How To Spot Fake Job Ads & Bad Recruiters

Indeed.com lists 24,000 jobs in your city, yet you can't land any after applying for months? It's because most of them are fake. There are quite a few "fake" levels, which I will outline for you here.

Unfortunately, job boards like Indeed, Monster, Career Builder, and even LinkedIn make millions of dollars yearly on job ads. There needs to be a more realistic and cost-effective way for them to police the job boards, and why would they want to anyway when they are making so much money?

The we-don't-want-to-get-sued fake job ads (by real companies)

The bigger the company, the more policies it will have in place and the more fearful it will be of getting sued for not following the law. Many companies post internal and external jobs because they want to give the impression that they are giving everyone a fair chance. The reality is, though, that they have already chosen the person they want for the job, and HR is just biding its time.

You may have an epiphany right now and realize why the company never contacted you, even though you were a spot-on dead match for the job.

The data mining and email phishing job ads (fake companies)

If you see a "Confidential Employer" job ad or one with an obscure company you've never heard of, it's a safe bet that you will submit your resume into a black hole and give some spammers your email address.

In short, there's no real company and no real job. Scammers are selling your email address on the "black web," and once it's out there, it could be sold to multiple spam factories.

In addition to the "Confidential Employer" red flag, the job will typically sound a little too good to be true: Work from home (or hybrid), little responsibility, a signing bonus, and, of course, a higher-than-average wage.

The recruiters' harvesting scam to land new clients

An obscene number of recruiters are out there, all fighting for commissions for placing candidates. Firms are always desperate for new clients so they can keep their lights on. One of the ways they get new clients is to post fake job ads. There are many versions of this scam, and it has much to do with how lazy the recruiter is.

OPTION 1: The recruiter will send a cold email to your LinkedIn profile and say you are "perfect" for their new role. They are so lazy, that they don't even want to have an exploratory phone interview with you first, they just ask for recommendations right out of the gate.

OPTION 2: Dishonest recruiters that have a little more discipline will at least do an exploratory 10-minute interview with you, but they are vague about the job and, conveniently, don't even have a job description to share with you ("It's in the works," they say). Ultimately, they will ask for recommendations before they even have your interview with the (non-existent) employer.

OPTION 3: The most egregious and sinister of the methods would be to have you visit the employment agency. You'll spend half your day there filling out paperwork and taking personality tests, and they will give you skills tests to see how proficient you are at typing (even though the fake job ad doesn't even call for the candidate to be able to type at a certain speed).

Essentially, you'll likely give some college interns everything they need to steal your identity, which will all be for no reason. The most crucial part is that you'll have signed a waiver that permits the agency to call your former employers to "verify former employment." The agency discreetly introduces itself to its former employer to score a new client.

If there is any bright side to this insidious method, it is that because you are officially registered with the agency and in their database, you could—in theory—get a job in the future through them. However, be advised that you will likely be called for sub-par jobs that pay much less than you are worth. In short, the recruiters are just clutching at straws.

The takeaways from fake job ads

It's bad enough that job seekers have a hard enough time getting their resumes past the ATS system, and now you have even more hurdles to cross just trying to submit yourself to a "real" job ad.

In the end, the fake job ads are all about getting information from you, whether the company is real or not. Check their reviews online if you are dealing with a real employment agency. You will usually see on Glassdoor or Yelp that they have countless bad reviews about fake job ads.

Desperate job seekers often ignore these bad reviews because they hope they score a real job, however unlikely. If you are engaged with a corporate or domestic staffing agency recruiter, be cautious about giving them your recommendation letters. Here's what you can say:

"I appreciate the opportunity to meet with you to discuss your client's open position. Just to let you know, I'm available for several other jobs, so I must be careful about my previous employer's private information. I don't want him/her to get several calls from recruiters asking about my employment. I only want them to get one call, and that's from the person who has already decided to hire me."

While saying all this, check the recruiter's body language and facial expressions. If they are legit, they will understand your position because they know what it's like to be barraged with phone calls from strangers asking about former employees.

You can end with this: "I'm willing to go through the interview process with the understanding that my former employers will only be called if I have a job offer in writing on the table with the contingency that they can verify my former employment."

You can even remind the recruiter that many companies now have a policy of only verifying former employment: start and stop dates, position held, and (sometimes) salary. They can't "recommend" a former employee, so be clear about that. If the agency is legit, they will cooperate with you and respect your position.