Hiring fraud is the worst.
Seeing your own headshot as a part of a scam is creepy.
Recently I learned that some fraudster out there, using a Gmail address, was impersonating me. Supposedly I was recruiting for a “VP AI & Sovereign Cloud Architecture” role. This person DMed me on LinkedIn to verify that the person sending them the email and my LinkedIn profile were one and the same.
This also happened a few months ago. A job seeker DMed me on LinkedIn, and even included a screenshot of the email they received. That email had a relatively convincing, although heavily AI-ed, long email body. But what was most disturbing in that email was the email signature:
Yes, that’s my photo. Yikes. Creepy. Do not like at all.
Look, hiring fraud sucks, and it impacts everyone: me, for being skeeved out that someone out there is using my likeness to try and fraud people. The job seeker, for earnestly seeking a new role, but being met with risky proposals. And as a recruiter, I can tell you: the companies.
I’ve spotted fraudulent candidates when I’m recruiting. I’ve spoken with recruiters who have said the same. I’ve been keeping an eye on news cases around fraud in hiring. One interesting fraud candidate scheme, which has fleeced HUNDREDS of US companies: laptop farms.
If you’re in for a big deep dive, read about this, the 7th and 8th sentences of U.S.-based “Laptop Farmers” secured in last 5 months, as part of ongoing efforts to disrupt a revenue-scheme by North Korea. (Yes, that is a mouthful, and yes… you read that correctly.)
As you can see, as a recruiter and career coach, I have a lot to say about fraud in hiring. Tech evolving has amazing upsides, and downsides. One of the downsides of easily accessible and high powered AI and automation tools is that it can be quite easy to scheme either side of the process: as a “candidate” seeking a role, or as a “company,” seeking to engage with job seekers.
Fortunately, most job scams are pretty obvious, or become obvious relatively quickly. Here are a few ways to identify you might be seeing a scam:
You receive an email message from a Gmail or Yahoo address. Recruiters will only contact you from a company domain. This is how the job seekers who DMed me became suspicious about the emails.
You receive a message that sounds unusually lucrative or easy. I get texts ALL THE TIME asking me if I want to make between $15 - $700 / hour for remote-based work. What kind of range is that??
You receive a message from a recruiter and they quickly ask for personal information, such as your home address or Social Security Number. You'll never need to provide a SSN to a recruiter. You'll only provide a SSN on an I9 form after you've accepted a job and you're onboarding.
You receive a message on LinkedIn who claims to be a recruiter, but their profile is unusually sparse.
You are contacted about a company, Google that company, but there isn't a very substantial web presence.
Have you seen any weird, fraudulent activity in hiring? Leave a comment and let me know. Stay safe out there!
Talk soon,
Nicole
