Your technical bar isn't broken. It's being bypassed.
AI tools, remote assistance, proxy candidates. There's an entire ecosystem designed to get unqualified engineers through your interview process. You won't see it on screen share. You'll see it in Slack three months later.
Can someone help the new hire with the database migration? They've been stuck since yesterday.
I helped them with this exact thing on Monday
Same. And Tuesday. And Wednesday.
How did they pass the technical screen?
🔥💯5Screen share creates the illusion of oversight.
Your candidate shares their screen. You watch them code. You see their IDE, their browser, their terminal. It feels like you're seeing everything.
You're not. Screen share only captures what the candidate chooses to show you. Anything running in an invisible window, on a second monitor, or outside the shared application is completely hidden.
The technical interview was designed before AI cheating tools existed. Now there's an entire ecosystem built to exploit that design.
Three ways your technical bar is being bypassed.
These aren't edge cases. They're documented strategies with dedicated tools, tutorials, and online communities teaching people how to beat technical interviews.
The invisible overlay
A new category of tools has emerged specifically for technical interviews. They work by creating windows that are invisible to screen capture. You share your screen, but these windows don't appear.
These tools listen to your meeting audio and read what's on screen. The moment you ask a question, the AI generates an answer automatically. For system design, it provides architecture approaches. For coding problems, it writes working solutions with edge case handling. For behavioral questions, it crafts STAR-format responses in real-time. The candidate just reads along.
From your perspective, the candidate is "thinking" for a moment, then delivers a polished answer. You never see the AI window floating inches from where they're looking.
These tools explicitly market themselves as undetectable on screen share. They're right.
The remote assist
Remote desktop tools let someone else control a computer from anywhere in the world. In a technical interview, that means someone more qualified can be typing while your candidate talks.
Having remote access software installed isn't suspicious. Developers use it legitimately. But when we detect keyboard input coming from that software during your interview, it means someone else is typing for your candidate.
The person on camera handles the conversation. The person you can't see writes the code. The handoff is seamless. The candidate passes. The person who actually has the skills never shows up for work.
The clean room
Virtual machines create a computer inside a computer. The candidate runs your interview inside a clean virtual environment with nothing suspicious visible. Meanwhile, on their actual desktop, they have AI tools, notes, reference materials, anything they want.
You see a pristine development environment. They see their entire cheating setup. When they need an answer, they glance at their real screen, then type it into the virtual one you're watching.
Some go further: they run the interview on a separate physical machine entirely, using the main computer just for assistance. Screen share captures one reality. The actual interview happens in another.
These methods are well-documented in forums, YouTube tutorials, and paid coaching services. The technical interview process hasn't adapted. Screen share still can't see any of it.
Learn more about AI cheating detectionSame interview. Two very different views.
A senior engineer technical screen. The candidate is using an AI overlay tool. Here's what each side sees.
Interview begins
Candidate joins the call. Screen share looks normal.
"Design a rate limiter"
Candidate pauses briefly, appears to be thinking.
Impressive answer delivered
Token bucket algorithm with perfect edge case handling. Interviewer is impressed.
"Walk me through your last project"
Detailed, articulate response. Great communication.
Interview ends
Strong technical performance. Team moves forward with offer.
3 months later
Can't debug without AI assistance. Needs hand-holding on basic tasks. Team morale drops. Performance review fails. Termination process begins.
Interview begins
Session starts. System-level monitoring active.
"Design a rate limiter"
Candidate pauses briefly, appears to be thinking.
AI overlay detected
Invisible window launched. Hidden from screen share but visible to us.
Answer delivered
Same impressive answer. But now you know the source.
Interview ends
Full session report available with timestamps.
Decision made with evidence
AI overlay was active for 39 minutes across 4 technical questions. Clear documentation. Move to next candidate.
The interview was the easy part.
A fraudulent hire doesn't just fail to perform. They consume your team's time. Every code review becomes a teaching session. Every standup includes questions they should know the answers to. Your senior engineers become full-time mentors for someone who won't improve.
Three months in, you're rebuilding the features they shipped because the code is unmaintainable. Six months in, you're explaining to leadership why the roadmap slipped. A year in, you're still finding bugs in modules they touched.
The real cost isn't the salary. It's the engineering time, the missed deadlines, and the morale damage of watching a teammate who shouldn't be there struggle with basic tasks.
Average cost of a bad engineering hire including salary, benefits, and lost productivity
More code review cycles for underqualified engineers
Average time to identify and terminate a fraudulent hire
System-level visibility, not screen share theater.
Screen share shows you what's rendered on screen. We see what's actually running on the machine. Every process, every window (visible or not), every input source.
An AI overlay tool might hide from screen capture, but it can't hide from the operating system. Remote desktop input might look like normal typing, but we know where the keystrokes originated. A virtual machine interview might present a clean environment, but we detect that it's running inside a VM.
Candidates install InterviewGuard once. It takes under a minute. Then every interview runs through your normal process with real verification happening underneath.
Beyond screen share
We see invisible windows, hidden applications, and off-screen activity that screen share misses entirely.
Input source tracking
We distinguish between candidates typing themselves and input coming from remote access tools or automated scripts.
Environment verification
We detect virtual machines, sandboxed environments, and setups designed to hide cheating tools.
Concrete evidence
No behavioral guesses or probability scores. Actual data about what ran, when, and for how long.
Your technical bar, verified.
Stop wondering if that perfect answer was too perfect.