How to Verify Suspicious Employee replies

As jobseekers continue to communicate more and more digitally with prospective employers, it is important to recognise signs of suspicious activity when jobs are advertised and offered without first meeting the employer face-to-face. The following are common signs that communication from an employer might be fraudulent:

Communication is sent from a generic email domain.

Most legitimate recruitment efforts will come from an email that is associated with the company directly, not a Gmail or Yahoo account. Be sure to inspect the email address to make sure the company’s name is spelt and presented correctly, as fraudsters sometimes create look-alike email domains to fool jobseekers.

The employer is not easy to find when doing a web search.

While you do not need to be a detective to ensure the company is legitimate, it should be easy to search the company’s name on the web and link it to a physical address, phone number or social media presence.

The employer is asking you to communicate only with apps such as WhatsApp, Google Hangouts or Facebook Messenger.

Communication should be done through official avenues of communication; such as meeting face-to-face, through a phone call, or via email from a company-official domain. It’s easier for jobseekers to determine if a job offer is ‘too good to be true’ when using these methods.

The employer is asking you for copies of important personal identification information, such as driving licences, credit reports, banking information or social security information.

Never send personal identification information over the web to potential employers, especially prior to communicating with them in person or over the phone and going through the onboarding process.

The employer is communicating poorly in the language of use.

Recruiters typically should have fluency in the language you’re communicating in, so frequent grammar mistakes, misspellings or use of uncommon words should be a red flag.