How to spot a job scam before it costs you

The economics of a job scam

Understanding what the fraudster wants makes the patterns obvious. There are only three things worth stealing from a job applicant: money, identity documents, and access to your bank account for moving other people's money.

Every scam is therefore a route to one of those three. If you ask yourself, at each step, "which of the three is this heading towards", the pitch usually becomes transparent well before any harm is done.

Signals that should stop you immediately

• Any request for payment. Training fees, equipment deposits, background check costs, visa processing. Legitimate employers pay for all of these.
• A job offer without a real interview, or an interview conducted entirely over a messaging app.
• Being sent a cheque or transfer to buy your own equipment. The payment is later reversed and the money you forwarded is gone.
• A request for bank details, national identity numbers or copies of your passport before a written contract exists.
• Correspondence from a free email address using a company name, or a domain registered a few weeks ago.
• Pressure to decide immediately, or a warning not to discuss the offer with anyone.

Softer signals worth checking

Not every warning sign is conclusive. Small employers do sometimes interview quickly, and legitimate roles occasionally have vague adverts. Treat the following as prompts to verify rather than to walk away.

• A salary far above the market rate for the described work.
• A job description with no specific duties — "flexible tasks, work from home, immediate start".
• A company with a website but no traceable staff, address or registration.
• A recruiter who cannot name the client, or names one that has no such vacancy.
• Interview questions that focus on your finances rather than your ability.

How to verify in five minutes

1. Search the company name plus the word "scam" or "review".
2. Look up the company in the national companies register. Registration is not proof of legitimacy, but absence is meaningful.
3. Find the vacancy on the employer's own careers page. If it is not there, contact them through details you found yourself — never through the ones in the email.
4. Check the recruiter's professional profile for history and mutual connections.
5. Check that the email domain matches the company domain exactly. Look closely for substituted characters.

If you have already engaged

• Stop all contact and do not send further documents or money.
• If you sent bank details, call your bank immediately and tell them it was fraud.
• If you sent identity documents, report it to your national identity-theft or fraud reporting service and consider a credit freeze.
• Report the listing to whichever platform hosted it, so it can be removed for everyone else.
• Do not be embarrassed into silence. These operations are professional, they target people under financial pressure, and reporting is what shortens their lifespan.

What we do about it here

CareerHub reviews employer accounts before their listings go live, removes any listing that asks candidates for payment, and never charges job seekers for anything. Listings sourced from partner boards carry a badge showing where they came from and link to the employer's own application page, so you can always see where your details are going.

If you see something on this site that looks wrong, please report it through the contact page. We would rather review a hundred false alarms than leave one fraudulent listing up.