Job scams target both recruiters and job-seekers

A sophisticated scam can fool anyone, from the well-intentioned reporter who fell for an evil doctor, which inspired Dr. Death season 2, or one of the many people conned by fraudsters posing as official personnel.

Employment scams in the US rose by 23% in 2022, according to the Better Business Bureau, and they’ve targeted job-seekers and recruiters alike.

Tricking job applicants. FlexJobs recently released a list of the 20 most common jobs scams that largely target job-seekers.

Scammers often target victims via social media or messaging platforms, like Telegram or WhatsApp, promising remote or flexible work opportunities. Perpetrators may even create fake versions of well-known job boards, including FlexJobs itself.

Con artists may also impersonate recruiters from real companies in hopes of gaining their victims’ trust, and eventually their social security number.

The HR imperative. Recruiting scams aren’t new, but they’ve become more common and sophisticated since the rise of remote work in 2020, HR Brew previously reported.

Recruiters can help job-seekers by publicly sharing their company’s hiring processes on social media or on a corporate careers page.

Some job scams involve fake applicants, too, giving HR leaders another headache as they tirelessly weed through candidates. A fake applicant may correctly answer screening questions or have a LinkedIn profile (technology has made these cons easier to pull off). A recruiter may then hire, and even onboard, a fake candidate, only for the “person” to ghost the company after they’ve charged billable hours.

Companies without a cybersecurity team or adequate software may be more susceptible to fake applicants, according to DarkReading. HR leaders with access to an IT department should consider working with them to stomp out employment scams quickly.

“HR relies on robust IT practices through the entire employee life cycle and it is critical for that relationship to be strong in order to solve these kinds of issues,” Talie Schwager, VP of HR at CoinDesk, previously told HR Brew. “So much of what we do occurs in the digital world and we depend on IT teams to help us operationalize our work.”