The digital handshake: Introducing identity verification

3min

I remember the day I applied for my job at TestGorilla. It was nearly 4 years ago – I took a skills assessment, got shortlisted, completed a work assignment, and was then invited to interview. Not once did the team question whether I was who I said I was.

When we surveyed job seekers this year, 17% of them admitted to cheating on a skills test. Not a huge percentage, but it happens. The rise of remote work has opened up incredible global opportunities, but it’s also brought a challenge that keeps many HR managers and hiring leads worried – fraud, proxy testing, and cheating.

How do you truly know the person on the other side of the screen is who they claim to be? Are they the ones actually completing the skill assessment? Is the integrity of your hiring process – and by extension, the quality of your future team – at risk?

I'm excited to introduce TestGorilla’s new feature: Identity Verification (IDV). This feature isn’t here to put up a gate – it’s here to help hiring teams build a foundation of certainty and, most critically, ensure absolute fairness for every legitimate candidate that takes an assessment.

I’m here to walk you through it. Let’s go.

Why identity verification matters now

Recent headlines reveal that fake and fraudulent candidates are flooding tech companies with applications for open remote roles. According to research and advisory firm Gartner, 1 in 4 job candidates will be fake by 2026.

“Gen AI has blurred the line between what it is to be human and what it means to be machine,” Balasubramaniyan said. “What we’re seeing is that individuals are using these fake identities and fake faces and fake voices to secure employment, even sometimes going so far as doing a face swap with another individual who shows up for the job.” – Pindrop co-founder & CEO Vijay Balasubramaniyan.

The impact of this is twofold. For companies, the financial and time-related drain of making a mis-hire (inevitable when you’re wrong about who you’re hiring) is significant. For honest candidates who are spending time preparing for and taking tests, it’s disheartening that the role could go to someone who used a proxy tester to cheat the system. It breaks the promise of a level playing field.

Identity verification is part of the solution to this challenge. It’s a digital handshake that says, “I am who I say I am, and I’m ready for my skills to be judged fairly against peers whose identities are also verified.”

Our approach

The future of work is global and remote, and it’s already happening. But the need for trust remains local and personal. We’ve chosen to offer identity verification because it gives you that trust, and makes it a seamless part of your hiring process – and it’s not the only thing we’re doing.

IDV is just one part of TestGorilla’s Trust Layer, a bundle of built-in safeguards that adds confidence and integrity to your assessments. It combines features such as ID checks, behavior monitoring, and AI-agent blocking to ensure candidates are who they claim to be and are completing the work themselves.

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How identity verification works

We’re proud to be using Veriff, a world-class identity verification provider, to make the process as seamless as possible. It’s transparent, simple, and uses best-in-class security and privacy protocols. It involves 4 simple steps and takes less than a minute:

Upload ID: Before they take an assessment, candidates will be asked to upload a photo of a government-issued ID (like a passport, national ID, or driver’s license).
Take a live selfie: They take a quick, live selfie to capture their current appearance.
AI checks it’s a match: AI compares the selfie to the ID to check if it’s a match – this takes less than 30 seconds.
Suspicious behavior? We flag it. Candidates who fail the identity verification will not be allowed to complete an assessment.
Once verified, candidates can continue to complete their assessment. No documents are stored. Verification data is encrypted, handled securely, and never shared with employers or third parties.

Identity verification confirms every candidate is who they say they are before testing begins, so you hire faster, smarter, and fairer, with confidence in every result.

Forget about impersonators with IDV

We want to put an end to anxiety about fraud jobseekers and proxy testing for our customers, and we want candidates to know they’re on an even playing field. IDV is helping us get there. Plus plan users can access this feature as of today! Try it now or read more about the Trust Layer here.