Recruiting Scams

News headlines are warning us of the growing frequency of employee recruiting scams - with criminal “recruiters” contacting individuals by text, email, chat or phone with prospective job opportunities.They present themselves falsely as representatives of legitimate companies.

In such cases, job seekers are asked to complete a job application and are quickly moved to offer status and to background screening. Sometimes the applicant will be asked to submit person information via email or submit it online into a fake recruiting website that the criminal has created.

Criminals can take a person's information (social security number, date of birth, address, etc.) and sell it to marketing firms, sell or trade it to other criminals, or keep it and use the details themselves for identity fraud. Other variations of this scam will see the victim asked to send money in order to cover expenses for tools, recruitment, résumé development, or training.

Telltale signs you may be working with a criminal recruiter:

  • They are pressuring you to quickly complete a job application or background check
  • You are being asked to give them money (no legitimate company would do that)
  • They are using a personal email address vs. the company's (yahoo.com, gmail.com)
  • There are grammatical errors and poor punctuation in communications
  • The position is not posted on the company's careers page
  • The process moves too quickly; in some cases, this means an offer after the first call
  • The salary and perks are “too good to be true”
  • Your “gut” says something doesn't seem right

If you believe you have encountered a scam, report the situation to: