Beware of Predators: How to Avoid Getting Scammed While Job-Hunting

n any period where millions of people are unemployed and many are getting desperate after months of fruitless searching, applying and networking, there are always those unethical human beings who, like sharks, smell blood in the water and begin hunting for prey. There are hundreds of “job search” websites, recruiters and scam artists looking to take advantage of anxiety and gullibility to score big bucks by fleecing you and others. Here’s what I’ve found out (in some cases, the hard way) about predatory practices in this field.

• Job-search websites that charge a fee for submitting applications. What do well-known, reputable sites such as Monster, Indeed, CareerBuilder and ZipRecruiter all have in common (besides, well, being job-search websites)? They all make their money from the companies and organizations offering jobs—NOT from the job seekers who use them. These firms pay a fee to have their jobs listed and applicants screened, and some sites may offer advertising from the hiring firms and/or other interested parties in the field. Even if they offer “premium” upgraded services to applicants for a fee, they don’t prevent you from applying to most jobs they list without paying. If you sign up to a job-search site and see dozens of listings, but when you click “Apply” on one of them, instead of the actual application you see a pitch for you to buy a monthly or annual subscription or pay some other fee—and you find you cannot actually apply, or even read the full job description, without paying—watch out. One such shady site is IHireCommercialArt.com, which doesn't even allow you to see more than the title of a job listing and the name of the employer without forking over at least $1 for a "trial" period—and then charges you full price per month after the trial ends. No ethical site operator will ever charge a job-seeker to apply for a job listed on their site!
• Unknown recruiters who contact you out of the blue to offer you jobs. These are usually from companies you have never heard of, and they scrape your resume off one of the job-search websites where you’ve posted it and match it to one of the openings they’ve been hired to fill. They call up a dozen or more job-seekers a day, and like salesmen working on commission, they get paid based on the number of candidates they sign up, by their employer or by the hiring client. They may or may not be legitimate, and one or two may even actually hook you up with an interview with the hiring manager for a position. But all too often, I’ve been called or emailed by one of these people (who usually speak English with a heavy foreign accent, indicating that the firms doing this hire a lot of immigrants) and given them an agreement to represent me, only to never hear from any of them or anyone associated with the hiring firm for weeks or months on end.

If you sign up with one of these recruiters, be certain to keep after them; if you don’t hear from them within a week or so, call or email them back and ask about your application’s progress. Make sure you get their full name, the name of their company, an email address and a phone number where they can be reached. If they don’t offer you this information, get their company’s website URL from their email and their phone number from your cell phone, which should record all numbers that call you. Keep a record of these contacts in the same document where you should be keeping records of all your weekly job-search contacts (and if you aren’t, start doing so now).

And if they ask for your Social Security number, photo ID or other personal/financial information, be extra careful; avoid giving anyone the means to rob you without verification. A check with the Better Business Bureau to find out more about the recruiting firm may also help; if you don’t find them listed with the BBB, ask the recruiter for more information. And searching Google or another search engine with the name of the recruiting firm followed by “complaints” may also turn up bad reviews or filed complaints that will send up a red flag or two. And if they ask you to pay them any kind of fee, give them the brush-off and report them to the BBB and local authorities at once. Asking to interview you via text chat, on LinkedIn, Facebook or anywhere else, is also a warning sign—especially if the "interviewer" asks for any of the above information prior to actually speaking with you.

• Resume-editing services who pester you with offers to revamp your resume for a fee. These can sometimes be affiliated with job-search sites you sign up for. Even if they are legitimate and not scam operations, they may still send you several emails a week “reminding” you of their services. Be very, very careful when considering the use of such services. Research them any way you can, via search engines, the BBB or requesting information on them from your professional network, before you hand over your payment information. They may be offering no more than what you can find out yourself for free online from various job-hunting websites. And if you find they are sending you too many emails, don’t hesitate to click that “unsubscribe” link they should include at the bottom…and if offered the option, tell them exactly why you wish to unsubscribe. If you don't find such a link, delete the email or mark it as junk mail and add the sender to your block list, and report it to your Internet service provider.
• Emails from persons offering you jobs as “customer sales agents,” “mystery shoppers” or franchise opportunities. These people are usually pitching jobs with insurance or financial services companies that may or may not be aboveboard, or offering franchised business programs that usually will cost you hundreds or thousands of dollars and may not give returns as high as promised. Often they send you emails that are plain text, with no formatting or images, and poor spelling, grammar and/or syntax. The best response to these is usually a quick click on the “delete” button. Some may contain an attachment, usually a PDF or Word document; this may be an attempt to plant a virus or other malware into your system. DO NOT download it!
• Job-search websites that offer links to job listings but instead send you to other sites and give only lists of search results. These are usually much less slick-looking than reputable job sites like Monster or Indeed, and may show you a pop-up screen offering a listing for a job unrelated to the one you are actually trying to see. They make money off user clicks, the more the better, and don’t have to actually give you any help finding a job as long as you click. Avoid them if you can.

And this doesn’t even get into the usual attempts to scam people in general, job-hunting or not: phishing emails trying to get you to click a link and provide your login information, impersonating actual known companies but with suspicious origin email addresses; ransomware threats claiming to have infiltrated your computer or found incriminating materials about you online and demanding payment; and other dangers to which job-seekers out of work for a while and becoming anxious and desperate may be more vulnerable than usual. Report these to your Internet provider and the authorities when they happen, and DO NOT respond.

A little caution, a little knowledge and a little effort can go a long way in keeping you safe from people and companies who like to prey on unsuspecting, anxiety-ridden job-seekers. Are there any other scams you’ve heard about (or, God forbid, been a victim of) that other job-seekers should watch for? Please feel free to tell me about them in the comments section below. And here is a link to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's warning about job-search scams, which has more information: https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0243-job-scams. Always remember: the old Latin warning, caveat emptor ("Buyer, beware") applies to job seekers too.