HR SEO : Online Candidate Attraction Specialists

Online scamming is as abundant as ever - and though some of you may be well versed in dodging such scams as easily as you type or perform searches in google - there is a margin of the public so fresh to browsing online (and as desperate for a lifeline as they are fresh) who are being taken for a ride by criminals lurking on career sites and job boards.

The MO is simple. The racketeers scan through resumes posted on job portals and send proposals to `eligible’ candidates, especially people who are new to the internet and conducting business online. They also conduct telephonic and video interviews with the candidates who respond to the offer. It is a polished and subtle con which they have down to an art form!

After a few days, they send an offer letter to the candidates and ask them to pay up to cash as `upfront’ charges - sometimes this can be thousands of dollars or pounds. Once the money is transferred to a specific bank account, the candidate receives a `BHC visa payment receipt’, `UK work permit’ as well as a `query letter’ from British Deputy Commission, Mumbai. The company asks for another cash deposit as processing fee. Once that’s paid, there is no response from the other side. It’s then that the candidate realises he/she has been duped.

An official in the British trade office laughs at the possibility of offers, saying: “There is a severe job scarcity in the UK. I see little chance of companies scouting for high-skilled labour in India or Africa.”

Vaishali (name changed) went through both processes of recruitment and realised she was cheated. She has lodged a complaint. The case of Krishna Murthy is different. A fresh mechanical engineering graduate, Krishna Murthy got a job offer in State Oil Company, United Kingdom. He paid the initial upfront charges, but grew suspicious when the placement company asked for an additional amount. He wanted the money back, but the contact was lost since then. The site PDVSA, through which the letter allegedly came, belongs to a Venezuela-based oil company.

Krishna Murthy’s advocate Murali Mohan said he had received a couple of such cases. “They had registered themselves with job portals and were either just out of college or had been issued pink slips. It’s not easy to get back the money. Even if a complaint is lodged, it will be difficult for the local police to investigate the case till it reaches a logical end. The only way is to be cautious.”

It’s in this spirit that Employersjobs.com makes such a vigilant effort to quality assure by eye each and every employer profile that signs up with us. Scammers are deleted on sight and we have a report employer/job button on all profiles where suspicious activities can be reported. The only way to defeat these fraudulent bottom feeders is to push education and knowledge about the phenomenon onto our readership and jobseekers as is possible by reporting and news items.

Additionally with our HR-SEO strategies and mechanisms in place we attract an educated and familial section of quality candidates online - this makes us fortunate in that we rarely encounter cases where scams have happened using our job board, and when it does occur we handle the matter severely by deleting the offending profiles and adding their information onto our blacklisted employers. These employers are handed over to the relevant authorities but often their details are fake and ip’s untraceable. So jobseekers be aware - and scammers BEWARE because we’re onto you!