“The vulnerable population when it comes to job scams are people who simply aren’t familiar with the process,” said Eva Velasquez, who heads the center. That could be young people like Ansell just starting out. Or new immigrants. Or stay-at-home parents returning to the job market after a few years.
“The bottom line is they’re going to give you money and then ask for a refund in some manner. And that’s where I always tell people, ‘Don’t even engage,’” Velasquez said. She added that a request for money — or sensitive personal data — are common signs you’re dealing with a fraudster, but we often miss those because the scam artist confuses us with a false sense of urgency.
“Phone a friend. Take five and phone a friend. Asking someone else kind of takes you out of that emotional state. And helps you to see things in a more factual, logical state,” Velasquez said.
What the online job boards say
While the onus is primarily on the job hunter to steer clear of scams, the top online job boards all told KQED fake job posts are against their company rules. Perhaps more helpfully, most have processes in place to identify and remove fake listings.
- Indeed: “Indeed removes tens of millions of job listings each month that do not meet our quality guidelines.” Additionally, a spokesperson wrote, “We encourage all job seekers to review our Guidelines for a Safe Job Search.”
- Glassdoor: “Like all content posted on Glassdoor, job listings are actively monitored to ensure they meet our rigorous guidelines. We encourage users who suspect they have been a victim of fraud to flag the content to Glassdoor and, if necessary, to their local authorities as well.”
- LinkedIn: “We’ve evolved our defenses by investing in technologies such as advanced network algorithms that detect communities of fake accounts through similarities in their content and behavior, computer vision and natural language processing algorithms for detecting AI-generated elements in fake profiles, anomaly detection of risky behaviors, and deep learning models for detecting sequences of activity that are associated with abusive automation.” Additionally, the platform has added a verification badge to job postings as well as job seeker and recruiter profiles.
- ZipRecruiter: “We take steps to educate job seekers about how to spot suspicious activity and encourage reporting of all such activity to us so we can investigate and take prompt remedial action.”
What if you do get scammed?
Experts say it’s always a good idea to report a scam to the relevant job board, local law enforcement, and the Federal Trade Commission, even though few scam artists are prosecuted at any level of law enforcement.
Experts also say the money — often sent voluntarily by the victim in postal money orders, gift cards, or cryptocurrency — is typically impossible to recover.
