Beware of Job offer scams

While someone close to me is hunting for a new Job, I noticed that almost 50% of the Job offers she looked at or got offers from were scams. This is very alarming and not always easy to discern for people that are not very internet savvy.

Since this seems to be very common, especially for remote jobs during the global pandemic, I thought I’d share how I go about, and more importantly, how you could go about determining between real and fake offers and what some alarm signs are. These are not only general tips but also contain real tools to help you put on your Sherlock Holmesian hat and investigate.

1. The salary: Does it sound too good to be true, fully remote job and pays well? Be skeptical.
2. You get an unsolicited e-mail or SMS offering you a job based on your resume on e.g. LinkedIn.
3. The email comes from a free provider like gmail, yahoo, etc. even though the company has a website. Always request to get a mail through the official company mail. Some smaller companies, like mom-and-pop shops may work like that, but these usually don’t offer remote jobs.
4. The email has grammatical errors – always a sign if “the” is missing in the sentences. “It is required for Application process that you fill out form attached.” instead of “It is required for the Application process that you fill out the attached form.”
5. The mail account does not exist, or is a “catch-all” account: Head over to https://email-checker.net/validate and put in the mail address you received the offer from or that you are supposed to send your resume to.
6. You receive an e-mail from an address that looks official but not quite so. Examples:
   1. A Job offer from Abbottlee, but the URL in all communications is Abbotlee.com (real-life example)
   2. An offer for a job at McKesson, the company website is www.mckesson.com, but the mail comes from mckessonmail.careers – in this case the website (don’t klick it please) just has a from for you to submit your resume. The site is not encrypted and is registered with a different registrar than the real company website.
      (real-life example)
7. The company is not registered. In the case of the Abbottlee scam for example: On the fake site, it says they are located in the US, Ohio and Canada, Vancouver. Find out where the company supposedly is located and look for a company registration portal, like https://beta.canadasbusinessregistries.ca/search or https://businesssearch.ohiosos.gov/ in the example of abbottlee. Both versions of their “name” do not have a single entry in the Ohio or Canadian Business registers.
8. To check who owns a website, copy the URL without the https and www parts and head over to https://lookup.icann.org/lookup – here you can enter the URL and see who owns it. Real companies will not hide their data behind privacy shields and you will see contact data for the site. You can also check where the website is registered (Registrar). If the website you know to be real is with a different provider than the one you got mails from, it’s very likely a scam.
9. And of course a biggy: They want you to pay something. Use your personal account to buy merchandise that you will get later reimbursed from the company, buy gift cards, etc.

Some examples of Real vs Fake