A Scam To Catch Job Hunters

I am currently hunting for a job.  I received a nice surprise the other day.  After many months of looking, I was contacted for a position of the type I wanted.  There were several e-mails sent back and forth which culminated in a questionnaire from the company – screener questions.  I responded to these questions, just normal interview questions, and returned the questionnaire.  The next thing I knew I had a return email from them saying that I was selected for the position and would receive an offer letter to sign. I was never really interviewed.

Almost simultaneously to this. My brother-in-law, who works for the Better Business Bureau (BBB), sent me an article about how the 2nd biggest scam now is that of falsely offering a job, sometimes with a very convincing offer letter.  My brother-in-law was nice enough to check this out for me.  He probably did a simple Whois on the domain name but had the foresight to do so.  It turned out that the domain the scammers were using was created about 2 weeks before I received the letter from them (they used the real company name followed by “careers” and ending in .com – so something like <companyname>careers.com).  It turned out when I investigated further that the company itself had a careers site, which was a subdomain of its main site (careers.<companyname>.com).  Needless to say, I did not correspond further with this purported company.  I did contact the real company and suggested they may want to get the domain in question taken down.

I continue to apply for jobs and hopefully will not come up against this again.

If you are looking for a job or if you are hiring, please be aware that this is happening and check for it.  If you are hiring, it is probably good to do a quick search on your company domain every so often so that job seekers who are looking at your company will not fall into this trap.
 
UPDATE:  While searching I discovered another job scam (a little more stealthy this time).  It saddens me that along with the burden of seeking a job, one is doubly burdened with the need to research each and every job posting as a possible scam.  Some are more blatant than others.  It is just a sad state of affairs.

A quick search got me these links about job scams:
https://consumer.ftc.gov/all-scams/job-scams
https://www.topresume.com/career-advice/job-scam-warning-signs
https://consumer.ftc.gov/consumer-alerts/2021/11/looking-new-job-watch-out-scams
https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/finance/scam-alert-how-to-spot-a-bogus-job
https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/finding-a-job/how-to-know-if-a-job-is-a-scam
https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/finding-a-job/job-scams
https://www.howtogeek.com/783231/how-to-spot-fake-jobs-and-recruiters/
https://www.themuse.com/advice/spot-avoid-job-scams