How to Avoid Résumé, Recruiting, and Job Search Scams
With 7.4 million people out of work and Jobvite reporting that over two-thirds of job seekers believing it’s harder to find a job in 2021 than it was before the pandemic, it’s no wonder that many people are looking for a miracle to help them with their job search.
Many people have been struggling for months to find their next job, and a whopping 36% of job seekers have been out of work for 6 to 12 months. If you’re one of those who hasn’t worked for most of 2021, you may be struggling to stay optimistic and you may be harboring a secret hope that someone suddenly reaches out to you with a great job offer.
If you’ve been looking for a job for a while, a seemingly out of the blue email from a recruiter offering you an interview for a 6-figure job or a résumé review service offering to optimize your résumé for free can appear to be the boon you need to advance your career.
But here’s the thing: If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.
There are scammers out there preying on vulnerable job seekers who are eager to find work as soon as possible. These scammers swindle job seekers out of money and/or steal their personal information to commit fraud.
Read all about the current job search scams and recruiting scams below to protect yourself f as you search for your next job.
1. Fake Recruiter Scam
Some scammers pose as recruiters looking to fill an open position in their attempts to get job seekers’ personal information and bank information.
Usually, these scammers send you an email that is supposedly from a recruiter who is contacting you to see if you’d be interested in interviewing for a role at their client’s business. Sometimes, they contact you through job boards like Indeed or ZipRecruiter.
The messages usually use some variation of the same wording. Here’s an example:
"Hello,
I hope this message finds you well. My name is Robert Smith and I am a Sr. Recruiting Specialist in Top Private Equity Recruiting Firm, a reputable Global Recruitment Firm. I am reaching out to see if you would be interested in exploring new opportunities.
One of our clients has retained us to fill various senior-level positions in one of their recent acquisitions. I was referred to you by an outside talent sourcing firm and based on your previous experience I think you are a very credible candidate.
If you are interested and want to learn more, please reply to this email with a copy of your resume as soon as possible. I will forward it, along with a brief introduction to the client and will contact you back to complete the NDA and get started.
Best Regards,
Robert Smith
Senior Executive Recruiter”
After you reply to the message the scammer will reply back to your email to tell you that you are a great fit for the role, but they need an ATS-optimized version of your résumé. They’ll link you to a site they claim will be able to optimize your résumé.
Here’s an example of this message:
“Good morning,
The role is aligned with your experience. Unfortunately, your resume does not parse correctly into the Candidate Management System. In order to move forward, I need your ATS compatible resume ASAP. You may contact cmsresumesopt.com for an ATS Compatible Resume.
For reasons of confidentiality and non-disclosure, I am not able to share any details of the position or company with you at this time, unfortunately. I will check my schedule and let you know a few time slots for a brief phone call after the initial process.
Stay Safe!
Best Regards,
Robert Smith
Senior Executive Recruiter”
The site they link you to will claim they can review your résumé for free or for a very low price. Then, they’ll say they can optimize your résumé for ATS for a higher fee. Once you pay to get your résumé optimized, the fake recruiter will email you to let you know the job has fallen through and the company decided to go with another candidate. If you receive a résumé back at all, you’ll notice that they made minor formatting changes and didn’t fully optimize your résumé. By the time you get your résumé back, you’ve wasted your valuable time and money on a scam that placed your personal information in an untrustworthy person’s hands.
While it can be hard to recognize these scams for what they are, they usually have a few things in common. Here’s what to look out for:
Emails from a free account: Recruiters use business email addresses that use the company’s domain name (like richard@staffingrecruiters.com, gloria@toptalentrecruitingservices.org, and kevin@remotetalentrecruiting.co) to reach out to potential candidates. If you receive an email from a recruiter using a free email service like Gmail or Hotmail, it’s most likely a scam.
They can’t answer your questions about the position: Recruiters are knowledgeable about the positions they’re finding candidates for. If your recruiter cannot answer your questions about the position they claim you’re a great fit for, you’re probably dealing with a scammer. While recruiters sometimes cannot name the companies they’re working for, they’re usually more than happy to provide all the information they can give you, like the industry the position is in. A recruiter who can’t answer any of your questions is likely not a recruiter at all.
The job sounds too good to be true: If the job offers all the benefits and perks you’re looking for, be wary. Scammers tend to create very long job descriptions so they can make it seem as if the fake position has everything job seekers are looking for in their next role. Additionally, be on the lookout for high salaries that are way above the typical salary for the type of work you’d be doing. If the salary seems at odds with the role, it’s most likely a scam.
The recruiter isn’t on LinkedIn: By nature of their job, recruiters are well-connected. They usually have 500+ connections on LinkedIn because they work with many companies to find job seekers to fill positions. If your recruiter only has a few connections and doesn’t have a complete LinkedIn profile, they’re probably not legit. If they don’t have a LinkedIn at all, they’re definitely not legit. If you do manage to find your recruiter on LinkedIn, make sure their profile is connected to their recruiting firm’s corporate page. If it isn’t, they probably don’t really work for a recruiting firm.
Fake recruiters can also link to fake recruiting firm websites in their email signatures. There are a few websites that have been already flagged as scams by other job seekers, like execsearchpros.com and exeprorecruit.com. Although these sites are quickly identified as scams by other job seekers, scammers get new websites online just as quickly as they’re taken down.
Be wary of sites that appear to use stock photos to depict their employees. The stock photos feature models posing as office professionals, and they tend to look very posed and unnatural. Also, some fake websites will claim they’ve been in business for years even though the website is just a few months, weeks, or even days old. If you’re unsure, you can enter the URL in a site like webnots.com to find out when the domain was created to see if you’re dealing with a potential scammer. While some companies do switch to new websites as they grow or their needs change, the websites are much more professional-looking than scam websites are.
If you’re unsure of whether you’ve been contacted by a legit business or not, see if you can find them on social media or LinkedIn. Even if they’ve switched websites, you may be able to find posts on their social media that were created months or even years before their new website went live. You can also search the company’s name in the Better Business Bureau’s scam tracker to see if the site and company are legit.
2. Free Résumé Review Scam
Some scammers pose as professional résumé writers to steal job seekers’ personal information and swindle them out of money. Like fake recruiters, these scammers may contact you via email or through private messages on social networks like LinkedIn. They’ll direct you to their website for a free résumé review.
When you upload your résumé to the site, it’ll give you a canned message about what’s wrong with your résumé. The message will also tell you that they can fix your résumé for a low price.
If they “fix” your résumé at all, they typically only do some minor formatting. Although this scam won’t take tons of your money, the résumé you get back isn’t worth what you paid for it, and the scam opens you up to the risk of identity theft.
While there are legit résumé writing services that do offer free résumé reviews and charge low prices for their paid services, the people behind the legit services will have more of an online presence than the scammers. You should be able to find them on LinkedIn, find reviews of their services online, and find them listed on one of the leading résumé association’s websites, like the National Résumé Writers Association or the Professional Association of Resume Writers and Career Coaches. Like with recruiters, it’s important to vet résumé writers before you send your sensitive information to them.
Fake résumé writers set up multiple websites to scam job seekers just like the fake recruiters do. While they quickly replace one website with another when their sites get taken down, the fake websites are usually easy to spot. The staff photos will look like stock photos and the site may claim the company has been in business for far longer than the site has been live. While companies do occasionally create new websites, new professional websites are generally much more aesthetically pleasing and detailed than scammers’ websites. Fake websites may also be riddled with grammatical errors, which makes it suspect as to whether the people behind the websites are professional résumé writers.
Cmsresumes.com and resume-experts.com are two sites that have been identified as scams, but be sure to use the tips above to determine if any other résumé writers’ websites you come across are scams.
When it comes to professional services (including résumé writing services), the old adage that “you get what you pay for” usually applies. But as someone with 4 kids, I definitely understand that it can be hard to find room in the budget for professional résumé writing services. Although you may find a great, less experienced writer who charges a smaller fee for their services as they gain experience or a writer who charges less as a personal mission to help others reach their career goals, a site that claims to create a great résumé for you for less than $100 or even for free is most likely a scam. Good résumé writers who charge less than their peers will typically still charge at least $100 per résumé. When you hire a résumé writer, you should anticipate paying at least 1% of your salary as a rule of thumb.
While you should be wary of résumé writers who DM you on LinkedIn to offer free or extremely low-cost services, the résumé writing professionals you find on LinkedIn ProFinder are legit. They’ve been vetted by LinkedIn, and they have submitted their website and LinkedIn profile to the social network to verify their professional status.
3. Pay for Interview Scam
Some fake recruiting scams go a step further than getting you to send a little money for an ATS-optimized résumé. Sometimes, scammers will tell you that they need you to pay a fee for their job placement services or for them to set you up for an interview with the client they’re recruiting for. They also ask you to sign a contract before the interview.
The fees for their “services” are often hundreds or thousands of dollars. Job seekers who fell for this type of scam completed a phone interview with the supposed hiring partner of the company with the open position. After their interviews, the job seekers were told the position had already been filled or that the position had been cancelled due to the company’s changing needs. Then, they were told that the contract they had signed contained a non-disclosure agreement that states they would have to pay up to 10 times the fee they paid for the initial interview if they discussed the interview or what happened thereafter.
Remember: A real recruiter will never ask you to pay for an interview. While recruiters may contact you to see if you’d be interested in interviewing for an open position they’re finding candidates for, they will put you in touch with their clients for free if they determine you’re a viable candidate for the job. Recruiters will also never ask you for your social security number, your bank account info, or for you to sign a non-disclosure agreement.
4. Advance Payment Scam
The advance payment scam typically comes through job boards like Indeed or ZipRecruiter. This fake recruiting scam offers you a great, high-salary job you applied for right off the bat without you ever having to interview for the position at all. The job offer typically comes via the email you used to sign up for the job board.
The fake hiring manager or recruiter will tell you they’ll pay you for your first month of work in advance. Once you agree to receive the advance, they’ll send you a huge check you can deposit in your account.
The scammer will also ask you to send money orders or gift cards to them that they can use to purchase the equipment you’ll need for your job. If the job you supposedly were hired for is a client-facing job, they may ask you to money from your advance paycheck to the clients you’ll be working for. After you deposit the check, your bank will let you know the check was fraudulent and they’ll freeze your account. If you sent money to your “clients,” that money is now gone forever and you’ll owe bounced check fees to the bank.
Wrapping Up
As you continue your job search, keep your wits about you. Remember: If something feels too good to be true, it probably is. Research anyone who contacts you about your résumé or about open positions they’re hiring for.
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