A source of income is a prerequisite to sustain a family or livelihood. There is no dearth of job seekers as young adults continuously enter the workforce. Bagging the first job after graduation or a downsizing is challenging. The scramble by anxious job aspirants for limited opportunities is actively exploited by fraudsters posing as company officials or job consultants. Fraudsters target unsuspecting job aspirants looking for lucrative jobs overseas or jobs which offer greater job security, such as with the Government. Job scams affect companies or sectors with large scale recruitment such as banks, Information Technologies, Call Centers, Retail and Government.
The modus operandi of the scam runs deep from first contact, to fake interviews, fake training, and finally a fake offer letter. Along the way a sum of money is taken on one or more pretexts. The fraudster gets in touch, when a prospective job seeker responds to spam emails or a fake job advertisement. Once the job seeker, makes contact the fraudsters pose as company officials or job consultants using fake ids and spoofed letter heads. The documents appear legitimate and may include a job description, salary, and benefit details. During the entire process personal data such as identity verification, certificates, past employment letters and bank statements are sought allegedly to process the job offer and obtain visas. The jobseeker finds out about the scam only when they turn up at the company premises on the joining date or they fail to receive a joining intimation. By then the fraudster is long gone. The job seekers only resort is to intimate the company and file a complaint with the cyber police to try and recover the amount. For the police, acting on several such minor complaints is a tedious task, and the prospective employer rarely can pursue any investigation on its own as the company is not party to the fraud. The net effect is that scammer makes money and the scammed job aspirant bears the loss.
The only way to stay safe is to avoid the scam in the first place, by recognizing red flags which help smell a rat in the process.
Listed below are six such flags for job recruitment scams:
1. Recognize a jobseeker’s vulnerability: A pressing need for a stable job is the precise vulnerability fraudsters exploit in job recruitment scams. The desire to not lose a good opportunity lowers the victim’s guards and is used by fraudsters to create a sense of urgency to force victims to make quick decisions without adequate research or consultation. It vital to realize that frauds are played on multiple people using a well-oiled template designed to win trust. It’s a big business and the victim is not a random target. For many, so pressing is the need for a good job, that even if warned that the job opportunity probably was a fraud, the advice would be a brushed off with the self-assurance that a response to an email would not hurt. In effect, it the step that sets the fraud rolling.
2. Verify, Verify and Verify Again: Before you respond to the email, there are vital clues in the initial correspondence to verify its authenticity.
a. Source of the email or job posting: Check if the email was from the company or a reputed job portal? To do so, match the received email domain (@thecompany.com) with the email domain from the portal or company. if it’s the same, then the mail is probably genuine, if not a misspelled email id is a sure sign that it’s a phishing site set-up for a recruitment scam. If the email comes from an unidentified source either because the consultant was not known or the client wants to keep the job confidential, a website search helps to verify the consultants background and reputation. Studying the site would probably give you an insight into how reliable the company is.
b. Check if the job exists: In some cases, it’s easy to check if the job you are applying for exists. Some companies especially the Government advertises all their vacancies on their website.
c. Check for the company’s recruitment procedure: The career pages of the company website often explains the recruitment procedure. Most companies which are targets for recruitment scams have a warning put up on their website. If the procedure you are asked to follow deviates from the one on the website, you know it’s a scam.
d. Confirm Recruiter email address: Confirm if the recruiter has a genuine company email id which would be @thecompany.com, where “the company” is the prospective employer. If not, it’s probably a scam.
3. Never pay for a job: A request for payment for training or visa processing or any other services is a sure shot red flag that the job is fictious. Many a time the ask for money is repetitive – small amounts for application, training, uniform, and the appointment letter. Most companies clearly state on their website that they do not request payment for selection. One could confirm directly with the company if they request payment for any step in their selection process before a payment is made.
4. Review what documents are requested: There are types of document that are not usually requested during the interview process. These include bank statement, tax documents, credit card details and other financial statements.
5. No job without interview: Every job selection process will have an interview whether offline or online. If the job does not have an interview, then it’s probably fake or there is something illegal in the offer process. if called for an interview, the id tags, interview location, and questions you ask may give provide a sense of the genuineness of the process.
6. Verify the offer letter: Try to check if the offer letter is genuine. Some companies offer the facility of verifying the offer letter online on their career portal, using information provided in the letter. Other clues to fake offer letters are receiving offer letters on WhatsApp or any social networking sites and poor grammar. Offer letters from large companies are normally very well written and grammatically correct and sent from official company email ids.
Picking up these Red Flags may help prevent you from losing money, time, and personal information while in search of a job. Don’t shy away from asking questions!
Stay smart, Stay Safe.
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