Job hunting can be stressful, time consuming and difficult as a process. More so, you can lose money in the process due to fake job adverts, fake interviews and fake offers. Due to advancements in the digital space, there has been a rising risk of fake job advertising and offers.
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Good News – Should you jump with excitement?
You have received an email for an interview or a straight a job offer. Or you have just seen a good job advert, scholarship advert or hiring advert.
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Wait a minute!
Before you joyously jump to applying, responding or sharing with friends there are probably things you need to do to verify the credibility of the information. Might turn out to be a fake job.
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Many have fallen to this, many are falling and to a certain degree of certainty many will fall into this. Hence there is need to deal with this monster once and for all to help people out there not to lose their precious money and time to job scamming.
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The boring part of life is that a desperate soul can almost be duped by almost anything. When you desperately need something you will do everything to the last for you to get what you need, and might get conned along the path of desperation.
Pure excitement without proper due diligence can act as a huge loophole for scammers to step in – the very scammers create the excitement through fake job offers in order to milk your money.
They know what you are lacking or what you want and they just present you your ‘dream’ and wait for you to dance according to their plans, and disappear with your hard earned money + precious time.
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Therefore, it is always good to remember that in life you do not need to be too desperate, but rather walk with your head up and mind ready to think and make decisions. Always do your due diligence properly to avoid participating in fake job processes.
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Job scammers are there
It’s true that a job offer can change your life remarkably, but again a fake job offer can change your life too, in the negative direction if you are baited. So watch out! Probably the rule of thumb is that you always have to remember that “If it sounds too good to be true then it is probably not true”.
When you see yourself being invited to sign a lucrative job offer of a job that you have not applied for, then it is clear that it is a fake job. Some scammers basically target your information such as email and bank account details in order to scam you more from different perspectives.
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Scammers probably know you very well
It is vital to know that job scammers do a research of the person or group of people they are targeting for a fake job. In some cases they research key information about you and give you the rightful job offer or job interview in such a way that you might think you mistakenly applied for it.
Scammers also know what you are searching for at a particular time, hence they curate the invite or offer to exactly what you are looking for. They probably know your current employment status, salary range and benefits in such a way that they will give you something you feel compelled to take in the spirit of upgrading yourself.
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If it is an offer that is out of your country, scammers will pledge to offer transport, flight and any other requirements for you to be at the place of work. Some scammers actually connive with internal personnel of companies in order to get more information about the company and make their process and documentation seem legit.
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What scammers need is money so they will find a very creative way of making you pay for example by saying you need to deposit some amount of money to show your commitment since the company is going to process many documents for you.
Or they can simply say there is need for document fee which you will get reimbursed when you resume work. Scammers can use different payment methods for the fake job including mobile money transfers if in the same country or Western Union if in different countries.
Dangers of participating in fake job adverts, interviews or hiring processes
- You may lose money
- You may lose time preparing for the fake interviews and documentation
- You may share the opportunity with family and friends and end up affecting many people
- You may be a victim of trafficking
- You might work and not get paid
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Quick verification methods for fake job adverts, interviews or hiring processes
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Apart from usual suspicion described above, the following are quick ways of identifying a fake job advert, interview invite or hiring process:
- Asking for money, be it to process documents, any form of deposit or some creative ways of asking for money. Some scammers even ask for money upfront
- The offer sounds too good to be true. For example a huge salary + benefits for an entry level position. This is to make sure that you won’t deny it
- Getting an immediate job offer. This involves being offered a job offer without going through an interview and not knowing the person or organization offering this
- Use of non-professional emails. For example all the conversations are done with Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail emails. Usually companies use their professional emails for hiring processes
- No use of letter heads and clear information and address in the documents shared
- Different contacts and/or address information between documents shared and those of the person you are dealing with. Key differences in this case are usually email domains. In some cases they use suspicious domains where they just change one letter away from the domain of a known company to trick people
- Too much spelling and grammatical errors in the text or email attachment. Many scammers are not smart in documentation but are just smart in tricking people and personification. Therefore if they decide to write an email or attachment themselves, there is a good chance that it will have many errors as this is usually done with a rushed goal of getting money
- Being pushed to make a key decision such as signing a job offer within a short period of time
- No digital footprint for the company and/or people whom you are communicating with for the offer. Nowadays companies and professional people have professional websites and emails, Linkedin accounts and other digital sites where you can easily get their information. Normally your online research about the person or company comes up empty. But be aware that some scammers have digital footprint to scam you even more
- Vague job requirements and description
- You get asked for personal and confidential information such as bank details at the early stage of interview or a ‘from-nowhere’ job offer
- Get promised that you will get wealthy quickly due to the job
- The work schedule for the job seems too flexible to be true. For example being told that you will work only two days per week but still be paid an extremely high salary as if you are working normally
- Too much use of texts and chats for formal processes of the interview or offer
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Bonus Tips!
After all has been said about fake jobs – always remember to ask your mentors or senior guys if you suspect something to be a fake job, interview invite or mysterious scholarship offer. They probably know such things or they can use their experience and common knowledge to depict the non-flowing part of the fake deal. Or they have been there and later discovered such scams.
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Keep a track of all the jobs you applied for such that when an unsolicited job offer comes you will realize. Headhunters usually come in a professional way and are for highly skilled professions.
Search for the person and company’s digital presence on google, Linkedin, GlassDoor and other sites. It it is a company just go an extra mile to search for their online reviews.
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Put the suspect email text or information as it is in Google search and see if this is not linking you to someone describing or alerting that scam. There are forums people discuss and alert others about these scams so you might be lucky someone has been scammed with the same job offer and is sharing and alerting others. The other quick way is to just copy just the email address and put it in Google search or add the word scam after it in Google search – you will probably see a lot.
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Keep checking this space we will be taking this article forward by giving some real life examples of fake job offers, interviews and hiring processes.
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