HOW TO IDENTIFY JOB SCAM (I)
with
Moruf Kolawole Nasir
(Experienced HR professional)
nmkolawole@gmail.com; info@jarushub.com
Just last week Friday at a cocktail with the President/Chairman of Council, CIPMN, the plaguing issue of ‘Job/Employment Scam’ was again raised. Although the President made known to the gathering, the fact that CIPMN governing council is aware of this and working towards guarding the noble profession of Human Resources Practice against the dents these ungodly people are rubbing on the profession; we cannot totally rule out the continued existence of this fraudulent trade where the government of the day takes lead in extorting money from job seekers. These informed today’s edition of HR Desk.
Irrespective of various articles and eye openers on the activities of these scammers, truth is, when frustration sets in, job seekers naturally fall for some of these frauds and some of them have so package their nefarious trade that it is a bit difficult to indict them of operating a scam recruitment outfit. This said, I have come up with the following tests to subject any vacancy/recruitment process/outfits or invitation to, before honouring such invite or applying for such jobs. I will take these in few parts; starting first with how to identifying Scam Vacancies. Below are eleven identifiers:
THE ADVERT PLATFORM: The first medium of contact between the scammer and you (job seeker) is through the advert. Be wary of the platform of the advert. If you are seeking a cleaning or gate keeping job, you may not mind applying for openings advertised on an A4 paper or chalkboard around your neighborhood, but if it is a graduate’s job you seek, keep off from adverts from such platforms. Again, that an advert is published on the pages of newspapers is not a guarantee of its authenticity. Infact a cluster of such dubious vacancies adverts are regular routine on the pages of most of our major dailies.
THE ADVERT TITLE: You may be wondering, what this has got to do with scam vacancies, trust me it has a lot to do with it. Whenever the title of a vacancy is in any way persuading, appealing, encouraging or enticing you to apply for a job; then watch out for fraud. Here you see “VERY URGENT VANCANCIES WITH COMPETITIVE SALARY” “100 OIL AND GAS JOB OPENINGS NOW” “OUR CLIENT AN OIL AND GAS FIRM IS URGENTLY IN NEED OF FRESH & EXPERIENCE GRADUATES”, and many others like that.
THE CONTENT OF THE ADVERT: Many of these suspicious vacancies are made so generic to accommodate as many as possible unsuspecting victims. The advert most times never has minimum requirements and job descriptions. Where job descriptions exist they are so vague that everybody fits in. Apart from this, some are so gullible that they advertised for twenty unrelated positions at once on a tiny spot corner of the pages of the dailies or in whichever platform they chose to. And if it is online they list countless number of openings without detail descriptions of roles and their requirements.
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THE PACKAGES FOR THE JOB: Whenever vacant advert flaunts big salary and mouth watering packages, please take off. We all understand the unemployment rate of the country now than for someone to entice people to apply for jobs. That is not to say some companies don’t publish their package alongside their advert. The difference between the genuine companies and the fake ones here is that the genuine companies reveal their identity and in cases where the recruitment is being handled by a recruitment firm, the recruitment firm has a face. If the employer is faceless (e.g. ‘our client’) and the recruiting firm has no searchable (internet wise) location and the position promises mouth watering package, then something is wrong somewhere.
THE METHOD OF APPLICATION: Despite the increasing rate of unemployment in Nigeria, Job application has been made so easy that you can now apply through SMS courtesy these ‘recruitment firms’ of questionable characters. Truth is no genuine company will invite you for interview on the bases of you sending your name sex and age via SMS to them. Serious companies want to screen you based on what you have to offer which could be accessed through your CV. This is not to say that all such platforms are scams, especially for road side marketers. If you don’t mind marketing drugs on the road, advert with such mode of application may get you one. Another is to ask you to come in person to a suspicious location, to this, I warn, shine your eyes; they are likely big time scammers.
To be continued next week…
[…] continuation of our last week’s article on ways of identifying job scams, below is the concluding part of the ways. Meanwhile, our subsequent article will be on how to […]