are covered. You don’t want to mislead candidates. Make sure expectations are clear on what you are looking for from the beginning.”

Rethinking Assessments Timing

Beyond interviews, organizations are reexamining when and how they assess candidates.

“We work with both employee selection and development, but our assessments are typically used later in the hiring process,” said Ryne Sherman, chief science officer at Hogan Assessment Systems in Tulsa, Okla. “It could be better to assess earlier, because using resumes as a first hurdle leads to passing people on who maybe shouldn’t be passed on.”

Earlier assessments can improve both validity and fairness. “We know you can increase the validity of your candidate pipeline if you start the assessment process earlier,” Sherman said. “It is also fairer to the candidate pool, creating a level playing field and an objective way to evaluate who really has the interpersonal skills needed to succeed in the role.”

Sherman also emphasized the importance of evaluating those human skills — areas where resumes offer limited insight. “Personality assessments test for leadership capabilities — whether someone is conscientious, detail oriented, or visionary. It doesn’t matter what they wrote on their resume.”

Designing Roles for Real-World Performance

Ultimately, addressing skillfishing requires a shift in how organizations design roles around clear outcomes and measurable performance criteria. Instead of hiring based on credentials or perceived potential, organizations must assess whether candidates can deliver specific results in their unique environment.

It also means possibly integrating more rigorous validation methods such as work simulations, skill demonstrations, live problem-solving exercises, and portfolio reviews.

But Erickson cautioned against overcorrecting with burdensome hiring practices which she characterized as security blankets — extra investments of time and money that could be saved if the interview process was set up the right way from the start. The goal is not to create more hurdles to trip people up but focus instead on surfacing real capability, she said.