Scams used to be easier to avoid.
Especially if the job required you to hand over personal details (like your bank account information) before you even get a job offer. Or, if you’re promised you can earn $30K each month (for, well, any reason).
And don’t even get me started on scams like this, where you’re asked to receive packages at your home and change the shipping labels before sending them to their next destination – a classic reshipping scam.
Situations like this are clearly sketchy and very unlikely to lead to a legit job opportunity. But in a time when when millions of people are actively (and in many cases, desperately) job searching, it makes sense that common sense trumps rationality.
The problem though, is that falling for a job scam is more than just a little embarrassing. In fact, participating in job scams, even unknowingly, can lead to a host of other problems, including financial loss and legal prosecution, turning a tough job search into a seriously perilous situation that’s not so easy to get out of.
So how do you avoid getting scammed while you’re trying to find a new job?
The first thing I advise is to lose the “that won’t happen to me” mentality. If it’s not already obvious, we’re living in a time when anything can happen to anyone. So it’s important to know that anything is possible. And yes, it can happen to you.
As you shift your mentality to understanding that you can get scammed, be prepared to enter your job search with a healthy level of discernment: judge each opportunity that comes your way by asking yourself ‘does this make sense?’ Consider this scenario: an employer contacts you through text about a job interview. The interview is conducted via a chat platform, like WhatsApp. You’ve never had an interview via chat before, but you know that things have changed in the job market and talk yourself into moving forward with this “new age” approach to interviewing. You enter your information to set up an account so that you can use the chat feature for your interview. Sounds innocent enough, right?
Nope. Not even close. There are too many red flags here and too many blind spots that leave you vulnerable (like entering any of your personal information to set up an WhatsApp account, which the scammer can now access).
Remember, discernment. If it sounds odd, it is. If you feel funny about it, there’s a good reason why. Go with your gut and even then, get a second opinion from someone you trust about whether the opportunity is as shady as it appears to be.
And for a bit more dramatic (but really important) advice? Throw everything you thought you know about scams out the window. Think scammers only as for super sensitive data like your date of birth or social security number? Wrong. And contrary to popular believe, scammers can do actually do more than you think with non-sensitive personal information, so proceed with caution.
Like any other form of fraud, job scams have evolved, so we have to evolve with them. Whatever you thought you knew about job scams might be blinding you to the fact that scammers are constantly finding new ways to get over on people.
In many cases, job scammers aren’t playing the long game. Their modus operandi is to get as much as they can as quickly as they can. So, if an “employer” is encouraging you to interview, sign up, or log in for something right away, be careful about moving forward. Similarly, if you’re being considered for an opportunity for which there is no job posting available, request one before providing any of your information. Exercise the rights you have as a job seeker by asking questions early and often, requesting to meet face to face or via a reputable video call platform like Zoom or Microsoft Teams if you’re uncomfortable about communicating through other avenues, and do as much research as you can on the job, company, and contact who reached out to you. You just might save yourself from breaking the number one rule of the job search.