If fraud was committed, the right answer would be to sue the applicant in small claims court for the cost of the ticket. Canceling their flight was just a petty move.

The "right answer" would have been to simply reject the candidate if they didn't meet expectations for position and, if the fraud was truly egregious (and not just a guy trying to get a foot in the door for face-to-face), blacklist them within company from further consideration in the future.

edit: eh, nevermind

What protocol? How would that work?

Personally, I would not have cancelled the flight under any circumstances. Whatever prompted that action is probably a good indicator that having the candidate far away is a good idea. As opposed to keeping them local and angry.

I'd take it as a lesson learned to shore up screening before flying anyone in.

> I'd take it as a lesson learned to shore up screening before flying anyone in.

Yep. Whoever made the decision to fly them out in the first place is now going to live with that on their track record, and rightfully be questioned whenever they want to spend money on a candidate: "Remember the $xxxx we wasted on that other candidate? What did you do differently this time to be sure we don't repeat that situation?"

Assuming this is a company of any size, the fact it was an actual tangible expense (and not just employee time) will probably make this scrutiny come from more and/or higher places in the management chain, because now more departments are involved.

Afaik, it’s next to impossible to cancel a return ticket on the day of the flight and get a refund too. Most likely done out of spite rather than financial concerns.

Depends on the airline. I've done it with one, whose rule is/was to allow cancellations with full refunds until... IIRC 40 minutes before departure.

And I suspect that corporate buyers tend to get full-fare refundable tickets more often than tourists anyway.

ehh, I dunno about that. We (750 person company) always buy non refundable, but if we cancel, the credit can go into our company account to be used later sometimes.

So at least it's pseudo-refundable, assuming that you tend to rebook with the same airlines and end up using that credit later anyway. Which is still a small incentive to cancel someone's return flight. Although I guess this only steers the motivation away from "irrational spite" to "petty sociopathy".

If there's a shred of truth to the story, I can only see two scenarios.

1 - The hiring manager had to put in a lot of effort budget-wise to make the flying in happen and when he found out it was more of a complete failure than a rubber stamp, he had to save face.

2 - The candidate dramatically misrepresented themselves and lied to get in the door. Especially in the case of a cash limited start up, that could hurt - even more so if the story about high air fares due to location is true.

Either way, I think it's a lie, or at minimum the candidate isn't being entirely up front.

There's also a chance that the company ran out of money. Sometimes the CEO comes into work one morning and says "foo deal with bar investor broke, we have six weeks runway, cancel every expense you can."

Another important question to ask. How far of a drive was his home? I could see an employer doing this if they had told them they would pay for a ticket if the drive was over X hours away, then discovered that they lied about it. I supposed this falls under fraud as well.

Nope not even flat-out fraud could justify stranding someone in another city. Some folks are desperate to work and may resort to deception to get their foot in the door for an interview. On the scale of nefarious activity, I put that pretty far down on the list-- slightly worse than jay-walking.

I have my doubts about the veracity of the story, but if it is true then that company needs to be shamed.

I disagree -- fraud absolutely justifies this -- if an overweight dark haired guy did the initial video screen and the company flew him out for an interview, but then a skinny blonde guy shows up and can't answer any of their interview questions, I don't see why the company has any obligation to fly him back home -- they agreed to fly out the guy from the video call, not the guy that showed up.

Maybe, but it does open up the door to a lawsuit. What if the overweight guy was actually working for a recruiter who had a scam going on to get unqualified people hired. The skinny guy might not know that someone else took an interview for him because it was all a plan by the recruiter. In this instance you're punishing someone who was acting in good faith, but had the misfortune to find a corrupt recruiter.

Better would be to use the legal system to recoup your costs. This way you don't accidentally recoup your costs from an innocent individual with zero oversight.

>Better would be to use the legal system to recoup your costs. This way you don't accidentally recoup your costs from an innocent individual with zero oversight.

Or strand someone that fibbed about their experience, that then writes a suicide note (after throwing screenshots of the emails and cancellation up on their social media) claiming you stranding them in a city far from home with no money and no way home was the last straw and then commits suicide in front of your building

Or someone that comes back and sets the building on fire "with nothing left to lose".

Or waits for the person that interviewed them to walk out of the building and assaults them. Or follows them down the sidewalk and shoves them in front of a bus/trolley/train.

There's a bazillion reasons why this was a horrible idea for the company to do, if it is a true story.

Those also sound like reasons to hire everyone you interview regardless of how badly they performed, just in case they are mentally unstable enough to act out inappropriately after rejection.

I'd think that this scam would be uncovered pretty quickly:

"Why are you asking me about X? I don't know anything about it"

"You sure seemed to understand it on the phone screen"

"Phone screen? What phone screen? My recruiter gave me this plane ticket and told me to come interview on-site"

A plane ticket does need a name on it.

Then contact the TSA, but don't cancel the ticket.