Employment scams have become increasingly common recently. Candidates tell us that they receive texts and emails with fake job offers and invitations to apply to roles that don’t exist. Beyond the obvious threat to your privacy and even your finances, these scams can be a source of significant stress and wasted time. Here are eight tips to protect your identity and stay focused on real job opportunities.
1. Always check LinkedIn
The easiest way to tell if an outreach is illegitimate is to look up the company. LinkedIn is a great first step. Anyone can build a website, but it is much harder for fake businesses to build a robust LinkedIn presence.
If you know the firm is real, check to make sure that the person who contacted you works at the company. Scammers frequently misrepresent where they are from.
LinkedIn offers a great way to see if the job exists. Many firms will advertise open roles on their LinkedIn page. If you don’t see anything posted, it’s time to take additional steps to verify if the job is real.
2. Visit the Company Website Directly
Looking at a company’s website can help you determine if the firm and job are real. Does it look professional? Do you spot anything suspicious? Does the site feature phone numbers with strange or incorrect area codes, a fake or unusual address, obvious typos, AI generated photos, or incorrect terminology?
3. Contact the Company Directly
No company wants scammers using their name. Don’t hesitate to reach out to a company to verify that a role is real. If a “recruiter” is using the company’s name under false pretenses, or if a scammer is using the company’s name to take advantage of prospective candidates, the company will want to know.
4. Always Interview
If a firm is trying to hire you without even speaking to you, it is almost certainly a scam. Beyond that, you should want to interview at any firm that offers you a job so that you can see if the company is a good fit for you, as we discussed in this post last year.
5. Be Wary of Sharing Personal Information
When you are getting closer to receiving an offer, you will have to provide more personal information for background checks and other purposes. Early in the process, you should not have to provide more than your resume and perhaps documents related to your education. Be careful if a recruiter or firm asks for your social security number, bank, Zelle/Venmo, credit card, or other personal information.
6. Do Not Send Payments
If the “recruiter“ requests payment from you under the guise of a “background check,” “recruiter fee,” or “management fee,” cut contact immediately. You will never have to submit payment in order to advance through a hiring process.
7. Do Not Click on Any Links
If you want to look at a company’s website or LinkedIn profile, do not click on any links provided in the questionable email or text. These may be phishing attempts rather than real links. There could even be a virus embedded in it. Visit the sites directly.
8. Respond to the Recruiter or Company with Questions or Concerns
If you are concerned about a link or document in an email, or about the company or role itself, the company will be able to address your concerns or questions. Refusal to engage, evasiveness, unusual syntax or diction, and strange or illogical explanations are red flags that signal that you are dealing with a scammer. Remember that the most successful scammers are adept at pretending to be legitimate. Receiving a response does not automatically guarantee that you are dealing with a legitimate company or recruiter. Combined, these tools should help.
