Hey, what's up, and welcome back to another episode of The Straight Shooter Recruiter. I'm your host, Emily Durham aka Emily the Recruiter on all social media platforms. If it's your first time listening, I have been a recruiter for over seven years. I've been featured in Forbes BBC. I'm a writer, I'm a career coach, I'm a content creator. Really, my goal is just to help you thrive in your nine to five and beyond and make
you feel confident and like your best self as you do it. So if that's your jam, please consider subscribing and you know, interacting with the podcast, and if you're listening right now, I would love to see you listen, So post on stories on Instagram, tag me if you're listening, if you're on Twitter, use our hashtags. It was honestly just like the best thing in the world to watch you guys interact with the show on Monday after I post every episode on Sunday, So I really I would love to see
it. But today gotta be real, we're talking about I don't love to see because ultimately it's taught me that nothing is sacred. There was the tinder swindler, and now somehow we're in the what like recruiter swindler era and recruiting scams They've always been a thing, but they have been popping off over the last couple of years and most especially over the last couple of months. So I want to deep dive on what the heck these are because they're a little
bit scandalous, you feel me, So they're an interesting listen. But I also and honestly most importantly want to talk to you about how you can avoid being a victim of one of them, because this is not the vibe. We are not trying to get scammed this year, not not on LinkedIn. So if that's your jam, sit back, relax, grab a coffee, because we're about to get into it. Okay, First, thanks, First, what is your recruitment scam? Because I heard this it was like,
what do you mean? There are recruiting scams, And I first learned about them probably five or six years ago when I first started my career. But there's a kind of more popular wave of scams that are popping up now that to me are even more disturbing. So I'll tell you the first and most basic kind of scams, because I'm sure you've heard of these, but it's typically when someone who works at a quote unquote recruiting agency winkin, mudge,
nudge, they don't work anywhere. They reach out to you on LinkedIn. They promise they're going to find you like your dream job in a matter of thirty days or sixty days. But in order to do that, they need to take a small deposit fee to lock down your interest, or a small agency fee to make sure that you're exclusively working with them. And they basically request that you pay them five hundred dollars or a thousand dollars or fifty dollars, it could be any amount. Any amount is too much, right,
Why on earth would you pay a recruiter to do their job? Why would that ever be? Why would that ever be the situation? It's giving employee, right, it feels like this person works for you. Now. This is not the same as hiring someone who writes your resume and helps you find
a gig like that is a very legitimate business. This is more so people approaching you telling you, hey, I work for an agency, let me find you a job, and it's going to be this amount of money and it's super ambiguous and super vague that I feel like is kind of easy to avoid because the second someone asks for money or personal information, we're all kind of like, yeah, this is obviously not real. So those have I
think, not been as popular or has impacted as many people. But this new kind, I guess it's yeah, it's like not new, but it's newly popular and it's really on the rise. Is when people are pretending to
work for reputable companies and they go ham on the details. They have the same email address style as that given company, They use all of their headers and footers and their emails, They quote unquote work at this place on LinkedIn, like they have thought of every single detail to make it look like they are a legitimate part of that organization, and it's so freaking diabolical. So basically, these people will reach out to you via email or via LinkedIn and
they'll say, Hey, I'm Emily, a recruiter at Google. I love your profile. Are you free for an interview? You go, oh my god, Google wants me. I'm on the way, say no more, and they go, great, we have an interview right now, like a virtual interview. Today. We need to talk to you, and you're like, oh my god, it's Google. Obviously, I'm going to you hop on the zoom. They ask you a couple of questions. It feels very legitimate. They put you through another round of interviews with a different person,
which this feels very legit. You go, oh my god, I'm killing it. They say we need you to start. We're going to send you an offer letter. They send you an official offer letter with Google's header and footer, with the sign off of the CEO, with all of these different things that you would legitimately need on an offer letter. And guess what, baby, that's not an off a letta. Yeah, that's nothing to tell.
They are scamming you. They are completely completely scamming you. And it is out of pocket, out of body, the craziest freaking thing I've ever heard. Okay, first, in my mind I was like, all of this for what What is the purpose of people scamming you? And then I did some additional research and was like, ah, yes, this is why.
So obviously there's number one reason, which is money. So maybe they ask you for, you know, a small deposit to purchase your laptop, or like a small fee to I don't know do something to help you get set up for work from home. But the other piece is your personal information. So when you sign a job offer, it is very standard for your social insurance number, you know, birth certificate, like all of these different forms of ID typically need to be sent in in order for you to accept
a job offer. And for normal companies, we do that because we're validating that you are who you say you are. What's super not okay about this is now these undisclosed scam artists have access to your social insurance number, your banking account information. They have access to all of these different things that are really really scary. So if you are in a position where you suspect this has happened, make sure you're contacting your banks and give them the heads up
to potentially change that information. But ultimately, it's very money motivated, and some people just like to prey on people who are vulnerable. I would say most fraud artists tend to tend to believe in that. But what I think is so messed up about recruiting scams is that they're literally preying on people who are vulnerable, Like these are people who are looking for another job in a market that's really messed up, Like we are living in a post pandemic world.
A lot of people say we're about to enter a recession, Like there's a lot going on here and it's a really difficult time to land your job. It is like, right now is a really hard time to find a job. I would say the hardest I've seen in many, many years. So when these people are reaching out and just taking advantage of folks trying to do better for themselves, for their families, like, it just breaks my heart just so so messed up. So anyways, that's what these scams are,
and I just can't get over how absolutely diabolical they are. But how can you avoid them? Like, how can you catch them? Because a lot of these people who have fallen victim to these scams are well educated people, like I saw a post from a literal Facebook software engineer that has happened too, Like, these are people who are on their ship, they know what they're doing, So how are they falling victim? How can you avoid
falling victim to this? Okay, the first thing is kind of basic, but I swear this is the best indication to tell if someone scamming you. It's spelling and grammar. I'm not saying you need to download grammarly, but should this episode be sponsored? Yeah, baby, absolutely it should be.
But for real, check out they're spelling and grammar. Like if you're reading the sentence and you're like, something is a whackadoodle with how you're typing this out, Like this isn't reading well, this isn't reading like a quote unquote executive recruiter. That can be a tell. Not always, but I would say if you're starting to read the message and it's just not adding up, um, yeah, good indicator to pump the brakes. The next is request
for personal information. And I know when you sign an offer, you ultimately don't have a choice. However, if they're asking you, like preemptively for the names of your previous employers, if they're preemptively asking you questions where they're clearly trying to generate some database around you, that is a red flag. Because for me as a recruiter, and I've been a recruiter for many, many years, and I also service clients who are looking for work, well,
I just punched my mic. I just got too passionate, But that's okay. I would never ask for data because it's not necessary. There's nothing I need from you in the early stages of the process. In fact, I personally am never going to ask you for information. When it's time for you to sign the offer, I send you the documentation, you submit it, that's it. I actually I have no knowledge of your Social insurance number.
I will never see details of your background check. And that is for legal as well as like policy based protection and most organizations, in most companies work like that. So if the recruiter quote unquote is asking you these questions, something is funky. You also need to be super wary of any time they are talking about like money. If they're asking you for money, if they're implying that you might need to invest in your work from home setup,
that's not normal. Companies are not going to make you pay to work for them by purchasing a laptop, and if they are, they'll tell you in a way that's not sketchy and weird. So anytime they're kind of prying for that information, that's big. But here's what I would say is the most important. It's the URLs and the emails that they are using. So in my last example, let's say a Google recruiter reached out to you and their
email address is at Google dot com. What you need to do is go online and look at people who currently work at Google, and there's a bunch of free websites that do this, and see what their email structure is. Because maybe it's not Emily underscore Durham at Google dot com. Maybe it's Emily dot Drham at Google dot com. Maybe it's e Durham at Google dotca.
There are a lot of different variants of what professional emails look like, and it's possible they're just using a slightly different version that still seems legit, So you need to validate that's accurate. You also need to check links, so when you click a link. Actually, Like to Know is a really good
example of this. Like to Know is the company that I use. Basically, it's like an Amazon storefront, so I put my skincare products that I use on there, like my work from home setup, because I always get people asking and it's just easier to have it all in one space. But I do make commission off of it. So if I use a certain I don't know nail polish and I post it and you're like, oh love the nails. You click the link, it'll say, hey, you're to this
website. By the way, Emily's going to make five percent commission off of the sale or whatever it is. When you click those links, the first page that will load is my like to know page, and then it redirects you to the website of the product that you're purchasing. So unless you're actually watching the uurl's change throughout the chain of events, you won't notice it because you're ultimately going to land on the product page. You're not going to land
on my like to know profile. But if you're watching the links load, you'll see it'll go like to know and then redirect. And what you need to do is you click links for job descriptions or whatever else it is see where the redirects are. Because I guarantee something sketchy is going to pop up, and unless you're proactively looking for it, it's so easy to miss.
Like, why would anyone think they need to do that? So I would probably recommend before you speak with any of these recruiters to google them first. Like, for example, if I reach out to you and you google me, you see I'm a real person. I'm a real recruiter. Most recruiters that's the case, like they will have a LinkedIn profile or other things that are super legit that will help you, so definitely do a quick search. The other thing I would say is be mindful of the speed and urgency that
they have. I know a lot of companies, mine included, there are some positions where like we need to hire you yesterday, like it's fast, we want you in the process. But if they're applying, like a weird pressure and you'll know that pressure in your gut where they're like, no, we need to talk today. We're so excited about you. How can we talk today? That is scammer vibes, because a good recruiter wants to make
the experience positive for you, and sometimes that means waiting a day. So just be thoughtful about all of these little things, because it is really easy to just think this person is enthused and excited about your profile, when in reality the chan is still money for your grandmother. There it is now. I was going to do Questions of the Week, but I actually had a lot of questions on recruiting scams that I intentionally answered in this episode. So
I'm going to buy pass it just because this episode is long. Af Like, it's so long. But what I'll also request from y'all is if you have a topic you want me to cover that I haven't covered yet, or a theme, or maybe you want like a pep Talk episode, put that in the link that I put in the description, because I want to make sure this episode and every episode I release a is like entertaining. It's good
vibes. You're listening to it while you're cleaning your apartment or you're on a walk, but that we're actually taking things away from it that's going to make the rest of our week better. You know. That's kind of the energy we're putting out there. But in any case, I am so happy you chose to hang out with me for a little bit today, and I will talk to you next Sunday. Bestie,