How to detect job scammers

I have been motivated to write this personal experience as I wondered why in less than three months I have had two encounters with scammers. The two scammers purportedly do head hunting jobs for the UN. Yes, I am looking for opportunities but I am not desperate. While the scammers come through my networks and I know they are well intentioned; scammers need to do better job - a point for learning for us all.

Generally, the scammers will come through close acquaintances and at first all look genuine but not for so long. Most of their initial contacts are via telephone and they will want to know more about you, your experience and accomplishments. In my case, the first flag was when I went through my work experience and accomplishments they were so quick to conclude I was the right person they were looking for. This is not a good sign because experienced recruiters while they may like your CV and the first encounter, they will be diligent enough to leave room to verify the information they have obtained from your CV and our first interaction.

The other red flag was the inability of the scammers to tell what role and even job title they are recruiting for. They would want to make it look like the recruitment is so urgent and someone was needed yesterday! This too is a bad sign. Serious organisations would like to take some time to ensure they get the right candidates and not just rush through the recruitment process. Because wrong recruitments are time consuming and costly.

The scammers are very quick to give details of what your salary is likely to be. Of course, they will exaggerate the amount and this should be a red flag too. Generally, one looking for opportunities you should know your worth and what the market offers. In my case, the offer was slightly higher than what I would generally be looking out for. When the scammer realised I was not so moved by the pay, they quick to say the amount was a net take home. It’s not often that you will know the net take home amount in the first interview, so watch out for these too good to be true offers.

After the telephone call, they want you to send them your CV. In my case, the scammers sent a text message with their email addresses. This a good opportunity for job seekers to do some due diligence. With the email I was able to check the relationship of the email and the agency they are recruiting for. The phone too, is good place to check that the telephone belongs to the person they say there are. In my case the telephone belonged to some other random people and the email did not look genuine either. Additional searches via google couldn’t easily trace them. Good places to check in too includes LinkedIn – they did not have accounts there either.

The sense of urgency the scammers have, they will certainly call you back even before you share your CV – that’s if you are like me doing some little background check before you share any additional information. In this case the scammers called back to say because the job was urgent I needed an Interpol letter – a letter that says you are not or involved in criminal activities. The scammers will be fast to offer contacts at Interpol to help you process the letter very fast. In my case when the scammer offered to share with me a contact, I declined saying I had contacts there already!

With my first scammer, I agreed to have a contact at Interpol and I called up the person and the person was willing to process the letter over the weekend! Knowing how offices operate, certainly someone willing to go out of their way to process a letter even at a fee was already another red flag. Here I was expected to send about $90 via mobile money. This I couldn’t do and I said bye to my first scammer in the year.

The scammers may use many different tricks but by just being calm and doing a little of bit of research you can quickly realise they are fraudsters.