London, United Kingdom, January 2010 – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -
In the hands of fraudsters, job search have become a nightmare for both the candidates and job sites alike. Job scams are so effective that it is today nearly impossible to catch it up until the damage is done.
Job scams are as old as jobs themselves and consequently, candidates are quite scared when they starts looking for new job. Usually, the lower and middle class who wants to make progress are always ready to take a financial risk involved in the offers of the scammers. Now, jobs scammers not anymore only target countries where the majority are living below the poverty line but also country with high economic growth.
What is job scams?
Job scams is a fake job ad circulated by fraudsters that seek to lure job seekers to give up personal data. There are different types of scams: some of them offer a guaranteed employment within a fixed time period against a deposit of fee (also known as CV “Blasting”.) Candidates pay money to have their resumes sent to employers, but what the fraudsters do is that they spam thousands of employers and industry websites with their details. Others recruiting companies offer a money back guarantee but only few job seekers receive a refund. Some time scammers advertise a job on the behalf of a real company and they ask candidates to send money for a work visa and/or travel costs to an agent who works on their behalf.
Those criminals use free e-mail or web mail accounts such as hotmail or yahoo, but a genuine employers or agencies never use a free e-mail service, they all use their own domain name. It is easy to check a genuine e-mail address or domain name by extracting the text after the @ and add www as a prefix to test the address in a browser. If genuine it will show the web site of the company from who a person is supposed to belong to.
The question is: How to avoid these types of scams?
- First, a genuine employer or recruitment agency will never ask money for visa processing or travel costs.
- Never give your personal bank account or credit card numbers and never forward or transfer money to an employer.
- Look at the job advertisements very carefully.
- Ask yourself some relevant and pertinent questions such as: Is it the company that is directly employing?
- Find out more about the company, telephone or emails.
- Never give your social security number.
- Never agree to have funds or paychecks direct deposited to any of your accounts by an employer.
- Do not deal with any person who is not an authorized representative of a licensed agency.
- Do not pay any placement fee.
- Do not deal with training centers or travel agencies who promise overseas employment.
- Do not accept a tourist visa.
- Do not be enticed by ads or brochures requiring you to reply to a PO Box.
For latest information’s on Internet employment frauds check those Websites:
www.worldprivacyforum.org/jobscamreportpt1.html
With the tips above, we hope you won’t become an other victim of illegal recruiters. Don’t fall for such offers and don’t waste your money by paying such companies. Make sure, all the time that those companies are credible and remember that: There is “no shortcut to accomplishment”.
About HostedJob Ltd:
HostedJob is a UK company which has the ability to supply Hoteliers to all overseas assignments. Specialising in International Hospitality Recruitment, their services are open to all sections of the leisure industry (e.g. hotels, luxury palaces, spa resorts, restaurants, cruise lines, airlines and other related organizations). Their objective is to assist companies in their recruitment of skilled candidates, using an extensive network of contacts to source individuals quickly and efficiently from any country worldwide and from the widest possible pool of people.
Good points, I think I will definitely subscribe! I’ll go and read some more! What do you see the future of this being?
There is 4 scenarios published by http://www.demos.co.uk in 2007. They generate ideas to improve politics and policy, and give people more power over their lives. Their vision is a society of free and powerful citizens.
Scenario I
Google enters recruitment, sending shockwaves through the
corporate world, recruitment companies and sites online.
Recruitment companies and advertisers were worried when the
government set up its own free-to-use site in 2010, but soon realised
that the real dynamism and competition would come from the Web
2.0 businesses as companies voted with their feet.
Now that everyone’s CV is online, the searchability provided by
Google means that employers can find employees more easily than
ever before. More than this though, they can also find out about each
other. In this brave new world of technology everything seems to be
available online: job seekers’ personal lives, employees’ experiences of
work, and every detail imaginable about companies themselves.
All this puts powerful graduates in the driving seat, allowing them
to decide who they work for based on brands, ethics and generous
working conditions as well as their basic salary. The backlash against
immigration has also helped force wages up in the burgeoning service
sector, gradually helping to close the gap between ‘lovely’ and ‘lousy’
jobs. Recruiters laugh that it is employees with all the power – not them
or even their clients. They adapt to the challenge of new technology
by trading on personal relationships, tacit judgement and ‘the human
touch’ in the recruitment process. Some firms re-brand themselves as
‘HR solutions’ providers, taking over all the HR operations of their
clients.
Scenario II
After 20 years of unprecedented growth there are plenty of jobs to go
around. Many felt that the government’s ‘open door’ immigration
policy would see job opportunities drying up, but Britain is reaping
the benefits of glamorization and its economy is booming.
Generation Y. They confounded the expectations that they would
grow out of their attitudes to work later in life. They look for
‘experiences’ in work – and are willing to go somewhere else if their
employer stops providing them. For many, the idea of a career has
become an anachronism.
Meanwhile, the older generation dips in and out of the job market,
topping up their pensions with part-time work and one-off jobs.
‘Grey recruitment’ is a lucrative – and important – business.
In the 2010s technology continued to improve, becoming more
reliable, with new software providing a reassuring level of privacy for
job seekers. But in many ways companies are using it to do the same
old things quicker and more efficiently.
With a strong economy, a tight labour market, and only
incremental improvements in technology, it seems that everyone is
relying on recruitment companies. Margins have risen back to the
levels of the early 2000s, as companies have little trouble trading on
their knowledge, networks and expertise.
Scenario III
The economy has taken a downturn and there are fewer jobs to go
around, but immigration has continued apace. There is high
competition for all jobs, and the market is flooded with graduates
who have high expectations but few opportunities to use their skills.
The flexible nature of the labour market means that retention is
more a concern for employees than employers, and once in work
people are battling to keep their jobs. The autonomy of employees
that was familiar in the early 2000s is all but a distant memory. Now,
investing in skills is a low priority for employers. They can choose
what to spend their money on, while still reeling in the best people,
who remain on the outside, desperate for work.
The initial excitement about Web 2.0 and complicated database
management tools has subsided. Filtering people through the Internet
was a short-lived phenomenon. Employers reported more failure
than success from this approach, and have almost without exception
shifted away from it, citing the human touch as the most important
element in recruitment.
But despite the technology threat waning, recruitment agencies
continue to face uncertainty. The downturn in the economy means
more companies are developing tighter business strategies, and
investing in in-house recruitment is an important result of this trend.
Those companies that continue to use agencies are operating in a
cash-strapped environment, and have succeeding in driving down
agency costs significantly.
Now, recruitment agency margins are lower than ever and they are
forced to rely on repeat business for survival. The client is king in this
market, and relationships with candidates – once considered
important to nurture – are now two-a-penny. Determined to remain
competitive despite a difficult economic situation, business is
demanding more and more accountability from recruitment agencies
forcing them to prove their value over time. Those that can
demonstrate this value survive. The others, those that offer short-term,
quick-fix and often inappropriate solutions, disappear without
a trace.
Scenario IV
The economy may not be booming but technology entrepreneurs
certainly aren’t worried. The low-cost nature of their business means
that they remain relatively unaffected by the change.
Web 2.0 was just the beginning. Now, technology in recruitment is
so developed that HR numbers have fallen dramatically. Some believe
that within a decade the HR industry will have disappeared. Powerful
search engines and the shift in people’s lives online allow employers to
vet personalities before considering people for a job. Work, life,
relationships – all of it has moved online, giving employers far more
than a CV to judge their candidates on. Now, people laugh that their
biggest privacy concern was once the doomed government ID cards
scheme.
Rateyouremployee.com is feared by all. This site, developed in
2008, sorts the winners from the losers and has the power to make or
break careers. Employers snigger at the thought that Vault was once
an influential information source. It’s still there, somewhere in the
depths of the Internet, but few employees bother to rate their
employer – gratitude for having work and fear of being caught are
adequate disincentives.
Employees and trade unions have tried to fight back, still banging
the drum about employee rights, but employers reign all powerful,
and really don’t need to listen to anyone else. Some say the days of
trade unions are numbered, already their influence has waned
considerably and younger employees, so accustomed to the ‘way
things are’, struggle to understand what they were once for.
Recruitment companies were initially slow to react to new
technologies. The ones that survived embraced it and employed
Internet entrepreneurs to help them integrate technology into their
business model. Now, IT graduates dominate in recruitment, as
finding new ways to use the web and advising business about online
recruitment have become core recruitment practices. Traditional
recruiters work more closely with business, performing a whole new
set of functions including HR consultancy and employee
management.