Online scammers have come up with yet another way to take advantage of unsuspecting victims, this time by capitalizing on the large number of job seekers currently in the market place. The latest con is to pose as a recruiter and put up a fake job posting or even a fictitious job board. Job seekers then respond to a posting (or are approached by a “recruiter”) whereby the scammer requests personal information such as “a social security number to get you set up with a profile in our system” or “bank account information so we can begin a preliminary credit check.”

Let me be clear about this, in case there is any doubt – the initial recruitment process does NOT require social security numbers, bank account information, personal taxes, or anything else out of the ordinary. Even when setting up an online profile with a recruitment firm or a corporate job board, the most you will be asked for at that stage of the process is exactly what is on your resume but in an expanded form (contact info, skills, accomplishments, work history, references, and such). Yes, at some point in the hiring process you will need to provide someone with information of a more personal nature, but at that point there will be no doubt as to the identity of the person with whom you are dealing (more than likely this will be HR or the hiring manager at the job site).

Here are a couple of safeguards to prevent identity theft (or worse) when responding to a recruiter or a job posting.

1. As stated above, be suspicious if you are asked for a social security number, bank information or tax information – for any reason.
2. When approached by a recruiter with whom you’re not familiar, ask the recruiter for detailed contact info. Then do an Internet search to establish whether or not the recruiter can be verified. Make sure everything looks good, and then call back the main business number and ask for that individual.
3. Con artists of this type more than likely are not going to spend the dollars it costs to post on a DICE, Monster, or CareerBuilder type site - they will tend to post mostly on the free boards.

There are plenty of good recruiters, job boards and posting sites out there, and armed with a grain of common sense and an awareness of the information above, there is no reason why a job seeker shouldn’t have a successful job search experience when utilizing these useful tools.

A list of some reported scams can be found at consumerfraudreporting.com.

As always, we’re interested in hearing how your job search is going. Feel free to contact us.