The Creative Ways of the Job Scam Perpetrators

In a job market that's as short on jobs as the current one, you can expect job scam perpetrators to really try hard. Only, they don't really have to try hard these days. Everyone's so desperate for a job that they will seemingly believe anything. The Better Business Bureau believes that 2011 has been a record of sorts. Job scam perpetrators have never been as relentless.

The best way to stay safe from these efforts by the scammers to defraud you would be to look at as many examples of these attempts as possible so that you can recognize how they operate. Another way to stay clear of these would be to look up every job offer you come by on the Internet. If it's a scam, someone will have said something about it.

You mustn't think that every job scam is just about asking you for a little money up front. Scammers can put a lot of effort into every job scam that they pull.

For instance, consider this job offer - a large hotel corporation wishes to hire HR managers for several new properties that they plan to put up, and the only need is a good background in HR management. This sounds legitimate enough, doesn't it?

They call you in for an interview locally, and once you go there, they seem very eager to give you the job. Only, they want you to wire transfer money to their account for airplane tickets to another city where the job actually is.

There are two things that should send up red flags here - no company is going to actually ask you for airplane ticket money. And certainly they aren't going to ask you to wire it. People who fell for this job scam also report that the interview was quite unconvincing. It was in a small, cheap, makeshift place, and the person conducting the interview didn't really seem to know what he was talking about. But they were so desperate for a job that they didn't mind.

Another kind of job scam ingeniously tries to get your personal information and makes no demand for money. The scammers just put out a job advertisement with a great pay package, and on the day of the interview, hire a reasonably nice office, go through the motions of an interview, and then, in the end, tell you that they need your personal information. Since this is for a job, you figure that they probably need the information to conduct a background check or something.

You just have to remember that job interviews never ever come with requests for personal information - certainly not credit card information. Whatever information regular jobs ask for, they ask for it only when you're actually hired and are actually working in the office.