Job website scams are hard to see if you haven’t heard of them before.
Job website scams and what to look out for
While applying for jobs online may seem like quite an easy and harmless thing to do, it is worth mentioning and issuing a tiny warning that some of these job adverts may be a spider’s web into which you may fly. Let’s find out about a few of the common types of job website scams, how to identify them and naturally avoid getting involved.
Fax number only
Sometimes you may come across an online job advert that only stipulates a fax number. This is suspicious, because most recruiters and companies do not accept fax applications any longer – only digital (or occasionally hardcopy) versions. Also, even if they did accept faxes, they would include an email address and perhaps phone number.
Usually, sending even one page to the fax number carries a large cost of up to $2. You incur huge costs and the scammers are anonymously reaping the benefits.
Pay for the next step
Online scams mostly get an emotional involvement and turn that into a payment. Think of all the love scams on dating websites, for example. What job website scams in this vein contain is a normal-looking position, which one applies to and then gets shortlisted for (on a call or email). Thereafter sometimes even a short telephonic interview occurs, after which you receive an offer (!).
Excited, you are asked for a sum of money for courier costs to send the employment contract to you, which you pay. The contract never arrives. No-one you dealt with is available. Hundreds of job seekers fall for the same ploy and the scammers leave with large sums of cash.
Give us your details
As with the payment scam above, you see a great role from a well-known employer. You are swiftly taken through a short interview and offer process, however this time you have to fill in all kinds of documents to do a credit check, criminal check, etc (as is normal in many recruitment processes). You wait for the employment contract, which of course never comes, or sometimes it does, because all they still need from you is a copy of your signature.
Your cellphone number, bank cards, etc stop working. You can imagine the rest of this story. As a recruitment expert, I often used to be amazed at the level of detail on some people’s CVs – if I were a scammer I would have been able to phone their cellphone provider right away and do a SIM-swop.
Everything on the website is fake
Most job website scams have something in them that just doesn’t feel right. Extremely high salaries, no experience needed, no contact details, addressed from a free email service address, getting offered too quickly. But in some cases, the entire website is simply filled with fake job advertisements and the scammers are simply looking for Internet traffic to get clicks on their advertisements (to earn advertising revenue).
Remember that you may never be charged for recruitment services (this is also a requirement to register with one authority called APSO). You should also be vigilant as a job seeker – not being able to interact with someone properly, often indicates that it is a fake job advertisement and a scam.
Once you have simply heard of each of these job website scams, the chance you are going to fall for them is quite low. Share them with your friends and other job seekers.
