With such little awareness amongst candidates, it’s important that recruiters take the lead in helping job seekers to stay safe when looking for their next roleToday’s job market is flourishing and there’s an abundance of opportunities available to workers looking for their next move. But, as they increasingly use online job sites, social networks and search engines to find the next step for their career, this can make it even easier for scammers to hide amongst genuine postings and take advantage of unsuspecting candidates.
In fact, CV-Library’s latest research found that candidates aren’t savvy enough when it comes to spotting the signs of a job scam, with 72.1% admitting they wouldn’t recognise the signs and a worrying 71.3% assuming that any job posted online is legitimate.
With such little awareness amongst candidates, it’s important that recruiters take the lead in helping job seekers to stay safe when looking for their next role. Below, I explain what the recruitment industry should be doing to help protect candidates:
Explain the signs of a job scam
The first step is to understand the potential signs of a job scam and educate candidates on these. Some examples to flag include personal email addresses i.e. joebloggs@hotmail.com, regular spelling and grammatical mistakes, unrealistic salaries, a job offer without an interview, extortionate DBS costs and premium rate phone numbers for interviews. Informing job hunters of these signs will ultimately help them to become more diligent in their job search, while also positioning you as a go-to recruiter that values the safety of their candidates.
Work together to raise awareness
Overall awareness of online job scams and the tricks criminals use to execute a con is essential to combating this crime. The recruitment industry coming together with the aim of protecting candidates could go some way to achieving this. At CV-Library, for example, we have been working with SAFERJobs, an organisation dedicated to educating the public on the very real risk of online job scams, to help raise awareness amongst job hunters on spotting potential scams.
Safeguard candidates
At CV-Library we use automated and manual tools to ensure every job posting is legitimate, but there are other platforms that fraudsters use to lure their victims and it’s critical that job hunters are educated on the risk of online job scams. Encouraging job hunters to use trusted sites, and keep the signs of a scam in mind when looking for work online is key.
Following the above advice will help safeguard your candidates but also ensure you remain reputable.
By Lee Biggins, founder and managing director of CV-Library.
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