Work From Home
This is a common term used in the last two years or so, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, when it was a preferred working mode to avoid infected with the virus.
When you search for a job opportunity in this time of the year, you will tend to find one preferably can work from home.
Because of this, scammers also know how to cash in on this and try to scam the innocent and genuine job seekers.
During COVID-19 when so many have lost their jobs and trying to find employment, some will become desperate and will grab any job opportunity comes along.
Hence , how do you know the job opportunity is genuine and real job instead of fake job?
Scammers pose as companies, recruitment agents offering you fake jobs claiming you can work from home in this trying time.
How do people usually look for job opprotunities?
- using online job portals.
- using job postings on human resources recruitment websites.
- advertisements of job vacancies in printed media or social medias.
- WhatsApp messages of jobs opportunities.
How do you detect the scams in the work from home postings of jobs?
there are some signs and indications if you can see the postings or advertisement of jobs carefully, you can detect the scams or fake jobs.
If you can notice the following clues, you may be able to detect the scams in the job advertisement
- The job is too good to be true.
- There is little information on the company.
- Contact number in the post cannot confirm the legitimacy of the job offer.
- There are bad review online about the company.
- The employer is too eager to hire.
- You have to pay to work.
- The employer want to conduct interview only using WhatsApp messaging.
- The job is too good to be true.
If the job offer states that you can do it from home and they pay a very good remuneration even though you may not have the necessary qualification or experience for the job.
Job description indicated that the job is very easy but have good pay, you should use your own instinct to determine whether this is a scam or not.
2. There is little information on the company.
Sometimes the company may put its website domain in the job posting and when you check the website, it does not seem like a genuine website of the company.
Some scammers have the effort to display a website of the original company and thinking the job applicants will not detect the different from the genuine company website.
If you apply through the link given , you may fall to the scam of the scammers who may use the phishing malware to infect your device the moment you click on the link.
3. Contact number in the post cannot confirm the legitimacy of the job offer
Some of the job advertisements have the contact numbers, however when you try to contact, either by phone or email, you fail to get the necessary reply.
When you check the website, you will notice the contact is not correct and you are not able to reach the right person or the recruiting person.
4. There are bad review online about the company.
if you are able to read the review online about the company, you may find the reviews of the company are not encouraging, a lot of bad reviews, some people who have been cheated may just state as such in their reviews and warn future applicants to be careful of it.
5. The employer is too eager to hire.
If you apply for the job and within minutes you receive the phone from the company and the person on the other end of the line is so eager to talk to you, this may sound an alarm in your head.
Normally when you apply for a job, especially online application, you may only get a reply after a few days instead of within a day or two.
if the caller said he or she wanted to talk you to find out more about you and so on, this may give you an indication that the job offer is not real.
6. You have to pay to work.
sometimes, you may come across some jobs, once they decide to hire you, however they insist on you making some payment to process some documentation, especially if the job posting is oversea.
The potential employer may want you to remit some money for the processing of the work documentation and relevant papers, this is to ensure you have a valid documents to work in foreign country.
Should not this at the cost of the employer? you may ask, if they insisted that you need to pay and they will reimbursed you later, or once you come on board,
The advice is you should not proceed with this any longer.
7. The employer want to conduct interview only using WhatsApp messaging.
I have come across potential employers insisting on conducting interviews using WhatsApp messaging.
And when i asked why didn't we use WhatsApp video calling for the interview, the recruiters said her device did not have the said function!!!.
You will find the interview can drag on for days and conversations were on and off.
The recruiter who claimed to be the Director in charge of Human Resource would only reply to messages on and off.
she would claim she was busy doing some other things while conducting the messaging interviews.
The interview will go from official and move to some personal matters and she may claim to share your interest and slowly will try to get you to invest in what she is investing.
Normally it is a cryptocurrency trading and the platform she gives you is not that professionally set up at all.
you may read more about that in HERE.
Conclusion
By being careful, you can protect your identity, your finances and your wellbeing.
When a prospective employer is asking you to fill up an online application form, it requires some personal data such as:
- your bank account number,
- your date of birth and
- those of your family members,
- chances are this is a scam and if you click on the link, you may subject to phishing attack.
Do not give out any personal information other than the basic such as the phone number.
Some scammers are using the legitimate job portals to post fake job openings, if you are selected, do some due diligence on the company.
With the availability of the internet nowadays and the amount of information easily accessible, it is quite easy to do some background check on the companies.
One of the alert signal will be the email domain from the so called HR or hiring personnel, it is very unlikely that the company does not have its own email domain.
It is no harm to be extra careful and pass on the job opportunity if you are not sure, rather than be sorry later after you find you have been scammed.
