A quick guide to preventing yourself from fraudulent recruiters.

With increased virtual interactions and digital transformation leading the way, there has also been a significant increase in job frauds.

Today, employees join the workplace, get inducted, and even deliver work in an absolute remote and distributed work environment. While this has enabled organizations to scale up rapidly, it has also accelerated avenues for recruitment frauds. Job seekers need to be vigilant and not fall into the trap of fraudsters.

As a responsible organization, we do try and create awareness about employment fraud. Generally, these are in the form of fake & fraudulent recruitment communications/ job offers circulated on fake letterheads of the company or emails from domain names posing to the Impetus Group.

Impetus never demands or accepts money or arrives at any monetary arrangement in return for a job. We urge people to be cautious and not fall for fraudsters.

What is recruitment fraud?

Although there are many types of recruitment fraud, in essence, it is when someone advertises a job listing that is not genuine to collect an applicant’s personal data or request money illegally. Fraudsters may use a range of communications to do this including, email, fake websites, or job posts.

Avoiding recruitment fraud

The goal of the fraudsters is generally to gain access to either personal information or money. To encourage applicants to divulge personal information, fraudsters will ask applicants to share information including:

Passport / ID numbers

Bank details

A direct money request

Mostly, the reasons given by fraudsters are:

·        To pay for training materials

·        To set up a company account/ check

·        Pay for travel to an interview/ job location.

·        Pay for visa-processing fees for foreign relocation's/ insurance.

Validating authenticity

To refrain from falling victim to fraud, there are some simple steps that you can follow:

·        Research the company thoroughly

Search online, check the company’s credentials, and whether it is registered with an industry body. Check online forums to see if anyone has experience of dealing with the company or has had similar job offers.

·        Be wary of providing any personal or sensitive information. 

Reputed companies will not ask for this information upfront. 

·        Never pay over money to a recruitment agent 

If money is asked, they are for sure not legitimate.

·        Be wary of any job ads/emails riddled with spelling and grammar mistakes.

This is a sign that the communication is fraudulent.

·        Check the domain name of the company website/ email address. 

If the offer comes from a generic address like Gmail or Yahoo, it is most likely not a legitimate source. Additionally, check if the spelling of the company is accurate. At times fraudsters interchange few letters so that it becomes difficult to decipher if it is incorrect organization name.

·        It is unlikely that a company will hire anyone without a rigorous recruitment process.

Any company that is supposedly prepared to hire you immediately without following a set application process is not likely to be genuine.

 Conclusion

These fraudsters can survive and expand their operations more rapidly because of the desperation of the job seeker to land a job and easy availability of your details as an employable candidate on the internet.

Although it can be time-consuming, it is essential to gather as much information as possible to make an informed decision about whether a job offer is real. Remember, if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is a fraud!

If you are a victim of such fraud, do not hesitate to report. Write to us at [email protected] and we will be happy to respond to you and tell you whether it is genuine or not. If it is a fraud, you should report it to cyber cell /police authorities so that fraudsters can be dealt with by law and do not reach out to more people to cheat them.