How to Avoid a Hiring Scam

Scamming is popular. There are Netflix shows and countless podcasts dedicated to the people who were caught scamming. Sometimes their attempts worked several times before getting caught. It might be easy to hear these stories and think it could never be you, but you might have to hope you never have to look for another job because otherwise you could find yourself on the wrong side of a scam.

Being a freelance writer, there are times when I will go to job postings and apply to a few places. I have my resume available, and I am always excited when someone wants to meet with me for a potential contract. This particular day I received an email from what seemed like a recruiter telling me I would be a great fit for an open position. I, of course, was excited about this and leaped at the opportunity. There were no signs that would have made me think this was a scam at this point. They provided me with the email of the hiring manager. I reached out to the hiring manager and told them I was interested in hearing more about the role. The hiring manager offered to do an interview over email. This was a red flag for me, now I thought this could be a scam. But I wanted to speak with them just to get a better feel for why a company would operate that way. I told the manager I would rather have a scheduled meeting, and they provided me with a Teams link. On the scheduled day of the interview, I hopped on the link and was ready for my interview. The only problem was that the manager wasn’t on the call. I found the owner of the created link was not attached to the ‘hiring’ company, but to an outlook.com account. This is when I knew this was a scam. Sure, there were a few red flags previously, but I find it best practice to understand the why behind decisions of an operation. For me, authenticity is key. When I found this to be illegitimate, I no longer wasted my time. I disconnected the Teams interaction. A few days later I got another email stating that there was a technical difficulty during the interview and offered to meet with me another time. Usually in scams, there is a money grab somewhere. I never got that far, but I’m sure I am not the first one they tried this with. About a week after this interaction, there was a LinkedIn message from the actual hiring company. The message stated they had been notified of a scam that was claiming to be their company. This confirmed my suspicions regarding the other people who may have actually fallen for the scam. Below are some tips I gathered for those who are not sure if they are being targeted by a scam.

Companies have to have approval to open a new hiring position. Someone would not be able to offer you a job if it was not posted for others to apply as well. Some policies also will not allow a position to be filled unless three or more people applied and were interviewed before filling an open position to rule on the side of inclusion and fairness.

It is common for the email to look a lot like the actual email structure of the company, but there are usually subtle differences or considerable differences, if you know what to look for. The email might be something like googles.com instead of google.com. To the normal eye, the names may look the same, but adding an ‘s’ at the end of the company name at the end of the company email is very common among a scam. It is also common to have underscores in the name or have a different format than is typical for a company email. If you are not already inside the company, it may be hard to know their exact format, so sometimes this can be a little tricky.

When someone reaches out to me and tells me they think I’m astonishing, and I would be a good fit for a position. I am flattered by the recognition. It’s hard to go from excitement to skepticism because you probably are a hard worker, and you do deserve recognition. In the hiring process, it is better to be level headed from start to finish and look at everything as a way to understand the operation. All companies don’t work the same, so keep this in mind, but it is standard practice to interview with more than one person. It is typical to meet on camera or in person. If something seems wrong, it probably is.

Great! You got hired on the spot after a text message interview. Before you start though, you have to send a check to pay for training or give them your bank information, so they can set up your automatic payments, or ‘we are sending you a check in the mail. Cash it when you get it, so you can make your dream office.’ Whatever they say, they have been successful, probably at least a few times. It’s likely convincing. Do not give your banking information to anyone until after your first day, when you have signed your contract and have contact info for someone in human resources. Do not cash a check until you have completed work for a company.

It is best practice to inform the impersonated company of the scam you encountered. This helps notify their technology department, and even let their followers know of a potential scam risk. The best thing to do if you see a scam or were part of a scam is to make a report to the Federal Trade Commission to ReportFraud.ftc.gov. This will help the government track scams at a deeper capacity. Being a victim of a scam feels demoralizing because it brings a person from feeling excited, seen, and valued to feeling scrutinized and not valued. Since these feelings all take place in a matter of a few hours, it’s a bit hard on the psyche.

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