How Scam Jobs Could be Impacting Your Recruitment

How scam jobs could be impacting your recruitment—and what to do about it

Today, there are more job scams on the internet than ever before. People receive piles of random text messages from unknown numbers offering work; they see suspicious looking job ads, even on legitimate platforms like Indeed and LinkedIn; and sometimes they get contacted by folks claiming to be recruiters who aren’t. 

This is all bad news for honest people looking for a job, who have to be careful to avoid bad actors looking for their personal info or their banking information. And it makes looking for a job more time intensive and stressful.  

But it’s also a huge problem for people in HR and the staffing industry. 

That’s because once enough fake jobs and job offers show up, candidates stop trusting the platforms and channels they used to use for jobs. And without trust, candidates are less likely to apply, meaning fewer applications, and fewer quality applications for open roles.  

So even if you are offering a legitimate job over SMS to a candidate they might just ignore it because it if it looks like every other fake job offer they receive.  

After all, who has the time to follow up on every job invitation they get? If 8/10 of them are fake, no one has time or attention for the occasional real job that comes through. 

Today we’re looking into this problem in detail, starting with candidate behaviour.  

What do candidates do when they see a suspect job ad?  

We recently ran a poll on LinkedIn to find out. We got over 250 respondents, and you can take a look at it here.  

We found that 2 out of 3 job seekers will just skip applying if a job ad looks suspicious, while 1 in 4 will check the employers website. And 2% of respondents would consider contacting the company directly when they see a suspicious ad.  

And if the jobs are fake, that’s great—most candidates are ignoring suspicious postings OR checking the company website.  

But there’s something worrying here too, insofar as sometimes candidates may mistake real job ads for fake ones. At Raise, we get regular inquiries about our job ads and recruiters from candidates trying to verify their authenticity. And if only 2% of candidates try confirming job ads, that means for every candidate that verifies an ad, there could be dozens or hundreds of people who skip it incorrectly, assuming it is a fake.     

The impact on candidates 

Here’s what one Reddit user had to say about a scam job offer someone posted: 

“I’ve gotten this exact text with a different company name. So scammy. Worrying still, I’ve gotten others with role titles I have applied for but they do the scammy things like being from “robert”, and being from a company not mentioned in the job posting (I keep track). They even use an email address name@business.com, but it’s tricky to find out if the business is even legit. They’ll have a website and everything. I spend as much time vetting legitimacy of ads and responses as I do finding and applying. These have all come off of LinkedIn lately, so I’ve abandoned them as a source. I even filed a report with LinkedIn explaining the scammy activity I’ve wasted time on, and they replied by closing the case with an automated message that I should be only flagging each post or company in their post or company page.” 

This is just one example, but it shows some of what candidates are feeling when they apply to online jobs today. It is so easy for a user to abandon a platform, or company, or channel if they think it is suspicious—importantly, most applicants will never verify whether or not a job is real or fake—they’ll just move on to something more trustworthy.  

Again, from the candidate’s perspective, this makes a lot of sense. Think about the friction candidates now experience when job seeking online: 

1. Risk of giving away personal information to bad actors 
2. Competing against hundreds or thousands of other applicants, including from AI generated resumes with fake qualifications 
3. No feedback on how or why they don’t get interviews 
4. Getting added to email campaigns or job alerts that may or may not be relevant to them  

It’s so much easier to skip something even remotely suspicious than figure out if it is legit or not. Which makes it really important to show candidates that they can trust your company. 

What can you do about it? 

It’s still possible to source quality talent online, but there is no question the landscape is changing. From both the employer and candidate perspective, trust and legitimacy are the most important thing. Anything you can do to show candidate’s you’re sharing a legitimate opportunity is key. 

Here are a few steps you can take to improve your online talent searches: 

1. Make sure your job ads look credible and legitimate—include branding elements like logos whenever possible 
2. Lead candidates back to your career site from job boards where possible 
3. Include a contact number and disclaimer at the end of your job ads, telling people where they can verify your job posting 
4. Consider creating a blog or web page detailing how and why your company is legitimate. Many jobseekers will try googling “is company X legit” when they are unsure about a job opportunity. You may be able to capture that traffic on your website and convince them you are the real deal.  

Wrap 

With new technology comes new challenges, but also new opportunities. While it can be hard to convince candidates that your company is legitimate, it is also a chance to build connection and trust for your brand.  

The best part? If you can appear legitimate and credible to your candidate audience, it could give you a big edge when it comes to attracting talent compared to your competitors.