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Initial Red Flags

While there are legitimate hiring managers and employer liaisons conducting real job search placements, the net can be cast wide these days for a job scam to reach you through email, text, or phone call. Even if you have only recently graduated, you might already be finding daily emails in your inbox or coming across LinkedIn connections from scammers trying to entice you with job offers you can’t ignore. Proceed with caution; many of these fake people reaching out to job seekers like you are computer-generated  emails, communications supposedly from a legitimate source looking to secure your financial, personal, or some other sensitive information, including bank account information.

Any email that even looks slightly suspicious to you should send up your red flags. Signing up for job search engines will also often bring unwanted spam into your email. While these emails are sometimes relatively harmless, they can still result in a dead end. Especially after Covid-19, we rely on our electronic communications and digital connection more and more so make sure to proceed with caution.

Too Much Information

Following from the above red flags, you also need to stay clear of any person or even a program asking for personal information, whether over the phone, in-person, or through email, beyond what you would provide on your resume. No legitimate job search representative of an employer, hiring manager, or HR person will ask for any of the previously mentioned items. The professionals in job hiring are well versed in the rules and regulations of what they can ask of job seekers and what can be asked of an employee after they are hired. 

Remember these simple rules: 

• You should be very cautious of anyone asking for your credit card information or any bank information.
• You should not give out your birthday. 
• If you find yourself stuck in a laborious online job sign-up program that begins asking for these facts or more, quit that program immediately!

The Money Is Just Too Good to Be True 

Sure, we all want to think we can command the starting salary we want. Only in rare cases will you be offered a high salary when starting a job in your field, no matter how popular that field is, how high your GPA was, and how extensive and long it took for you to wrangle yourself through a job search. If you are offered the big bucks right out of the gate, this should be a red flag that you are potentially being scammed. The axiom here of it’s too good to be true usually rings true. Out of all the job scams out there, playing to someone’s natural hope of making a high soaring salary is one of the most popular. 

Keeping Your Eyes and Ears Open During the Interview 

Online, you will find plenty of advice on , but you are not the only one being tested in this process. Luckily, the in-person interview presents the perfect opportunity to reveal a job scam if you open your eyes and ears.

As the applicant, you are in the driver’s seat to determine what the job you are applying for is all about and for who you might be working. You are allowed to interview the company; how else can you do the job you are hired for if you don’t know exactly what the job entails and if you have the skills and education for it? If the interviewer seems unsure of the job's requirements, you might indeed be encountering a scammer in your present job search.