How KellyMitchell Flags 1 in 4 Candidates for Fraud Before They Reach a Client

KellyMitchell’s recruiters were already some of the most careful in the industry. Ropes helped elevate the process they built.

Since deploying Ropes at KellyMitchell

• About 25% of candidates assessed were flagged for fraud in some way
• A proxy candidate located in another country was caught before placement
• High candidate acceptance on assessments that take 15 to 20 minutes
• Candidate drop-off, the team’s biggest early worry, never became a problem
• Ropes fully integrated into KellyMitchell’s ATS

“Since we’ve started using Ropes, we feel exponentially more secure in our processes.” -- Kim Paxton, Executive Vice President, KellyMitchell Group

About KellyMitchell

KellyMitchell Group is an employee-owned, women-led talent solutions firm. It started in the U.S. and now works globally, with a long specialty in technology and engineering talent. Kim Paxton has been there almost 20 years. She has led recruitment operations and delivery, and has also worked in HR and risk, talent acquisition, and training and development. Her focus today is figuring out how KellyMitchell will find, evaluate and place great talent as the world of work keeps changing.

Recruiters who were already human detectives

KellyMitchell’s recruiters have always had to dig. Tech and engineering roles attract fraud, so the team built habits early. They asked candidates about their city and where they like to eat with family. They took screenshots and selfies on video calls. They repeated those checks through the whole employment process.

“Our recruiters have always had to be human detectives when it comes to identifying fraud and evaluating skills and catching bait and switch,” says Kim. “We were early adopters of all of those unique human steps we could do. But as we all know, it hasn’t been enough.”

About three years ago, one of KellyMitchell’s enterprise clients started training its staffing partners on fraud, including North Korean actors getting hired into U.S. companies. That was well before it became a common topic. KellyMitchell learned to spot it in candidates, in payroll setup with banks, and in where remote laptops and hardware were being shipped.

“We had a pretty early preview on how sophisticated things had gotten,” says Kim. “So we became really focused on how we close these gaps.”

KellyMitchell already had a strong process. The goal was to take it further as fraud got more advanced.

Why Ropes

When KellyMitchell found Ropes, what stood out was that Ropes looked at the whole hiring process, not just one step.

Kim describes the gaps they wanted to close. Is the candidate a real person? Are they using a fake ID? Are they the same person at the interview, the same person on day one, and the same person doing the work?

Ropes fit into the process KellyMitchell already had. It added more checks without making things harder for candidates.

“Ropes was the partner that checked the most boxes,” says Kim. The team wanted to be thorough without losing good candidates along the way, and Ropes let them do both.

The moment it worked

KellyMitchell didn’t just take the demo at face value. They had a few candidates their team already suspected. Recruiters had raised red flags. HR had found mismatches between resumes, LinkedIn profiles, visa documents and onboarding paperwork. So they ran those candidates through Ropes.

“Absolutely all the flags came up,” says Kim. “We were actually able to pinpoint how that person was cheating, whether or not they were using a fake identity. We knew as humans that something was going on, but we couldn’t articulate it until we could see it on the back end of that technology.”

The results

KellyMitchell now uses Ropes across its recruiting process. About 25% of candidates who go through the platform are flagged for fraud in some way, some more severe than others.

“That’s been extremely eye-opening for our recruiters and our sales team and our clients,” says Kim.

Some of those catches were serious. Ropes flagged a candidate who was using a proxy and was actually located in another country. “Had we not used the platform, we might not have known that,” says Kim. “And it could have put our partnership at risk.”

Candidates have been on board too. KellyMitchell followed Ropes’ advice on how to position the assessment. It takes 15 to 20 minutes, and it moves a candidate up the priority list. Acceptance has been high.

“Candidate drop-off was something we were worried about in the beginning,” says Kim. “That has not proven to be a problem.”

Built to fit how recruiters work

Kim’s favorite part of Ropes is that each assessment is AI generated and built for the specific role, industry and work setting. It’s not a generic skills test, and it’s not a 60 or 90 minute exam.

That also means a proven candidate keeps their value. “We’ve been able to take that candidate and market them over and over and over again,” says Kim. “Not only can we say they’ve done a great job for us, but I can prove it to you in this really custom setting that only takes a few minutes.”

Ropes runs inside KellyMitchell’s ATS, so recruiters use it in the system they already work in. Recruiters and sales use the platform in different ways, and the Ropes team built training for each. KellyMitchell’s client partners also get free training on how to review the candidates they’re sent.

A standard the whole industry needs

Kim sees fraud as a problem no single firm can solve alone. If a client uses KellyMitchell and gets that extra layer of protection, that’s good. But if the client’s other suppliers don’t do the same, bad actors still get in.

“We need to make sure that our clients are as bought in on this as we are, and that it applies to all of the partners they’re utilizing,” says Kim. “All of us in this space need to be really dedicated to this together in order to really make an impact and change the industry.”

Remote and hybrid work aren’t going away. Clients get access to far more talent than before. Kim says that comes with an obligation to check three things. The candidate is who they say they are. They’re where they say they are. They can do the job.

“The better we are at using partners like Ropes to do those three things, the more our clients win,” says Kim.

Working with the Ropes team

From the day-to-day account manager through launch, Kim says the Ropes team has been thorough about best practices and training. The product has also changed quickly, based on feedback from KellyMitchell and other staffing firms.

“They feel like a portion of our company versus a vendor,” says Kim.

Looking ahead

For KellyMitchell, Ropes now sits alongside the checks their team has run for years. It connects the steps in one platform tied to their ATS and gives recruiters proof to back up what they see.

“Ropes has been awesome. It’s been transformational,” says Kim. “Our recruiters really enjoy using it. It gives them peace of mind, and it’s been a big success.”