"] If you're being asked to pay to work, that's a big red flag. Photo: 123rf.com
In a tight job market, being approached by a recruiter for a job opening may seem like a stroke of good fortune, but for some job hunters, it's turned out to be a major letdown - or worse.
Recruitment scams are becoming increasingly prevalent.
In a recruitment scam, a fake job ad is posted or an offer of employment made to get personal information out of would-be applicants.
The scammers can then use the data for online fraud and identity theft. Sometimes, people are also asked for money.
Shay Peters, chief executive of recruitment firm Robert Walters in Australia and New Zealand, said he had seen a spike in the number of scammers in the last 2-3 months. Some pretend to work for his company.
"It's a concern that people are leveraging off our brand in the market, trying to gain very, very private information on people's backgrounds," he said. "We're an organisation that's been around for over 40 years.
"Our name is fairly well known. Only recently, I've had personal contacts reach out to me, saying they've been contacted by Robert Walters for some quite senior level roles in New Zealand.
"I've had to let them know it's not actually us, because it looks legit."
He said the risks to jobseekers were "quite profound".
"The information that we are privy to is significant about a person's background and the risk of identity fraud is very, very high, when you're dealing with scammers pretending to be from the recruitment industry."
Netsafe chief online safety officer Sean Lyons said employment-related scams made up a significant part of the financial losses reported last year, and seemed to be on the rise in New Zealand and overseas.
"These scams can be sophisticated and often leverage well-known brands in New Zealand to create a false sense of legitimacy, making them more appealing to potential victims.
"Scammers use a variety of different methods, but a common employment scam we see is a job offer for a role that can be done relatively easily. Once people sign up, they're told they are earning money, but when they try to withdraw it, that's when the scam starts to be revealed.
"At this point, scammers will often offer large incentives to leave the money or simply stall to the point where people give up in exasperation. While identifying a scam can be tricky, it's important to have a level of scepticism when it comes to online job offers."
He said people should think carefully, before engaging with any unsolicited offers.
"Very few - if any - genuine opportunities will come out of the blue, with no previous contact or connection. If you are being asked to pay in order to work, then this should be looked at with caution and scepticism.
"Prospective employers don't generally ask people to pay money to be employed, so if that is the ask, think very carefully before taking any further steps, even if the amount seems relatively small to begin with and, perhaps because of that, feel like they are worth a risk, they are not.
"If the job is at a known company, contact them directly to verify the ad's legitimacy, before moving ahead with anything."
Peters said all recruiters would have a Linked In profile. People could check that and make sure it lined up with what they were being told.
"Scammers will post fake profiles too, so you might need to dig a bit deeper, but some of the scamming we are seeing at the moment is quite rudimentary. People are gaining access to people's accounts through Whatsapp, Facebook, text messaging and offering quite senior-level roles, without many layers or barriers to achieving success in gaining that role.
"The sniff test is also very important from that perspective."
Lyons said it would be almost unheard of to be offered a job without a job interview.
