Job scams thrive amid hiring slowdown & layoffs

Bengaluru: In March this year, imposters masquerading as employees of a reputed recruitment firm published multiple job openings for a renowned ITeS company for Singapore postings. They created a fake website with the company logo, set up an office in Kochi to gain credibility, even conducted two rounds of interviews and issued offer letters on fake letterheads. Selected candidates, some 30-odd of them, were asked to pay up between ₹1 lakh and ₹3 lakh in agency fees, visa applications and even for a cultural assimilation programme. Once the money was collected, the 'recruiters' disappeared. The racket came to light when the victims reached out to senior executives of the real recruitment firm - only to find that they had no connection with the fake agency whatsoever.

Job scams - where fraudsters pass themselves off as representatives of leading recruitment firms to establish authenticity - have become rampant in a lacklustre hiring market, worsened by layoffs in some sectors.

"Fraudsters are thriving," says Alok Kumar, president, ManpowerGroup India. "Such incidents have nearly doubled compared to six months ago."

Hiring firms and job sites, including Manpower, Randstad, Foundit (formerly Monster) and Adecco are on high alert to prevent conmen impersonating them from taking advantage of unsuspecting jobseekers, including the newly unemployed.

Kumar says the slowing down in the job market, and fewer jobs, are luring many into believing dubious job offers, ignoring what would otherwise stand out as obvious red flags. To spread awareness, Manpower has been stepping up efforts to educate people on social media, sharing signs to watch out for and emphasising that they do not ask for money for jobs.

"The kind of attention to detail and aggressiveness we are hearing of now is something I've not seen in the last 24 years of my career," says Sanjay Shetty, director, Randstad India. The company has seen a doubling in such cases between February and April compared with the October-December quarter.

Fraudsters go the whole hog to convince jobseekers of their legitimacy - setting up realistic-looking job sites, forging company logos/letterheads, even conducting interviews. Many of them are registered as genuine recruiters on established platforms, giving them access to resumes of jobseekers. In most cases, they ask candidates to provide personal financial data or pay fees under various heads.

The target audience is mostly juniors, freshers, people who've been laid off or those keen to go abroad, says Shetty. Fake job offers are even signed off with actual names of CEOs/chairpersons of hiring firms.

"About three months ago, we uploaded a toolkit on our website explaining what to watch out for, like slight differences in email ids, domain names. Then how to distinguish between fake vs real offers - for e.g., an offer letter without an interview is usually fake," says Shetty.

HR solutions company Adecco India recently had several fake social media handles, which were impersonating it and posting jobs, shut down. These handles had acquired several thousand followers of their own.

"We constantly monitor such activities. The internal audit department doubles up as a compliance team," said an Adecco spokesperson, who says that such vigilance has helped bring down cases.

Sekhar Garisa, chief executive of job portal Foundit, says when there are fewer jobs, it's a more fertile ground for scamsters to prey on desperate people. "The basic modus operandi is the same, but as technology progresses, it becomes more concerning. You need to have safeguards in place," said Garisa.

Agrees Randstad's Shetty. "Fraudsters are getting savvier but legitimate companies need to stay two steps ahead of the game," he says. "Recruitment organisations need to come together and keep communicating; keep educating people through as many avenues as possible."