Beware of Job? Why Sometimes You Need to Be Cautious When Applying for Work

How closely do you look at an advertisement when you apply for a job? It doesn't matter whether you're applying to one of the nationally recognised recruitment agencies or for a job at a local supermarket, a certain amount of diligence is can be helpful. There have been instances where scammers will set up a fake job advertisement solely for the purpose of capturing the personal information of the applicants. It can be rather easy to be caught out by such tricks, and before you know it, unknown parties can be in possession of your name, your date of birth, all your contact details and even scanned copies of your ID. So how can you tell when a job advertisement doesn't feel quite right?

Where Did You Find the Advertisement?

Did you find the advertisement on a known job website or was it somewhere more obscure? There are a number of free classified websites where anyone can post a listing and the information is not necessarily verified. A larger employment website is more likely to verify information before posting the advertisement. They are also likely to carry multiple listings from the same company, making it less likely that a scammer can attempt to list something on behalf of one of the website's existing clients. Finding the job listing on an obscure website does not conclusively mean that the advertisement is fake, although you should check a number of different job websites, and perhaps the job will also have been listed on a more established employment website.

What Does the Advertisement Look Like?

When an advertisement purports to be from a major company or recruitment agency, a certain amount of cross checking is required. Check employment websites for other listings from the same group. Do all the advertisements have comparable formatting and application processes? For example, if a recruitment agency normally provides a job reference number, the name of a contact person and their telephone number and/or email address, then this will probably be uniform across all their job listings. If the possibly dubious job advertisement does not provide as much information as other listings from the same group, then this can be a cause for concern.

Should You Make Contact?

If you still have doubts about the legitimacy of a job posting, then feel free to contact the company in question. This might require a telephone call or email to the human resources department of the company or to the state branch of the recruitment company. Look these contact details up yourself, as opposed to using the details on the possibly dubious job listing. Succinctly state your concerns and query whether or not the advertisement is legitimate. You should be given the all clear to proceed with your application, and on the off chance that the advertisement was listed by scammers, the company would be glad to know that their name is being used in such a way.

It certainly pays to exercise a bit of caution when applying for a job. After all, you want to make sure that you're applying to work in a great job in your chosen sector, instead of worrying about the privacy of your personal information.