Hiring Has a Trust Problem. On Both Sides.

In September 2026, iHire released its 2026 State of Online Recruiting Report, and one theme runs through the whole thing: nobody in hiring trusts anybody right now.

On the employer side, 23.6% of employers received at least one fraudulent applicant in the past year, and 55.7% say unqualified applicants are their biggest challenge, for the fourth year running. On the candidate side, 41.2% of job seekers ran into a fake or scam job, and 57.5% say their biggest frustration is applying and never hearing back.

Put those together and you get a hiring market where both sides walk in suspicious. Employers wonder whether the person behind the resume is real and qualified. Candidates wonder whether the job is real and whether anyone will ever reply.

That's a problem you can actually fix, and the place to fix it is the first round.

Why the first round is where trust breaks

Think about what a typical first round looks like from each side.

For the employer: a stack of resumes that increasingly read the same. Many are polished by AI, some aren't honest, and you can't tell which from the page.

For the candidate: an application sent into silence. No name, no timeline, no sign that a human will ever look at it.

Both sides are guessing. The fix is to replace the guessing with evidence for the employer and signals of good faith for the candidate.

Four ways to rebuild trust in round one (whatever tool you use)

1. Ask questions a resume can't answer. "Walk me through the last time you handled an angry customer at closing time" tells you far more than a bullet point, and it's much harder to fake. Role-specific questions are the fastest honest filter there is.
2. See and hear the person early. A short recorded answer won't tell you everything, but it tells you there's a real person who can talk about the work. That's a meaningful first check at a time when fraudulent applications are becoming routine.
3. Show candidates there's a real company and a real process. Put a name on the invitation. Say what the role pays. Explain what happens after they apply and when they'll hear back. The same report found that 60.7% of job seekers won't apply without salary information. Transparency isn't a nice-to-have anymore; it's how you prove the job is real.
4. Close the loop, every time. A two-line "we've moved forward with other candidates" email costs you nothing and is what candidates remember. Silence is how a good company gets mistaken for a ghost job.

A word on AI, because candidates are watching

Here's a number every hiring team should sit with: in the same report, 44.3% of job seekers view employers' growing use of AI negatively, and only 21.8% view it positively.

Where EasyHire.me fits

I work in business development at EasyHire.me, a video interview platform, so this is the problem I spend my days on. Here's how it maps to the four points above:

• Role-specific questions in a minute. Describe the role in one line and the AI drafts a job description and about ten tailored interview questions. You edit, then send.
• Real people, on their schedule. Candidates record answers to the same questions whenever it suits them. No account needed, and a camera and mic check first so the tech doesn't trip them up.
• Evidence you can review quickly. For every interview you get a written summary that refers to what the candidate actually said, plus a job-match score and per-question navigation. You watch the answers that matter, then decide.
• A human decides. The AI prepares the evidence. Your team makes the call.

Try it on one role

If fake applicants and silent pipelines sound familiar, run your next first round differently:

Trust in hiring won't come back through one report or one tool. It comes back one well-run first round at a time.

Dana Rocha is Director of Business Development at EasyHire.me, a video interview platform for hiring teams.