GUEST POST: How to Avoid Job Scams by Nicole Nicholson.

Submitted by Gbolahan Babalola on Wednesday, 18/07/12

With so many people searching for jobs, the possibility of being scammed into something harmful is increased tenfold. Unfortunately, a lot of people have jumped at the chance to take advantage of the fact that so many people need jobs and have started to offer fake jobs in order to grab your personal information. This can be extremely dangerous and with your information they can fraud you out of your money and your identity. When searching for jobs, especially online, you need to be careful to avoid these job scams. Take a look at some of these tips and make sure you never give your information to a shady online job offer.

The first things you should be aware of are the job listings themselves. A lot of the job scams that are out there now are listed under the guise of very popular and generic job titles. For instance, job titles like “customer service representative” or “administrative assistant” are well-known positions that the majority of people are qualified for. Pay careful attention to these job titles and make sure they are legit. Another easy way to scam job seekers is to tell them that “telecommuting is OK.” This will draw in a lot of people because, let’s face it, who doesn’t want to work in the comfort of their own home? A lot of these positions won’t list a specific location and that is a big sign that this job is a scam. Most of these fraudulent job offers will boast amazing earnings. Do you really think you can make $1,000 a week by doing virtually no work? Let’s be real here, this doesn’t exist.

  

Posted jobs like this are unrealistic and only want your information for unsatisfactory purposes. However tempted you may be, stay away. Earning a large sum of money for doing nothing only exists for possibly 0.5 percent of the working population- and those people likely worked very hard to get where they are now. Or maybe they didn’t. Either way, it’s not a realistic job offer.

A lot of these job offers also forget that adequate grammar and punctuation is necessary for companies offering open positions. Many job scams will have job descriptions with tons of misspelled words and obnoxious punctuation. Know that if a reputable company has an open position and wants to hire someone competent and intelligent, they will likely be competent themselves. Real companies posting real job offers will take time to type up their open positions and will likely know how to spell. If it is, in fact, a real job post do you think you would even want to work for a company that didn’t take the time to make sure their job post was professional and correct? I’m not quite sure I would.

Another thing to look out for are the posts that boast“no experience necessary”yet the earnings are high. Again, let’s be real here. What company is really going to pay a candidate tons of money when they don’t have any experience? This is another description of a fantasy job that just doesn’t exist. Most importantly, any job post that asks you to fill out applications that require tireless amounts of your personal information is likely a scam. Even more important, if this job offer is asking for your checking or banking information run far, far away! No legitimate company will ask you for this kind of information just to apply for their open position. Never, never, never give personal information like this away online for job offers. This is a scam and if you participate in it you can pay a high price. Literally.

If you for some reason miss any of these tell-tale signs that this is a job scam, then be careful to note a couple more things. If the company’s email is from yahoo, gmail, hotmail account or any other free mail service provider, this is probably a scam. Companies don’t use free mail services. Their emails likely end in their company name. All in all, in order to avoid job scams you really just need to use your common sense. As stated earlier, no one gets paid to do nothing and if you do, please tell me where I can get your job! These kinds of promises only exist in job market paradise. It’s unfortunate that people out there try so hard to take advantage of job seekers in this weak market, but it’s a reality. Don’t fall victim to the these job scams and do everything you can to avoid them.

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