Stealing from Job-seekers in Kenya - PAT Tests

The unemployment rate in Kenya is at its peak and it is a known fact to many job-seekers and employers alike. The numbers of those unemployed keeps rising due to the huge number of graduates produced by both middle level colleges and universities in Kenya. It is for this reason that most employees would fall for anything promising to lift them out of  poverty to join those earning a living through white-color jobs. In the past, many job-seekers would search through print media adverts for the advertised jobs that suite their qualifications. This mode of advertising has however been overtaken by electronic media platforms. Most recruitment firms post job openings through their respective websites and other electronic media platforms.

Electronic media advertising:

Electronic media advertising has grown in the past few years and many job-seekers have benefited from it owing to easy accessibility and simplified application process. Job-seekers no longer need to print their resumes and academic credentials before sending them through post. The online application process involves just uploading documents online and sending through email or through inbuilt online resume construction platforms.

Many companies in the developed world and also in Kenya have embraced electronic media especially social media advertising for job openings besides promoting their products. Electronic media has therefore become a meeting place for job-seekers and employers. Any kind of development that benefits society comes with its own challenges. Electronic media has indeed revolutionized the recruitment process in Kenya, Africa and the developed world.  Electronic media is awash with all kinds of job advertisements. It has now become the responsibility of the job-seekers to sift through thousands of job advertisements and select their preferred positions on offer.

Bogus online vacancies:

In as much as many jobs out there are genuine, there are also a number of job postings that are not genuine. The banking sector in Kenya has suffered from online fraudulent transactions despite the investment they have put to prevent such occurrences. In the same manner, job-seekers too who are - in fact- more gullible have suffered from online fraudsters.

The process of defrauding the unsuspecting job-seekers has advanced at the same pace with technological development and uptake of electronic-driven recruitment process in Kenya. The fraudsters have become meticulous in their actions to an extent that it becomes difficult for the unsuspecting job-seekers to notice until they have lost money in the process.

Questionable Psychometric Analysis Tests:

One notable instance is where the fraudsters begin by developing a sophisticated, responsive website of an international non-governmental organization which is setting base in Kenya. They then place vacancies for several positions on their website and also through other recruitment agencies’ sites. The websites they build look genuine with registered domains and hosted locally or abroad. The job advertisements posted give clear instructions on where to send the job applications, and usually they provide genuine email addresses. The gullible job-seekers will as usual send their applications. In the next stage, these recruitment companies write to job-seekers who applied for the jobs informing them that they have passed the first stage of the interviews and they are required to attend the second phase of the interviews. But before they are allowed to attend the second phase of the interviews, the job-seekers are required to undertake a psychometric analysis test (PAT).

Financial Loss: 

These companies usually provide at least one company that undertakes an internationally recognized psychometric analysis test and they encourage the candidates to choose any of those firms. The PAT test will be offered at a cost which varies from 50 dollars to 100 dollars depending on the firm that offers. Once the job-seeker does the test and issued with a certificate, they obediently send a copy of the certificates to these recruitment firms/companies as requested. A few weeks or months after these companies receive the PAT results, the websites are closed and seize to exist. It is at this point that many job-seekers have realized that they have been unsuspectingly been lured to do a PAT test that will not help them in any way. The same fraudsters would later open new websites with different domain names and start the same process again. Quite a number of job-seeker have complained of being duped to undertake a PAT test only to find the firms purporting to request for these tests non-existent. The unanswered question in many job-seekers minds will then be, is it the companies that offer PAT tests in Kenya that are sponsoring this scam online in order to redirect traffic of the gullible job-seekers to do PAT tests so that they benefit financially or are they working in cahoots with online fraudsters?

Other forms of online fraud have been reported and many more sophisticated ways are emerging with increased uptake of electronic-driven recruitment processes in the Kenyan market. Many job-seekers have lost financial and intellectual resources in this manner. In this age of globalization, technology is imperious in social, economic and political interaction. Job-seekers, employers and social media users need to interrogate their actions before they commit to execute online transactions be it in the recruitment process or e-commerce.