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If you are looking for work, seeking a job and meaningful employment the last thing that you need is to be on a SCAM website being taken advantage of in the worst way. As promised here is part 2 of the great article written by Barbara Safani, in which she includes several links that a job seeker can use to check out a website to see if it is a scam site before you put in your valuable information.
Pass it on to everyone you know, whether they are actively looking for work or have a job- it is really important information. As I said previously this is a long article consisting of 2 posts but I can not STRESS enough its IMPORTANCE!
Neah
How can you tell if a site is a front site?
Candidates should use some common sense when using Internet job board sites and recognize that if a job board site is promising a job, claims to have all the jobs on the Internet, wants to charge the candidate, asks the candidate for personal financial information or SSN, or the opportunity sounds too good to be true, it may be a scam or a front site. The term caveat emptor, buyer beware, definitely applies in these cases.
A way to check out a site is to see whether it provides legitimate contact information. Sites that do not have a telephone number, address or contact e-mail may be suspect.
Explore the pages of the site and see if it is has real content or is it just a lot of advertising.
In order to enhance revenues, some job sites provide listings for job boards that do not have many jobs or a sales force. Feeds are provided by the aggregator sites to job boards and others. On these front sites you will frequently see words to the effect of “Jobs by XXXXX” or “Jobs powered by XXXXX.” In a similar manner, many aggregators put up hundreds if not thousands of front sites to give their copied jobs more exposure and try to increase traffic so they can charge more for advertising.
A characteristic of many online scams is the site and/or job posting has bad spelling, grammar mistakes, and awkward sentence structures. If you see this, the site should be suspect.
If there is a request to communicate at a private e-mail address outside of the company e-mail, you might be dealing with a scam. Human resource personnel normally do not use fake email addresses or e-mail addresses outside of their company e-mail.
A characteristic of many online scams is the site and/or job posting has bad spelling, grammar mistakes, and awkward sentence structures. If you see this, the site should be suspect.
If there is a request to communicate at a private e-mail address outside of the company e-mail, you might be dealing with a scam. Human resource personnel normally do not use fake email addresses or e-mail addresses outside of their company e-mail.
How can job seekers protect themselves?
1. Ask yourself if it looks legitimate. Many scam or front sites just have a site name and search boxes. If the site lacks content, you might be visiting a scam site. Browse the site to see if it has contact information, an about section or content to help candidates.
2. Guard your financial information closely. Under no circumstances should a candidate provide bank card, credit card, SSN or financial information. If a candidate is registering on a job site and posting a resume, the only information they should provide would be legitimate information needed by an employer to contact the candidate, i.e., name, address, phone number and e-mail.
3. Check to see in what country the job site is located. Some countries with a high rate of fraud sites are: Belarus, Estonia, Ghana, Hungary, Indonesia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Malaysia, Nigeria, Philippines, Romania, Russia, Singapore, Slovak Republic, Thailand, Uganda, Ukraine and Yugoslavia.
4. Check if the job site is listed in common databases. Legitimate databases include:
5. Check if complaints have been filed against the job board. Suggested sites to do this are:
Another way to ascertain whether there have been complaints filed against a site is to use an internet search engine (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc) and type the following search string: (site name) scam or complaints.
The FTC, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management and the U.S. Postal Service caution consumers to watch out for:
- Classified ads or verbal sales pitches implying an affiliation with the federal government, guaranteeing high test scores or jobs, or stating, “no experience necessary.“
- Ads that offer information about “hidden” or unadvertised federal jobs.
- Ads that refer to a toll-free phone number. Often, an operator encourages the caller to buy a booklet containing job listings, practice test questions and entrance exam tips.
- Toll-free numbers that direct consumers to other pay-per-call numbers for more information. Under federal law, any solicitations for these numbers must contain full disclosures about the cost. The solicitations also must make clear any affiliation with the federal government. The caller must have the chance to hang up before incurring charges.
In closing, Daywalt suggests using Internet job boards as a tool in your job search, but be careful of those who want to take advantage of you.
Filed under: Candidates, Employment, job hunting, job seeker, Recruitment by Neos Sister
