Have you been the victim of a job scam?? With so many people forced to stay home, either based on their own health conditions or the circumstances of loved ones, the number of people looking for remote work has skyrocketed over the past several years. This creates opportunities for scammers to target people looking to get back into the workforce.
If you have been targeted or fell for an offer that seemed too good to be true, don’t worry, you aren’t alone! Often scammers will use tactics such as advertising impossibly high pay, describe a position that doesn’t require special skills (like envelope stuffing), falsely claim to be affiliated with a legitimate company, and may not require background information in order to secure the position. You should never have to pay to get a job, and it’s unlikely you’ll have to buy equipment either - so advertisements encouraging these two things are a red flag already!
The best ways to prevent your personal information from being stolen are, researching the job posting through other channels, learning more about the company from the Better Business Bureau, and checking for grammatical and spelling errors on the listing. If they want to conduct the interview in an unusual way that can be a red flag also. Interviewing over Telegram for example, is unlikely to result in a legit job.
If it seems like you’ve applied to a fake job, you may want to contact your bank, the Better Business Bureau, or law enforcement.
Even though there are scams out there, legitimate remote jobs are plentiful as well! By staying sharp, doing your research and monitoring the process of acquiring a position to look for any red flags, you’ll have a high chance of staying safe!
The Jobcase Avoid Job Scams Resource Center has many articles and tips that can help, just like this one! With some due diligence you could have a real work from home job in no time!
FULL DISCLOSURE: We as Jobcase Community Specialists are only sharing the latest job openings. We are not the hiring managers or recruiters, and we do not represent these companies, so apply today and contact the employer directly through these links! If the job has expired, you can follow us for other openings and more!
#Jobsearch #Workfromhome #Application #Resume #Interview #Scams
The MLM scammers have figured out ho to make the job look legitimate.
Thanks for posting this. We need to be aware of things like this.
THANK you so much I appreciate it so much
The job scam I almost fell for contacted me by text, rather than by email or phone. And when I looked up the company on LinkedIn, it was a legit company and the recruiter worked for them. The red flags were the conducting, by text, on an encrypted texting app like Wire, a thoroughly weird interview that hardly touched on the job (think "what kind of tree are you" type questions), and being hired right off the bat. While I've had jobs skip second and third interviews in their eagerness to hire me, legitimate jobs aren't going to hire you the day of a first interview. But what really alerted me to the fact it was a scam was being told that the company would send me a check with which to buy computer equipment. NO LEGIT COMPANY DOES THIS! This is a known as a fake check scam, where you deposit a fake check into your bank account and wire the cash to a "vendor" to get your equipment that will never come. If you deposit the fake check, your bank will try to prosecute you for fraud even though you are the victim. When I said that it sounded like a fake check scam, I was ghosted mid-interview. I later contacted the real recruiter for that company on LinkedIn and she assured me that I was dealing with scammers who had stolen her identity.
Scammers are getting ever more sophisticated. I just dealt with a scammer impersonating Bradley Cooper (and he was pretty convincing!) who tried to lure me into a human trafficking scam.
Passive scams that try to lure victims by job listings are actually the least pernicious. The most dangerous ones are the ones who go out of their way to target you by getting your data from job hunting sites and individualizing the approach of their scam. The guys who perpetrated the job scam knew that I was looking for work as a medical editor or proofreader, so they spoofed a real company and recruiter that I would want to work for.