A job scam is an application in reverse. A real employer asks you for a resume and gives you money. A scam gives you an offer and asks you for money, or a document that is worth money. The offer arrives fast, the interview is short or absent, and the request comes before any contract. Five checks catch nearly all of them, and all five take under ten minutes. The sixth check is the one that matters most: a real job never costs you anything to start.
Key points
- A real employer never asks for money, a bank login, or a copy of your passport before a signed contract.
- The offer comes too fast. No interview, or one chat, then an offer letter.
- The recruiter is on a free email domain, or a domain that is one letter off the company's.
- Check the company's own careers page. A real role is on it. A fake one is only in your inbox.
- If you already sent something, act in the first hour: the bank, the card issuer, a fraud report.
Where fake postings come from
Fake postings start on the sites with the lowest bar to posting: free job boards, classified sites, and social media. Aggregators that scrape those sites copy the fakes along with the real ones, and the fake posting gains the look of a real one by being on a site you trust.
Then the second stage: a message from a "recruiter". It arrives by email, text or a messaging app, often before you applied to anything, and it refers to a role you never saw. The role pays well, is remote, and needs nobody to meet you.
This site reads from employers' own hiring systems and careers pages, not from free boards, so the postings here were written by employers. A scam can still reach you by message with our name on it. We never message you about a job. The pledge says so.
A real job is on the employer's careers page. A fake one is only in your inbox.
The signs
| Sign | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| An offer without an interview, or after one chat | Hiring takes weeks and at least one person who asked you questions. |
| A request for money: equipment, training, a fee, a deposit | A real employer pays you. Always. |
| A request for a bank login, a cheque to deposit, or a passport copy before a contract | The document is the product. |
| A recruiter on gmail, outlook or a lookalike domain | Real recruiters write from the company's domain. |
| Pay far above the market for the role | Our wages page has the real number. A posting at twice it is bait. |
| Interview over a chat app only, by text, with no video | The person does not exist. |
| Urgency: accept today, the role closes tonight | Pressure is the mechanism. |
One sign is a reason to check. Two is a reason to stop.
The five checks
- The careers page. Go to the company's own website, not the link in the message. Find the careers page. Is the role there? A real posting is. If it is not, write to the company's general contact and ask.
- The domain. Read the sender's email address letter by letter. "company-careers.com", "company.co" and "cornpany.com" are not the company. A real recruiter at a real company uses the company's domain, and the company's website names that domain.
- The person. Search the recruiter's name with the company's name. A real recruiter has a professional profile that says they work there, and the company's own site or a press mention agrees.
- The pay. Look the title up on our wages page. A posting at double the median for a role that needs no experience is not a job.
- The ask. Before any document or payment, ask one question: "Is there a signed contract?" A real offer comes with an offer letter from the company's domain, a start date, a manager's name, and no request for money. If anything is asked for before that, stop.
The common scams, named
- The cheque. They send a cheque for equipment, you deposit it, buy the equipment from their supplier, and the cheque bounces a week later. You paid the supplier, who was them.
- The fee. Training, background check, certification. Paid by you, to them.
- The identity. Passport, social security number, bank details for "payroll setup", before a contract. The job does not exist. The identity is used elsewhere.
- The reshipping job. Receive packages at home, forward them abroad. The goods were bought with stolen cards, and you are the address on the shipping label.
- The task scam. Paid to rate products or complete tasks in an app, small payments at first, then a deposit to unlock the next level.
If you already sent something
Act in the first hour. The order matters.
- Money by bank transfer or card: call the bank or card issuer now. Reversal is possible for hours, not days.
- A cheque you deposited: do not spend against it. Tell the bank it is suspected fraud.
- Identity documents: a fraud alert with the credit bureaus, and in the US a report at IdentityTheft.gov. Watch the accounts for a year.
- A login you shared: change the password everywhere it was reused, and turn on two-factor sign-in.
- Report the posting to the site it was on, and the scam to the FTC in the US or Action Fraud in the UK. Reports are how the sites learn to block the domain.
Do not pay a second "fee" to recover the first. That is the same scam, continued.
Questions
A real company's recruiter wrote to me first. Is that a scam?
Not on its own. Real recruiters write first. Run the domain check and the person check, and expect an interview before any offer. A real recruiter is not offended by a question.
The posting is on a site I trust. Is it safe?
Safer, not safe. Big sites carry scraped postings and paid postings from anyone with a card. The careers page check is the one that holds.
Is a job that pays in cryptocurrency a scam?
Not always, but the company has to be one you can verify, with a contract, and the pay has to be after the work. A role that asks you to buy cryptocurrency to start is a scam every time.
Why do scammers use real company names?
Because the name does the work. A fake posting for a real company passes the first glance. The careers page check catches it, because the real company does not list the role.
Can an aggregator stop this?
By reading only from employers' own systems, which is what this site does. A scraper that takes every posting from every board will carry fakes, because fakes are posted to be carried.