So many of us are unhappy with our current employers that some clever person coined the term “rage applying” to describe the newfound zeal for searching for a new gig. The term has been trending on TikTok—but applying too quickly for an opportunity that seems too good to be true can also put you at risk of being roped into an employment scam.
Like any other scam, employment scams prey on the vulnerable—but that can be anyone looking for a new or better gig, whether they are fed up with their current working conditions or were recently laid off and need to land another job as quickly as possible. They were the second-riskiest scam of 2022 in terms of median dollar loss, with the average victim being bilked out of around $1,500, according to the latest BBB Scam Tracker Risk Report, overtaking crypto currency scams. Employment scams have consistently ranked among the top three riskiest scams since the BBB began compiling its annual report in 2016. But how are they tricking people—and what can you do to spot and avoid them?
How employment scams rip you off
Most fake job listings are a honey trap, luring you in via great remote work benefits or unusually high salaries ranges for jobs that seem to demand very little work. These fake job listings can look very authentic, some even impersonating real employers, and all are engineered with the same goal in mind—to take your money.
As Josh Yavor, CISO at cloud email-security platform Tessian, told HR Brew, scammers are, “fraudulently impersonating employers, or parties affiliated with employers, in order to achieve their goals, [which are] usually some sort of financial reward, by being able to trick people into transferring money…or by compromising further accounts or being able to achieve identity theft.”
HR Brew’s report outlines how scammers created fake CoinDesk job listings and reached candidates via emails purportedly coming from the company’s HR team or a hiring manager. The “recruiting” emails provided a link that took applicants into an official-looking CoinDesk website to complete an “application.” Through that process, some applicants shared personal information, putting themselves at great risk of having their identities compromised or their bank accounts drained, especially if they filled out direct deposit information.
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The scam often involves an online interview process, usually favoring written components over face to face video chats. Victims may even receive “job offers,” at which point they will be prompted to provide their banking information during their “onboarding.”
Some victims have even been sent fake checks they are instructed to deposit and use to buy equipment from fraudulent online retailers for “other” employees. As we’ve previously noted, checks can bounce even after you see the money hit your bank account, which means someone who falls for one of these scams can wind up without a job, minus money in their bank account, and potentially facing legal persecution for being part of a money mule scheme.
How to spot a scam listing
While there is no foolproof method for filtering real and fake job listings, there are ways to improve your chances of avoiding a scam. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Scott Dobroski, vice president of communications at Indeed, advised looking for detailed job descriptions, including clear and concrete lists of responsibilities that align with the role and company you’re applying to, and make sure they pass the smell test. If a job posting is months old, that’s another red flag.
If a link in a job listing takes you to another website to fill out an application. check the domain on the URL to ensure it matches the company’s legitimate website. If you’ve never heard of it before, Google the company name and cross-reference its domain with the URL of the link on the job listing. If there isn’t much online about the company, or what’s there seems fishy, beware.
The biggest warning sign of them all: If the job entails moving money around, especially if you’re being asked to do so via peer-to-peer apps like Zelle or PayPal “Friends and Family,” it’s definitely a scam. No legit job will rely on you moving around your own money as part of your job duties.
