Most job seekers today use online job boards such as Monster.com, CareerBuilder, or HotJobs as primary methods for finding positions. Many upload their resume to the resume databases and include their address, telephone number, and email addresses. It is important to remember when placing your resume and contact information on the Internet to do as much as possible to protect your privacy. For people intent on doing evil, all it takes to have access to this wealth of personal information is to purchase a membership to one of these sites.
Many job seekers report receiving contact from companies seeking commission-only sales representatives to sell insurance, household products, or to get involved in multi-level marketing schemes. In addition to these quasi-legitimate employers making contact with you, you should be careful of other mail that comes into your in-box. The following is an email that I received yesterday. Let's take a look at it.
Dear Prospective Representative,
INVITATION TO TREAT AS AN EXCLUSIVE INTERNATIONAL REPRESENTATIVE.
I am Mr. Chao Chin, MANAGING DIRECTOR OF XIANGON ARTS AND CRAFTS IMPORT/EXPORT. CORP. CHINA.
We are a group of business men who deal on Art and Craft and export
into the Canada And the United States of America.
We are searching for representatives who can help us establish a medium of getting to our customers in the Canada/America, Australia and Europe as well as making payments through you to us. Presently, we are faced with some problems most especially with our payment methods as mostclients we have in Canada And the United State of America prefer to pay us with cheque rather than cash.We find it very cumbersome in accepting such payments due to the new monetary policy in our banking systems here in China and this is crippling our business.
We have numerous customers in the Canada/America, Australia and Europe and we cannot afford to loose them due to this problem.We hereby request for your hand in partnership to act as our payment Representatives , to act as our agentss who shall receive payment on
our behalf from our customers in the United States,Canada,Australia and Europe.
You shall be entitled to 10% of each payment you receive on our behalf
and this shall be a continuous process.Please if you are interested in
transacting business with us, we will be very glad.
Please contact us for more information.
Subject to your satisfaction you will be given the opportunity to negotiate your mode of which we will pay you for your services as our representative in Canada and the United States of America.
Please to indicate your interests please send to us the following informations about yourself.
1.Full names
2.Full contact address( not P. O. Box).
3.Present occupation (Company And position)
4.Phone number/fax
5.Marital Status
6.Age
7.Sex
Upon receipt of this requested information I shall provide you with the necessary details of how to become our representative.
Thanks In advance
Yours sincerely,
Mr. chao chin.
Managing Director,
Xiangon Arts and Crafts.
China.
I have left in all misspellings, mechanical errors, and spacing goofs so you can see how this arrived. It is obvious this message is a scam but some messages that have similar intents are much more sophisticated, slick and professional in appearance. Senders of these messages are preying on people who are potentially unemployed and in need of income. There are several ways of identifying scam messages so you don't become a victim.
First of all, no true potential employer would ever ask for the items listed in numbers 5-7 because they are in violation of the Equal Employment Opportunity laws. That alone should make you delete this message immediately. You should never provide a Social Security number, driver's license number, passport number, bank account number or any other identifying information to any potential employer until you have a written job offer in hand and you are completing your paperwork in the human resources department. At that point, your Social Security number will be needed for tax purposes and it's possible your drivers license number will be required. If you are going to have your check direct deposited, you will need to complete a form for that with your bank account number. Beyond that situation, protect this information to the death!
The second indicator of a scam is a mention of an easy way to make money. This email asks for the recipient (you) to launder money. What actually happens is you would release your bank account number at some point in the interview and your funds would disappear. Several job seekers experienced loss of thousands of dollars a few years ago when scammers originally started using the job boards for trolling for victims. Most of the job boards have tightened up and are doing a better job of policing users but it is still incumbent on you, the job seeker, to be aware and very, very cautious.