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5 tips to avoid recruitment scams

Posted by Jonathan Meyrick, 4 months ago

2 min read

From catfishes to phishing emails, scams are an unfortunate fact of online life. And regrettably, we’ve seen an uptick recently in scammers targeting people using fake jobs. That includes by pretending to be legitimate companies to trick people into handing over their data, send money, or even apply for loans where the scammer makes off with the funds.

With criminals’ tactics getting more sophisticated, we wanted to share five tips that will help you avoid being taken advantage of.

Don’t pay to work or share financial information

Let’s start with the big one. A reputable company won’t ask you to pay money in order to secure a job.

And while a company will need your financial details eventually – after all, they’ll be paying your salary into your bank account – they won’t need it as part of a job application. Don’t hand over your sensitive details before you start working for a company.

Check email addresses and domain names

Most scams involve someone either being contacted by email, or directed to a website to enter details. Always check the email or web domain. Does it match the company’s official website? Or does it use a generic email like gmail or yahoo? Or perhaps it’s a misspelled version or variation of the company’s actual domain? All are signs that you should be on alert before you go any further.

Search for the company’s official sites

Let’s say someone’s reached out to ask you to apply for a job at a well known professional services company. It could be real, but it could also be a scam.

Search for the company’s official site. Their recruitment site – or dedicated pages on their corporate site – should come near the top of search results if you search ‘[company name] careers’. If it’s a real job which the company is hiring for, it’s likely to be listed there. Do the details on the official listing match the ones you’ve been given? Is the reference number the same?

If you’re not sure, look for a way to contact the company directly, and check with them.

Look into the recruiter

If someone claiming to be a recruiter gets in touch with you, LinkedIn is your friend. Look them up. Do they have a profile? If they do, does it look like it’s a real profile, or a fake that’s been thrown up quickly?

Recruiters trade on their reputations and their network of connections. So look to see if they’re connected to lots of people, or only a few. Does it look like they work where they say they work? Do they have a work history with detail about their career? Do they have endorsements from their connections? Do they actively post, maybe including photos and video?

None of these things are impossible to fake. But making a realistic recruiter profile is a lot of effort for a relatively small detail. So it could help steer you in the right direction as part of the bigger picture.

Expect a proper recruitment process

If someone gets in touch to offer you a job with no recruitment process, there’s a good chance it’s too good to be true. But a scam might also involve taking you through elements of a recruitment process to get your guard down.

Expect to make a formal application with a relevant level of detail. Applications which ask for what seems like more detail than needed to assess you for a job could be a red flag. Especially those financial details we covered earlier. And expect a professionally run interview, with questions which explore your experience and your ability to do the job.

And lastly, think about how quickly the whole process is moving. Sometimes a company might want to move at pace, but pushing you to make quick decisions without the time to really think about them is a classic scammer’s tactic.

And one more tip? Apply through a company’s official jobs listings.

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