Madam – With our high unemployment rate, fraudsters are increasingly targeting South African job seekers who are desperate to find employment.
Many job seekers enter the market looking for new opportunities and careers. As scam artists are opportunistic, they craft their attacks around what is typically known to be a peak job hunting season.
Unfortunately, in their desperate attempt to find a job, vulnerable job seekers offer up personal, yet irrelevant information to fraudsters posing as hiring companies or recruiters. The most typical strategy used by fraudsters is to trap job seekers by posting job advertisements on websites or in the newspapers requesting CV’s to be sent.
These fraudsters use brands of well known job websites in their correspondence with job seekers, thereby making the applicant think that the job offer is from a legitimate source linked to the targeted jobs website.
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Some use well-known companies brand’s as a front, while they pretend to be hiring for the established organisation. Job seekers apply extra caution when applying to jobs that have been advertised on free job listing or classified sites, as it is often easier for fraudsters to advertise their scam jobs on these platforms as there is seldom a validation or moderation process in place.
Job applicants should check out the companies before submitting any person or banking details to recruiters. In any event, regardless of where the job is being advertised, if a job seeker is informed that they have been successful in their application without having undergone any prior screening or interview process, then it is highly likely that the position is not real.
In addition, if anyone ever asks a job seeker to send them money when applying for a job for any reason, be careful!
Marina Smal
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