Fake Job Offers! Steps to Protect Yourself From Recruitment Scammers.

Employment arena is a favorite hunting ground of scammers. They use Emails, Text Messages, Classified Ads, Phone Calls  and Social Media to reach potential jobseekers with their cleverly designed scam messages. The focus is on luring victims into paying money in one name or the other, by making them believe that the offer has come from a well known company.

The bogus employment offers can be for local or foreign jobs. The victims are informed that they are “selected” based on their profile in some job site. Or sometimes are “selected” out of the blue!  

Emails

You would find job offer mails with multiple job profiles, with the scammers expecting the potential victim to fit into one of those categories!  

You may receive bogus job offers from an array of companies! IBM, Oracle, Shell, Hilton Hotel, United Health Care etc.   The scammers  create fake mail ids and even bogus websites  (phishing sites) resembling the company its pretending to be.

Job seekers should appreciate the fact that a genuine firm will proceed to recruit only after thorough evaluation of candidate. An employment offer will not land in your inbox, unsolicited.

Bogus emails offering employment can be easily identified  by observing the email to which reply is to be sent.    The email ID should be the official mail Id of the company and the string after @ in the email id, should be the name string in the website URL of the company.     

For example  a mail from the Hilton Hotel should read @hilton.com      NOT  hilton@live.com

Text Messages

Text messages ask the user to call back the fraudster who pretends to be the Recruitment Manager of a widely known company. Text messages may have website links (phishing pages) or a link to download bogus offer letter.  The victims are told to pay  certain fees, security deposit or refundable deposit which the scammer receives by Moneygram,  Western Union etc

Classified Ads

Free Classified websites like Craigslist, Backpage, Gumtree, Olx etc are haven for job scammers. Employment seekers are lured by attractive offers which eventually turn out to be a bad dream!

Phone Calls

Scam artists carry out elaborate hoax by calling gullible job seekers and traps them into paying money

Social Media

Social media sites including Facebook & Linkedin are thickly populated by bogus recruiters. They identify and contact potential victims and send  them fake private messages offering employment.  

Steps to Protect Yourself  From Job Recruitment Scammers

• Ignore unsolicited employment offers received by email, SMS or phone call
• 90% of  job ads in Free Classified portal are bogus. Stay away!
• No legitimate employer asks you for money
• If employment offer is from a free email address like Gmail, Yahoo, Live, Outlook etc, set it aside as scam
• Real companies will send job offers only from their website domain
• Real companies will never use mobile numbers in their communications.
• If “employer” has short listed you without directly verifying your credentials, it has to be a scam
• 99.99% of  “Work at Home” offers are bogus designed only to cheat you out of money
• Do not call or mail the so called “employers” to investigate using the contact detail they have provided. You would be talking to scammer himself!    Research the employer name on the internet, contact them directly and you would find they had never sent any offers to you. 
• Refuse to pay money in advance to employment-service firms 
• Be aware that job scammers could be looking to steal your identity by trapping you into sending personal data, photographs etc. 
• Do not take risk! Avoid like plague offers of part time work from home, form processing, ad clicking, data entry, MLM schemes, Money Mule, Stuffing Envelops etc
• Check the background of the employer or employment agency on the internet as well as with the  local consumer protection agency, state Attorney General’s Office and the Better Business Bureau

If you come across  Job Recruitment Scams with phone number to call, report details at: http://www.scamcallfighters.com/