Job seeker scams hit an all time high (for us)
Emergency Press Conference
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Urgent (and unfortunate) update: scammers are once again stealing our company name to take advantage of job seekers. Last week, we received over 100 questions, concerns, or friendly heads-up messages from people who were targeted.
Which means the true number of people targeted was probably 10-100x that.
This time around, the scammers are contacting via text/SMS and asking people to connect via WhatsApp or Telegram.
Hirewell:
❌ Does not use text/SMS to reach out to job seekers on initial outreach. (We use it primarily with people we have already had live contact with.)
❌Never uses WhatsApp to reach out to job seekers.
❌Never uses Telegram.
❌Never asks job seekers for money.
If you see messages asking for that, it isn’t us.
A few other notes:
👉All of our recruiters are on our website and LinkedIn. If you’re not sure if the outreach is legitimate, reach out to them there to verify. If you can’t find them there, it’s fake.
👉Watch the John Oliver segment on “pig butchering” to better understand how these scams work. (Here.) What is wild is that the scammers clicking the button and interacting with you are often in dire circumstances themselves, operating under duress from crime syndicates.
👉I absolutely hate text/SMS initial outreach for this very reason. You have absolutely no idea who is contacting you.
👉I used to say “if you someone tries to scam you, let me know.” But this time (let’s say for the next few weeks) if you know it’s a scam, just hit delete. I wasn’t exaggerating when I said over 100, it’s been an exhausting week just trying to answer everyone. We got the message! 😂
👉Block and report spam to you mobile carries. (It’s an easy button to click.)
👉There’s no Diana here. (Seems to be the most popular one.)
There are bigger victims than us in all this, but this time around we had:
(1) a client thought we were targeting their employees to headhunt (which we never do) because a couple of them received this scam.
(2) several negative Google reviews from people who didn’t realize it was a scam – they thought we were just harassing them. (Should go without saying, also something we don’t do.)
And I know we’re not the only firm dealing with this.
It’s annoying. I’m venting. Here’s to a better week. Kindly forward to any friends and stay safe out there.
You can follow me on LinkedIn here and Twitter here. Join the discussion on this LinkedIn post (or give it a 👍) here.