How Swoon Caught 70 Fraudulent Candidates in 3 Months and "Won in Rooms" They Couldn't Before

Within 3 months of deploying Ropes:

• 200+ candidates assessed across high-level IT and development roles
• 70 fraudulent candidates identified and removed from the pipeline
• 21%+ increase in interview-to-hire ratio
• Fortune 10 client conversations unlocked using Ropes as a differentiator
• Ropes validated head-to-head against a leading Bay Area tech company's own internal technical assessment
• Recruiter adoption swift -- Ropes now embedded as a first-round interview replacement

"Reliance on human beings is wonderful in its ideal state. However, it leaves a lot of room for error -- at a time when room for error is the difference between deals and no deals." -- Jenny Davis, SVP Enterprise Accounts, Swoon

About Swoon

Swoon is a North American-focused, women-owned staffing and solutions firm headquartered in Chicago, specializing in creative, technical, and digital talent. With a focus on high-demand, highly technical skill sets, Swoon serves enterprise clients across North America -- operating not as a vendor focused on staff augmentation, but as a solutions-oriented partner invested in client outcomes.

The Challenge: Discovering Fraud at the Last Moment

Before Ropes, Swoon operated the way most firms in their space did. Recruiters leaned on human judgment -- second-round screens, manager vetting, additional conversations -- to determine whether candidates were qualified and legitimate. The problem: fraud wasn't being caught at the front of the process. It was being caught at the end.

"We were waiting until the last moment to uncover and learn if and when candidates were, in fact, not who they said they were," says Jenny Davis, SVP of Enterprise Accounts at Swoon.

For Swoon's enterprise client base -- including Fortune 10 companies with line-level managers spending hours every week screening candidates -- that lag had real consequences. A 15-minute phone screen was no longer enough. Managers were burning hours on candidates who would never make it through the front door. And every wasted interview was a crack in the relationship.

"What is unrealized by many running contingent labor is how much time is spent by a manager -- not just vetting out fraudulent candidates, but screening candidates for capability and acumen," says Davis. "The market was ripe for something different. It was asking for this."

The transition to Ropes wasn't just a process upgrade. It was a strategic necessity for a firm pushing into deeper partnership work with enterprise clients -- accounts where the margin for error was zero and the bar for credibility was high.

The Solution: Assessment as a First-Round Interview

Swoon deployed Ropes across their high-level IT and development recruiting, building a process where assessments weren't an afterthought -- they were the first real filter.

Sara Riggs, SVP and Head of Recruiting at Swoon, describes how the workflow evolved. Recruiters conduct initial conversations with candidates, then bring Ropes in to validate the skills candidates claim to have. Assessments are built in collaboration with the sales team and calibrated directly with hiring managers so everyone is aligned on what's being tested. Results go straight to the client.

"Our clients can watch the video, see the scores from the assessment, and that can really take the place of a first-round interview," says Riggs. "Which therefore accelerates the entire interview process."

The initial concern -- that adding an assessment step would slow things down or frustrate candidates -- didn't materialize. "I was nervous that candidates would say, 'Oh my gosh, it's another step in the process,'" says Riggs. "But that really hasn't been the case. They look forward to showing what they're able to do. They think the tests are a bit fun. They're curious to see how they score and are very anxious to hear the results."

On the sales side, Ropes gave Swoon's enterprise team something they hadn't had before: a credibility layer in the highest-stakes rooms. Jenny Davis describes walking into a meeting with one of the most talked-about tech companies in the world -- a Bay Area client with PhD-level managers and PhD-level developer expectations -- and putting Ropes to the test.

"They sort of second-guessed us," says Davis. "They had their own technical team run an assessment side by side. And Ropes stood up. The note I got back was, 'Wow. Yeah, the assessment said the same thing. Great. We can use this moving forward.'"

That moment changed how Swoon's team carries Ropes into every room. "It gave me and our team the confidence to continue talking about Ropes everywhere," says Davis. "Because it stood up in that room."

Results: 70 Fraudulent Candidates Stopped. 21% Higher Placement Rates.

The numbers from Swoon's first 3 months with Ropes are stark.

Of 200+ candidates assessed, 70 were flagged as fraudulent. That's more than 1 in 3 -- candidates who, under the old process, would have continued moving through Swoon's pipeline and potentially reached clients. The reputational exposure that represents is significant.

"We have been able to not move forward with those candidates," says Riggs. "We've eliminated risk. It has allowed us to not put forward fraudulent candidates to our customers."

And for the candidates who passed: quality went up, volume went down, and interview-to-hire ratios improved by over 21%. Clients aren't reviewing stacks of resumes anymore. They're reviewing a short list of candidates who have already been assessed, scored, and validated.

"We might not be sending as many candidates to our customers, but we're sending higher quality candidates," says Riggs. "From the customer's side, they are happy not to have to look through so many different resumes or talk to so many different candidates."

Recruiter adoption followed quickly. A few early adopters on the team dove in, saw results, and others followed. "When you see the successful ones do it, you do it too," says Davis. "Adoption has been very swift."

Looking Ahead

Swoon is already using Ropes to scale with some of the most demanding clients in the market -- accounts that, as Davis puts it, "bleed edge in everything." The ambition is clear: continue co-designing with Ropes to build a vetting process that can keep pace with clients who operate at the frontier.

"Without Ropes, we would not be able to scale with them," says Davis. "On our gut and trust alone, we cannot build what they need. We need a third-party partner like Ropes to help validate what we're saying and validate the work we do -- and even to enter the room."

For a firm moving decisively from vendor to strategic partner, that validation layer isn't a feature. It's the foundation.