How to stay safe from Fake Job Alerts

I encourage you to be wary of emails that

• ask your personal, non-work related information such as Credit Card numbers or Bank information over phone or email
• do not provide valid contact information
• ask for monetary transactions, money-transfers, or payment for any employment/recruitment related purpose
• promise emigration and ask for money to process visa, etc

Before you respond to such emails, I suggest you to do a discreet enquiry and be sure to verify the legitimacy of the employer with whom you are interacting.

How can you check if an employer or a recruiter is a fraud or genuine?
Below are a few things we can suggest you could try (you are encouraged to exhaust all possible ways, not just be limited to the following) to ascertain the legitimacy of the employers who contact you:

1. Have you heard the name of the company before?
2. Do you remember applying to this particular company or did the offer come unsolicited?
3. Does the domain name in their email address match the name of the company? For example if you get a job offer from XYZ Petroleum Company, and their email ID is xyzpetroleum@gmail.com or xyzpetroleum@yahoo.com then it’s a fake company. Real companies use their own domain name on their email, and do not use free email providers.
4. Search on Yahoo, Google or MSN to see if the company has a genuine website. Also check if other people have reported that the employer has been involved in job scams previously.
5. Note the country that company claims to be working in, and offering you a job in. Most fake companies offer scam jobs in Africa, Middle East, Asia, South America, and to a much smaller extent, US or Western Europe.
6. Find out if you need to pay the company for anything. If they ask you to pay - at first or even after some time - for visa, work permit or for travel, chances are it's a fake company.