I’ve been applying for jobs recently to look for some part-time work from home for the next few months, and encountered a lot of the silly stuff you’d expect: job ads with boomer energy, insultingly low pay, extreme demands, covert sales jobs, the works.
However, after applying for a few jobs (and hearing nothing, of course), I started to see a trend of specific job listings. They are always either staffing agencies or new locations for very small businesses with no online presence (the first red flag). The positions are usually for assistant work or “data entry clerk,” and the jobs ask to apply on the job site rather than to the company directly.
The ads offer good but not alarmingly high money, but do mention every possible benefit starting immediately and for even part-time workers. Things start to look pretty questionable when you send your application and you get an automatic email telling you to use a messaging service (either Signal or WhatsApp) to contact a hiring manager for an interview.
Things start to look real bad when you message with this “hiring manager,” who will identify themselves by their age (?!) and share a website for their “company” that isn’t Google-able and is revealed as fake after even minor scrutiny. They then start firing off questions about info easily available on your resume and talking about paid training. They will never respond to any of your questions, and end each volley of inquiries with things like “Understood?” or “Got that?”
At this point it’s pretty clear things aren’t what they seem. But if you stick around for the fourth round of questions they will ask about your banking information because they need to make sure it doesn’t have any communication issues with their payroll.
That’s about about as far as I’ve gone in an “interview,” but upon further searching there are dozens of these jobs listed, and their upfront presentation looks relatively legitimate. These are on every job/application site I’ve seen – Indeed, Monster, Ziprecruiter, and more.
I’m sure I’m not the only person who has seen this, but I haven’t seen any discussion of it anywhere. For what it’s worth, I contacted some of the businesses named in these ads and they seem completely unaware they’re being used in these scam ads. But I encourage folks to look out for these ads and tell anyone you know who might be desperate enough to fall into this trap.