Staying Safe in Job Searches

All right. Well, thank you all so much for joining us for 10 Essential Ways to Avoid Job Scams and Conduct a Productive Modern Search. Over the years, job scams have become more complicated and complex. Technology's advancement allows scammers to appear as hiring managers, employers, career professionals, and recruiters to lure them into fake job opportunities, scamming them for money and private data. By being proactive and informed, you can avoid becoming a victim. victim. Stay vigilant, protect your private data, and be aware of the signs of a scam. This way, you can maintain control over your job search and avoid the risks associated with job scams. And so today's presentation is led by Mark Anthony Dyson, who has been the voice of job seekers for 13 years and has written nearly a thousand articles about job searches, careers, and related workplace topics. He is a freelance career advice writer, thinker, podcaster, and advocate for job seekers. And he writes the Job Scam Report on Substack, which he is well known for. Again, I want to thank the Friends of the Library for sponsoring almost all of our programs. And so all 52 of us who are watching live and the many more that will watch the recording, let's give a big virtual round of applause to Mark for joining us here this afternoon. And Mark, you can take it away. Thanks so much. Thank you, Robert. It's an honor to present before your group. And I hope everybody's ready because I think this is one of the topics that has hit everybody either passively or they've been victims to as far as all the people that I've met. At least someone has received some kind of scam by text or by email. And They say everything doesn't apply to everybody. I think this one is pretty universal, where scams, not just particularly financial scams, that's happening. Romance scams are happening and being talked about quite often. But job scams are very prevalent. I believe it's a pandemic right now where there are scammers that are using tools from the Internet that we all have. access to, using that to be imposters, to fool people, to lure them into schemes that eventually extort their money from them, is stealing. And the one thing I want to be sure to come across here, it's a crime. These are internet crimes. And one site you can write down already is ic3.gov. That is the federal government. uh, site to report scams. Now they don't report them or they don't respond the same way that you would think that they would respond to a burglary, but you should treat them like a burglary. If someone takes your information passively or aggressively, whether you got lured in part of the way or not, you should report it because those things really count. There's a site that you can go to. to really grasp really what's going on, you can put in Google the Better Business Bureau tracking, scam tracking, and it will take you to a site where it logs more than 32,000 incidents of scams over the past year, year and a half. That database probably is larger than I cited just now, right now, but scams are happening all the time. They're happening. on all the platforms, and definitely LinkedIn. So when I talk about LinkedIn and I talk about email and text, you know there's applications that apply to Facebook and all those social networks. If you don't use any of them, you probably got it through a text or email. And a phone call. I bet you everybody has gotten at least one scam-likely phone call in the last week or two, at least one, if not many. And though I won't cover that, one of the things that you could probably do too to help curb those calls, and I found this pretty helpful, is using the app called RoboKiller. That makes those calls silent and go to voicemail so that you don't have to hear your phone ring all the time. There is a paid version. I pay $80 a year for it to have peace. That's how much peace really means to me. So hopefully this will be helpful in that. kind of way So let's move on to the mainstay of the presentation. These are going to be quick hits. Feel free to ask questions within the frame of the screen, the slide, and I'll be glad to answer those during it. And hopefully we can have more of a conversation than me talking and luring you to sleep for 30 minutes and then having you wake up to catch up. So hopefully, again, you always go back. to the replay and get this information and also join my sub stack which is markanthedyson.substack.com universally scammers are using social engineering tactics to lure people in in other words they're taking advantage of those who are long-term unemployed who appear desperate anxious worried the job market and the job market stats citing doomsday, those people are the most vulnerable and are a low-hanging fruit. And those are the ones that scammers usually create victims out of. The 98% I have here is from Frank Abagnale. If you saw the movie To Catch a Thief with Tom Hanks and Leonardo DiCaprio, that was a real-life character. And he ended up working for the federal government now as an investigator. And he said recently that like these scam artists and scammers, and especially when it relates to employment, they have 98% of your information already. The 2% are details. Some people put it out there on social media. Others try to keep it close to their chests until it's time to get hired. And what they've been able to do is get social security numbers, bank account numbers, something that's not so much out there as far as a public domain. And they're able to get credit reports and become you. That's the worst case scenario. A lot of people say, well, they took my cash. A few times people have gotten their life savings taken. or hundreds of thousands, tens of thousands of dollars, that's something to really motivate you to kind of listen up and see how you can avoid these scams and avoid your personal information from being taken and given to other scammers as well. They also weaponize your lack of knowledge about scams if you're unaware. And a lot of victims... They get attacked at first without even knowing they're being attacked. And we say it's attack, but your approach saying, hey, this is a great job. Why don't you apply for it? That's what I, it is attack. And again, it is a crime because it's a fake job looking for an opportunity to take your personal information. Your cash is just kind of the side thing that they'll do. But your personal information actually has a much more value than what the. And that's what they really want is to get as much information to become you. Scammers, they use really subtle ways to get to you. They use fake profiles of real recruiters, employers. They use company pages that look exactly, well, if you don't look that close, they look a lot like the real company. They use websites that way as well. And more than likely, if you've been on a website where a company is, you know, saying that we have jobs, they've taken that information and duped it. Sometimes even with spelling errors and all that, and that's usually a clue because real companies are not careless in that kind of way. So that is, but those, what I'm saying is, is that these are very common among people who are looking to take. your money and people who are looking to scam you. So we'll talk about those things, but this gives you an idea of who basically they've been able to take advantage of. You're thinking, well, you know, if you've been a victim, please feel free to share your story because this is important and this is life. And you sharing your story, even if you didn't fall for it, but you were by telling your community. people you know, and especially your online community, that really adds a layer of protection that scammers don't want, is that they want the anonymity. as much as possible and they want to be able to get more for less exposure as possible. So the more you expose to them, the more that makes everyone else safer. So let's go on. Like I said, these are touch points. I can get deeper. But these are scams that you should avoid. And this is in terms of just every company, recruiter, hiring manager. refer, could possibly be a scammer and to you. And you should treat them that way. And you should want to treat them that way because there are so many that are happening that are so prevalent. And it's basically inundating your timelines in some kind of way, your phone calls in some kind of way, your text messages and your email. So you have to, and one way to modernize your job search as well as we. talking about modernizing your job searches, is that you should deeply research every company recruiter until you get satisfaction that they're true. But a lot of times these clues are so subtle it's possible to be fooled, but you've got to look at all that's involved. So if you find something, what I've been advising lately is if you find one thing that is false, you probably want to disengage from that. person that's communicating. It is possible because these scams are so close to the real thing that they are masquerading and acting as imposters of the real thing that if you're applying to a lot of different jobs and you're getting a lot of different interests from folks, it's possible that some of that might be legitimate. So there might be an opportunity you might miss or two. I'm not encouraging that, but I'm saying for safety's sake, you can't take the chance of being invaded, your privacy being invaded. Because, again, you need to treat that like gold. So even that, and I put here refer, yes, even the people who refer you, unless you've known them for years and years, I would be very skeptical and check their backgrounds. And you can do that. And if you can't check. their backgrounds, then you're either going to have to have a very straightforward conversation and say, hey, I'm trying to avoid scams. What makes you think that you're not? Or it makes me think that you're not. Or get their LinkedIn profile just to check. If they don't have long histories or you see a lot of duplicate messages and things like that, or just trying to sell the company by referring, then you know that's kind of suspicious. And you should. Hello, your communication with that person. And yes, if it's on LinkedIn, if you use LinkedIn, which a lot of us do, and I'm talking in terms of everybody should be on LinkedIn or has been on LinkedIn, but there's a lot of scammers, but there's a lot of great people as well. You need to be able to tell the difference. You may need to report that person to LinkedIn. So, Mark, we do have a couple of comments. Tammy says... I'm sure. Yeah, yeah. Well, you asked for this, Mark. So here's some comments. Tammy says, I think scammers and sellers are leveraging LinkedIn's open to work banner to identify victims and customers. And then we also have Nikki saying people are posting bogus work opportunities in many local community groups on Facebook. I see them all the time. Work at home opportunities are a very popular one. Yep. We're going to get to all those. The open to work is very popular. And like I said, other social networks, there are scams all of the time. And usually a good barometer is that that's a little bit too good to be true. Now that speaks to a person's curiosity or... if they've been long-term unemployed, kind of desperate. That speaks to them, and that draws their curiosity. And curiosity is a double-edged sword, more or less. You could be too curious to say, hey, let me see how far this goes, or curious about that person and their background, and I'm going to lead with suspicion first rather than with trust. A lot of people tend to lead with trust. first. And in this day and age, you almost have to lead with suspicion first. Unless, again, you've had that long-term relationship with that person and you trust that person personally. But, yeah, everybody else should be somewhat suspect. So hopefully I know we're going to get into the open to work because that's a whole discussion. One last question for you, Mark, and then you can go on to text. Sure. So another Mark wants to know, how do you recommend that we actually vet? companies and recruiters. What are like the top three things you think that we should check on? Great question. You're confronted with a company and let's say you get an email from a recruiter. Everything behind the at sign should match the company. So if you were to take that and put it in the URL or put it in Google rather. The real company should show up. And if that site is different than that URL, you know that that's going to be a problem. Fake companies and fake employers also misspell words, how should I say it, on purpose. In other words, if it's Microsoft, we know how Microsoft is spelled. But if they added an extra T, you definitely should be suspicious. and should treat it as such. You should get to the point to where you cut that off automatically, don't respond to it, and report it. I would even say, if you can, even report it to the company and let them know that there are scammers trying to lure people into a wrong place and a wrong website, and they'll check it out. From what I understand, Microsoft has been more aggressive lately in checking out. these scammers that are related. Now, keep in mind too that Microsoft also owns LinkedIn. So on that site right now, LinkedIn isn't doing as much as they should be, but they are a great place to check out a company page which also is part of the part two is to check out the site, see if it's legitimate through Google, check out the LinkedIn page. The LinkedIn page might be dupe and it might- So you want to do kind of a broad search when you go through LinkedIn and look for the company. So let's use Microsoft again. Just put in Microsoft and look at the pages and see if that page actually shows up. A lot of those pages don't necessarily show up on search because they're misspelled. So you could put in the misspelled and the corrected spell and see the vast difference. Microsoft has a lot of different followers. A fake page. Might have a few thousand, but if you dig a little bit deeper into like the employees and the people, you might see just LinkedIn users or names that don't necessarily match the faith. So you might have an American name that matches somebody that obviously looks a whole lot different than the culture that they say they're from. And thirdly, You should also check out the person that's referring you. If it's a referral, check out to see who they are. Check their LinkedIn profile. Google them. If you don't want to go to a LinkedIn profile so that they can't see you checking them out, go Google them and see how they come up. So if you're being approached by a recruiter, more than likely they should show up on the real company page. If they don't, you should be a suspect. So those are three of the many ways that you can know. Another way, a lot of people get offers and get lured from text. If you've never engaged a company from that person, in other words, if you're not involved in the hiring process, some companies do text after they've been contacted at first. The recruiter will ask, would you like to be contacted by text? so we can keep updated. If you haven't, and this is straight text, I would report it as junk and bail on it because it is more than likely a scam or something to really be suspect of. If somebody made a mistake or whatever, let's say if it was a real opportunity, they'll go to LinkedIn or they'll reach you by email. But text isn't the only way. Text is just a way, a layer for people to... to scam you and to get you in because it's there's not a whole lot to bet other than the Texas stuff. So hopefully that answers all three of Mark's questions. All right. So, and that goes along here. I don't even have to really go on with this particular one. Is that, or I already said it, that if it's from an unknown source, don't engage. Don't click on attachments from either text or email. Those are to be leery of. Again, you always want to get deeper into the information, but if it's from an unknown source, just try to keep it moving. Scammers have fake LinkedIn profiles and social media accounts. We talk about it happens on Facebook. It does happen on X, Instagram, all of them. LinkedIn is a little bit different because people visit LinkedIn specifically for job information, career information. whether it's to grow in their professional development, to network with others, or to find out other possibilities of jobs. You can apply to jobs on LinkedIn. So it's really become this one-stop career site for people, and LinkedIn's done a great job with that. But scammers have, because of the technology, they create fake profiles and they create company profiles. They may even lure you to... that apply through another site. And we'll get to that in a second. But they are trying to get you to believe and get trust that if you have a profile, then I should be trusted. But if you dig deeper in the profile many times, you'll find that there are dates and places and things that look more like they were copied from another profile that was a real profile than that person's profile. And there's a lot of red flags that will be raised through that, even if you look at it. But if you look at people's past posts, that's a very interesting and telling sign of the activity. I looked at one recently, and I didn't bring a screenshot of it, but there was one where that person basically just posted comments, send me a connection. And that has a lot to do with the open to work. Banner that I know that people are asking about. You may have even seen a banner called hashtag desperate, but the open to work is something special. I'm going to get to that in a moment, but that's really important because a lot of times people are targeted because they have that banner or because they use the hashtag. The hashtag is the one that actually generates those fake profiles to say, send me a connection, like they're going to be really helpful. likely they're not going to be helpful. In fact, they'll deter you the wrong way. So you want to watch for those, avoid them at all costs. And feel free to expose them as well. You know, it takes a certain amount of audacity to do that, but really that helps their LinkedIn community. If you get a chance to look for a guy named Jay Jones, he's called the profiler. I'm giving him a shout out. He's great at... exposing these LinkedIn profiles that are great. Specifically from people who say that they're resume writers, career coaches, et cetera, people who are supposed to help you build your marketing materials and get you ready for interviews. Those are his specialty in particular. And a lot of what he shows is what everybody can take away, something to help. them identify LinkedIn profiles. But one of the ways you want to look for the authenticity, a lot of times the photo doesn't even look right. Sometimes they even look like, and a lot of times they actually look like something you find on Google as a generic photo. So you want to look for those things. There's even a way for you to look at a Google photo or a LinkedIn photo to check to see if that... That photo's even authentic. But again, you look at people's posts and where they are and some of their history, you don't see the things that are inconsistent and don't match. And you should definitely avoid those people. Five, avoid transactions or communication on messaging apps. Scammers tend to take their victims or potential victims to another platform and use a messaging feature to engage them. I've heard of cases where they use Facebook and Instagram. But a lot of them use the WhatsApp and Zoom features of those platforms because they're able to, they say, well, hey, let's have it further. And they all take you there for interviews. And who does interviews on Zoom and WhatsApp, right? But they try to and they do. But that's not what the platform actually is for. So if they're taking you on to those platforms, avoid them at all costs. They tend to. They can easily delete their accounts after they've scammed you, after they've gotten whatever information they want, and you're trying to find them, you won't find them. It's the same way on LinkedIn, too, but WhatsApp is a little bit easier to use to create hundreds and hundreds of accounts for scammers. So just try to keep and try to avoid those as well. Six, avoid giving it personal information before they conclude the interview. A lot of these scammers ask for the information up front about your social security number, your bank account number, and it kind of leads you on. You're thinking that this is hopeful because you look like they're going to hire me. Some of them hire or pretend hire without vetting you, without doing anything. And a lot of people, that gives them, it's a red flag. And most of the time, it's a sign of... Something's a little off and it's really something that's a lot off because they are emphasizing your personal information first rather than finding out if you qualify for the job. A real recruiter, a real interviewer cares about what value you're bringing to them first as far as the job. They want to make sure that you are 100% or if not 100%, maybe 80% and 100% qualified. for the job first rather than finding out what your bank account information is. So you definitely want to beware of anything that doesn't. If they say you're hired, you've gone too far already. But if you are just at the beginning, you feel like this is kind of weird that we're doing this via Zoom on chat, no less. They don't show their face or they show something. They show some kind of avatar. Disengage. and report them, please. And also tell the story online. And I bet you if you were to start looking for their LinkedIn profile that you saw one particular time, they're gone. A lot of times that's happened. Part is that LinkedIn may have deleted it. I've been the user that deleted it. So you want to take those things into consideration. They are quick to act as far as being found out. and avoid avoiding being found out. Another sign you want to avoid is if that website that you go to, let's say you're checking it out, it's bare. That like there's very little information about the company that is generic. There are no faces of people who are, and it may have been duplicated. Again, you want to go back to the basic of checking and make sure that URL that... Let's say, again, Microsoft has XGT. If you're there, you want to disengage. But if you get this far, there's a couple of other steps you're going to want to take because likely the fake sites will have some kind of malware, spyware virus for them to track your whereabouts online and possibly check your passwords and to get those to get into like your accounts and things that you look on. online. Be especially careful when you have a phone and you're doing this on as well. Phones, most people don't put like virusware and spyware and software on it. You definitely want to have it on your phone as well as what's called a virtual private network. And a lot of times people, and this might be an offshoot, but those are good to use so that If you go to like a Starbucks or to a hotel where there are, you know, it's being shared publicly, you can mask your whereabouts. In other words, a VPN will make it look like you come from Indonesia instead of Indiana. So that way they're more likely to not see you in the hotel and you'll become less of a target. And plus, they're encrypted as well. The encryption, they are not able to penetrate through because they use the software that doesn't allow them to. But the fake websites, there are some legitimate companies that actually have terrible websites. It is up to you to kind of discern between what's right and what's wrong. So then you want to try to find a contact person on LinkedIn that has a legitimate profile. actively recruiting for jobs for that particular company and just ask them directly and say, hey, is this really your site? And ask them that question. Don't be afraid to go those extra steps. In fact, you're going to find yourself going those extra steps very often in the modern job search because you want to make sure you've got the right person recruiting for the right job at the right company. So all of that makes a big difference. They'll make a big difference in your life. So you really don't want your personal information gotten by the wrong person because they are very aggressively looking to become you. So let's say they become you. They have your Social Security, your bank account information. Then they can go not just apply for credit cards and get cards and any other kind of fiscal assets. They can also... make your name look bad by applying to a bunch of jobs in one company. Now, if a company sees that one person is applying to a whole bunch of companies, you know what they do? They blacklist them. So you want to stay away from that scenario, too. They can make your reputation bad without you even knowing it. Let's say you are smart enough to target Disney as an employer, and you want to work in whatever department. But you're not getting any response when you apply. And they may even possibly say, hey, you've applied to all these jobs. So therefore, you know, you're no longer invited to be part of Disney. Say, wait a second, I just applied to one job. That could possibly happen in today's environment. In fact, it is now. There's a recent CNET article. that talks about how there are fake employees or applicants who are scammers who are trying to be fake employees and they're implying in your name. And we can go deeper on how much damage that can be done there, but you definitely want to stay away from that. Scammers, they ask you to give, or better yet, they ask you to purchase. equipment, computer software. Most of you have even heard about people saying that they paid for equipment to a third-party company. They never got the check from the company, and they were to deposit it in their bank for the equipment, but the bank found out that there's no sufficient funds, or they may even find out later that they gave the money, but they take the money back. and then some because they're charging you for the insubstantial fund. And they're charging you even for the whole thing. And depending upon your bank, they may not even let you know that it's happened or not. So you should never pay to be an employee where value is being exchanged. Never. But a lot of people have. And, you know. The reimbursement part and the whole thing, they disappeared by that. So you want to avoid those scenarios as well. Here we go. Talk about open work badges and hashtags. Let's talk about the hashtag first before we talk about the badge. The hashtag, people often will post something saying, I'm looking for work. And they used a hashtag. The hashtag originally was sort of a way to bookmark conversations about a particular subject. So let's say I'm a recruiter and I want to look up everybody who has the hashtag open to work and to see if I could find qualified candidates. Now, the easier ways for them to do it, the catch is that it depends if the recruiter has the tools to look up without the hashtag rather than with it. But what's happened is. is that scammers either have targeted people with the hashtag open to work. and send them DMs about scams, which I'm almost sure they do that to every single person there. Or they send, they lure them another way, in a passive way, and saying, hey, send me a connection notes in the comments. And usually that's just automatically generated through an artificial intelligence bot, which is a technology a lot of them will use to... in order to reply to everybody. So that bookmarks for them who they can victimize or some way lure them into being a scam. I recommend you not use the Open to Work, but you'll find different discussions about the Open to Work badge, which is a green badge. It's different than the one I have here. I have a new one called Desperate. That's something that nobody wants to be, but it's a thing. It's not as popular as open work. That has years of data, as opposed to desperate badge is something that's kind of really new. But I want you to beware, desperate is kind of the message you really don't want to send to employers. But open to work is kind of something special. And the open to work is something that is from LinkedIn. It's something, it's the badge you're talking about. That is something they do operate. Now, LinkedIn, it has not responded as people would like as far as, you know, getting their visibility. To some degrees, yes, to some degrees, no. That's arguable. The part that I want to concentrate on is saying that it makes you look desperate and far from the truth, in my opinion, and for most recruiters who actively look for open to work. badges, they have a tool that they use that is called the LinkedIn Recruiter Tool. They pay a lot of money for that tool to use, and they can see whoever has the badge. Now, if you are using the badge, you've stopped using the badge, the advantage of using the badge is you can set the settings that you can set the Open to Work badge. Either you want it public or not public, but where recruiters can see. Try using it without being public. So only you would put it to see. This makes their job a lot easier and it finds the right candidates faster for them so that they can get to the right person. Of course, they're going to make sure that you're a qualified person. They're going to make sure that you are really the person associated with the profile on LinkedIn. But all in all, you want to be sure that... And the best way to use it, set it to private so that only legitimate LinkedIn recruiters or recruiters, period, will see the badge. There might be some recruiters who are fake that are looking for the badge. That's arguable. I've heard a few cases that have happened. To be honest, it's huge. Way too big. fewer than the other scenario and the other scenario, but it does increase your chances of getting in front of the right recruiter. So it's better to set that badge in private so that only recruiters, and that way you cut quite a bit of people who can have access to you and your situation. And finally, there's more that... I can go through, but I tried to cover the 10 that are most common here is that, and I talked about before, is that there's those who are, you know, they're pretending to be resume writers and career coaches, people that you would pay money to, to have them develop a resume or to give you advice or to help you prepare for interviews and what have you. A lot of them do that. And the common scenario is that people are, the scammers are copying well-known, even people who have companies and create company pages, individual profiles, excuse me, and they're able to replicate their profiles in such a way to make them seem like they have all the prudential. When really all you have to do is take the name that they said that they are. and you can go to where the credential like for instance as a CPRW probably seen that a lot. or certified professional resume writer. There's a site you can go to to check out where they are. You can just Google it and check their name to see if they actually have the credentials. You can also Google a little bit further to make sure that their photos are matching. Go to their sites and make sure that, again, another case where you have to make sure that spellings are correct. And sometimes they even use, it could be 1T. It could be one S away from being the correct site. So you want to check those. You want to check reviews. Sometimes they're fake reviews. You could go on LinkedIn and check the reviews and then check the person that's reviewing to make sure that they're a real person. The fake ones always have to fake people that are actually doing it because they do it in rings at night. does something. And again, they'll try to steal the credentials, but usually the ones that I know have a great internet presence. So it's kind of hard to duplicate them as opposed to if somebody's just starting out business and doesn't have a large following or a business yet, they might be more, have a chance to be, you know, duplicated, their information duplicated. So you want to keep that. And just to kind of wrap up, you know, to talk about waste and bottom, not just your job search. I talked about a few of them already, but to kind of recap, definitely consider safety first and stop applying to hundreds of jobs per month. It is no longer a numbers game like it was back in 1999, 2000, where you go to CareerBuilder and... you can apply for five jobs and probably two out of those five you can almost assure that they that you'll get a call for interview uh you want to vet everything that anybody says in fact i would even go on to the next one is to so that you want to pump target the real companies just be aggressive and just you know you're 10 to 50 uh companies where you want to work that idea that you've researched that you They have all the right things that you want and the things that they can do for your career, that there's some exchange of value where you can add value. You feel great about the culture from what you've read so far and that you've researched. And it's better that way. So that way you're not tempted by all the offers. The one way takes, the way I suggest you do it, takes a little bit at first, but ultimately it's better. that it comes the more that you target companies and start reaching out to them and start finding ways to maybe even networking into it, into a job or into a company, which is my next one. That's a great way to do it. LinkedIn is still the best place to do that. Engage other people to find out what they do and see if they can bring your name up or if they can give you suggestions or tell you about the interview process. Anything to give you a little bit of a leg up really helps. And finally, security tools. Definitely, I'm going to emphasize your phone, having the right security tools. Avoiding the scam likely is by using RoboKiller for VPN. They are free. If you use iPhone, they have a VPN along with it. Although I tend to use IPVanish, which is a company that has been doing it for a long time. I pay the yearly subscription so I can have all my devices under one to keep them safe because I do travel. And, you know, I'm in hotels and Starbucks and Panera Breads to use Internet. So I hope all of that. Really helps. And, you know, we didn't get a chance to talk about the other things, about the rise of artificial intelligence and deep fake videos and some of the other things you see here. But that's why I created the Job Scam Report, so that people want to go deep right now. A lot of that content is very free. All you do is just go subscribe to it. I'm not selling a whole lot just yet, but in the future it will come. But I definitely want to be. of service first which has always been the case so that concludes the powerpoint presentation And probably went along a little longer than Robert because of the beginning. No, you did great, Mark. You did great. And I stopped asking questions because I was going to keep derailing you. So I think we still have plenty of questions to get to, though. And we'll take about 10 minutes and try to knock out as many as we can here. So Anne asks, what should we do if we get a text from someone who we think is a scammer, a job scammer? So besides blocking the message, should we report them? And who do we report them to? Well, a text I recommend just don't engage and just you have the option to report and put it in junk just so that you don't get the text again. Because again, from an unknown source, you didn't agree to the text already violates your personal space. An anonymous attendee asks, are there any services you recommend to keep a separate phone number from your home phone number? You know, a lot of times nowadays. That's a stupid question. Yeah. What do you think, Mark? Stupid question. And I get that, and I'll tell you the reason why I think this is important. And I didn't mention it because it's amongst the other 30 things that I could have done. But using Google Voice is great. If you have an Android, I recommend YouMail. Y-O-U-M-A-I-L. And those two give you, how should I, screen numbers. Actually, they're phone numbers still. And people contact you. If you use that during your job search, you're putting things up on job portals or you put it on your LinkedIn. That way, they don't have access to your home number or your cell number. So the second number, the Google Voice. and email used with cell numbers. I don't know if any of the major phone companies, if you have like a landline, let's say, I don't think they're doing anything just yet. But I just, I know we got rid of our landline. There was just too many scam calls. And we know a lot of people. So we didn't want that to happen. And it took me some time to do it, but I decided to do it. But finally, my wife and I, we, agreed that this is time to go. And it's been much more peaceful since. So email, Google Voice, Google Voice, if you already have a Gmail, it comes as part of the suite. So Christina has a question, or really it's more of a comment that maybe you can react to. Christina says, I believe that it's not legal for an employer, recruiter, or website to request of a job seeker their social security number and their date of birth. If I see one that does, I usually enter 99999999 for my social security number and something similar for my date of birth. And I never enter my home number on the address line. And if not required, I don't even give my street name. So any thoughts, Mark, on that? Have you come across companies that... will request a social security number for a job seeker? Well, a lot of them, as I stated earlier, they ask early on. The scammers will ask early on, even before they get to an interview, of that information, and employers just don't do that. They don't. They don't ask for that until they know that you qualify. They're going to invest in hiring you, and in return, you're investing in giving them the value you need to. promote their company. So really, if it's at first, you shouldn't give any, why go through all that information? But if you get to the end and you're so suspicious, then you can cut it off at any particular point if you don't trust them. The advantage, they're making sure to keep in mind, they make sure that you're a real person with the real credentials as well. So you're vetting each other. So... You want to give, I mean, when you say a home number, I guess these days, that would be your cell number. But if it is a landline, then give them your cell or give them that Google Voice number. But yeah, you want to make sure that that person is legitimate for them for a social security number. And that's something that's essential because that has to do with tax on both ends, for you and for them. So you want to keep those things in mind in the application. So just... I'm assuming the context is that that's somebody fake. You shouldn't even give that much. You didn't give them any information because it's a waste of time. So Tammy wants to know, do you have any thoughts on LinkedIn's new verification feature? Yes. LinkedIn has a new verification feature that is better right now for individual accounts rather than company accounts. Company accounts, they don't use the verification the same way. The different companies that LinkedIn uses for verification, one of them is Clear. Clear is the same thing you use, some of you may use for travel to get through TC faster and skip it even. Those are fine. There's some other companies they use, but they're using legitimate companies for the individual accounts for verification. I think that's one of the things you could actually look for. Although there have been some... profiles with verification and people with thousands of of uh of followers and connection but then you gotta also dive a little bit deeper is how they behave online um do you trust the way that they interact with people and if they don't interact at all that should be suspicious as well if you have a few thousand folks but you don't interact with anyone how does that work so you verification, I think, is a very good thing. It's a step in the right direction. And especially if you're meeting people who are new, then, or you see somebody you want to connect with new, that's a better way to connect, though everybody hasn't used it yet. So, and there's, I can go deeper than that. But I think it is a good thing. So Angela notes that some gig-based companies like Trusted Herd and InstaWork will ask for social security numbers before applying for gigs. And Angela says she always enters in fake social security numbers. And then Georgia points out that several federal agencies like the post office will request your social security number and date of birth when you're initially applying. And that's, and I was going to say... They've been doing that for decades, so we know that's going to be a trusted source if they still do it. If they still do it. A lot of them, like when you apply to a federal job, it's likely they ask for a lot of that information first, in addition to everything that you've ever done. But that's a very secure site. I haven't heard fake employees on USA Jobs. dot gov is the site with federal so yeah but you know if it's a startup or if it's nvidia some of those sites have pages which you should look for by the way to see how their hiring process is to be handled if you somebody approaches you and says they're doing something special but their page says something i disengage automatically from that person that's referring you because NVIDIA has very clear, and so do many other companies, have very clear standards and policies of how they go about hiring. So folks, we've hit three o'clock. There's a couple of questions we didn't quite get to. However, I am-We can answer those. I got a couple of minutes. Good, Mark. We just started a couple of minutes late. Yeah. All right. So, well, first of all, Bill in the chat put a link to a list. that's curated by mass.gov. So our state government has a list of recruiters and staffing companies that are legit. So these are all Massachusetts-based ones. So it's not going to help you verify if they're from another state or another country, but at least for Massachusetts ones, there is a list on the state website. That's good to know. Yeah. So Ethan has a question, says, in the past, I was able to detect and avoid job scams. However, I must say that I have not done such a good job lately. I think some came through LinkedIn where I lowered my defenses and I responded to those too quickly. My question is, once that happens, my email and my text gets inundated. And so do you have any recommendations on email tools that can filter out or in the emails that I actually want to see? Yeah, depending on the emails. So the one. I'll give an example. Like if you use Gmail, Gmail, you can. There's ways you could just put them in the spam folder, just like you do Outlook and probably a bunch of others where you put them in Outlook or you put them in a spam folder and you'll treat them as such. You can also block and report them for phishing as well. And those will help filter them away from your incoming. If you're doing a job search, you can have a separate Gmail. You can create as many Gmail accounts as you want as opposed to have per address. So you can create I have several Gmails for different purposes. But if you have one just for your job search, then you can kind of keep better track on how they got there to you. And it's probably easier to even filter a lot of those out and report them. If they keep doing it, if they keep reporting them phishing and putting them as you know reporting and phishing uh which i recommend doing and blocking them uh then eventually they end up going away but sometimes they may even make it through to inbox but those are usually the best filters and they work really well uh so an anonymous attendee sort of has a situation that she recently encountered I received several texts from someone supposedly with Randstad, which is a national temp recruiting firm. Yeah, I'm familiar with that. Yeah. So they were pitching me on working for them from home. The recruiter was very anxious to start my training as soon as possible. I agreed to a phone conversation the next day, but then decided it was too good to be true. I googled their phone number and their pitch, and it sounded very sketchy. As a result, I blocked them. And then the next day, so they blocked the text. And then the next day I got a call asking why they blocked the number. So then I blocked that phone number. And then they tried calling on another number. So was I right to think that this was a scam? Yes, absolutely. You don't feel good about that communication. It was sort of like the creepy boyfriend, right? He tries to get a hold of you through text and he emails you and calls you. And you really are not into him. And therefore, now he becomes a serial lurker. So treat them as such. So yes, absolutely. I wish everybody would have done the same thing. Yeah. And trust your gut, folks. Trust your gut. And trust your instincts. You don't want to, I mean, ultimately, it is up to you whether you want to, you know, deal with somebody who... It could be legit, but if they have scammy behavior, I call it, in other words, they act like they're going to take advantage of you in some kind of way, then you have every right to block them. You want to be with people you feel good about, not with people who you're always going to have to look behind your shoulder. Let's see. Angela says, I also recommend everyone set up. a two-factor authentication on their accounts. I was hacked over Wi-Fi because I didn't have a two-factor authentication set up on my account. Susan says, thank you, Mark. This was a terrific presentation. There's also some other nice comments in the chat. Bea and Brigham say thanks as well. So folks, let's give Mark a big virtual round of applause for a great presentation. Mark, do you have any last words for the audience? Please put safety first. I can't emphasize. Yeah, there are things like strategy and you've heard those things. If you talk to Bob, Bob, I know it was very thorough in talking about strategy and targeting companies and just being very and having intent when you are engaging employers, but being safe. And 2024 and 2025 and beyond are the operative words these days. And I hope more of you will be safer and be smart about it. Yeah. Good words to end on, Mark. Thanks so much for a great presentation. Folks, next Monday, we're back. I believe that's November 4th, 2 o'clock. We're going to do an AMA and Ask Me Anything with resume and LinkedIn coach Virginia Franco. Someone else who recommended to me from Bob, matter of fact. Virginia is awesome. Yeah, that's what I hear. I hear it. Yeah, Virginia is awesome. Yeah, I love Virginia. I know her. Yeah. Excellent. You all know each other, I feel. So folks, bring your questions for Virginia. OK, it's going to be very interactive. Looking forward to that one. So thank you all so, so much. Make sure to take the feedback survey when you exit the Zoom and look for an email from me tomorrow with a link to this recording and information about some other upcoming webinars. So thank you all so, so much. And I hope everyone enjoys the rest of their day. Thanks again, Mark. Thanks.

victim. Stay vigilant, protect your private data, and be aware of the signs of a scam. This way, you can maintain control over your job search and avoid the risks associated with job scams. And so today's presentation is led by Mark Anthony Dyson, who has been the voice of job seekers for 13 years and has written nearly a thousand articles about job searches, careers, and related workplace topics.

He is a freelance career advice writer, thinker, podcaster, and advocate for job seekers. And he writes the Job Scam Report on Substack, which he is well known for. Again, I want to thank the Friends of the Library for sponsoring almost all of our programs. And so all 52 of us who are watching live and the many more that will watch the recording, let's give a big virtual round of applause to Mark for joining us here this afternoon. And Mark, you can take it away.

Thanks so much. Thank you, Robert. It's an honor to present before your group.

And I hope everybody's ready because I think this is one of the topics that has hit everybody either passively or they've been victims to as far as all the people that I've met. At least someone has received some kind of scam by text or by email. And They say everything doesn't apply to everybody. I think this one is pretty universal, where scams, not just particularly financial scams, that's happening. Romance scams are happening and being talked about quite often.

But job scams are very prevalent. I believe it's a pandemic right now where there are scammers that are using tools from the Internet that we all have. access to, using that to be imposters, to fool people, to lure them into schemes that eventually extort their money from them, is stealing. And the one thing I want to be sure to come across here, it's a crime.

These are internet crimes. And one site you can write down already is ic3.gov. That is the federal government. uh, site to report scams.

Now they don't report them or they don't respond the same way that you would think that they would respond to a burglary, but you should treat them like a burglary. If someone takes your information passively or aggressively, whether you got lured in part of the way or not, you should report it because those things really count. There's a site that you can go to.

to really grasp really what's going on, you can put in Google the Better Business Bureau tracking, scam tracking, and it will take you to a site where it logs more than 32,000 incidents of scams over the past year, year and a half. That database probably is larger than I cited just now, right now, but scams are happening all the time. They're happening. on all the platforms, and definitely LinkedIn.

So when I talk about LinkedIn and I talk about email and text, you know there's applications that apply to Facebook and all those social networks. If you don't use any of them, you probably got it through a text or email. And a phone call.

I bet you everybody has gotten at least one scam-likely phone call in the last week or two, at least one, if not many. And though I won't cover that, one of the things that you could probably do too to help curb those calls, and I found this pretty helpful, is using the app called RoboKiller. That makes those calls silent and go to voicemail so that you don't have to hear your phone ring all the time.

There is a paid version. I pay $80 a year for it to have peace. That's how much peace really means to me.

So hopefully this will be helpful in that. kind of way So let's move on to the mainstay of the presentation. These are going to be quick hits. Feel free to ask questions within the frame of the screen, the slide, and I'll be glad to answer those during it. And hopefully we can have more of a conversation than me talking and luring you to sleep for 30 minutes and then having you wake up to catch up.

So hopefully, again, you always go back. to the replay and get this information and also join my sub stack which is markanthedyson.substack.com universally scammers are using social engineering tactics to lure people in in other words they're taking advantage of those who are long-term unemployed who appear desperate anxious worried the job market and the job market stats citing doomsday, those people are the most vulnerable and are a low-hanging fruit. And those are the ones that scammers usually create victims out of.

The 98% I have here is from Frank Abagnale. If you saw the movie To Catch a Thief with Tom Hanks and Leonardo DiCaprio, that was a real-life character. And he ended up working for the federal government now as an investigator. And he said recently that like these scam artists and scammers, and especially when it relates to employment, they have 98% of your information already. The 2% are details.

Some people put it out there on social media. Others try to keep it close to their chests until it's time to get hired. And what they've been able to do is get social security numbers, bank account numbers, something that's not so much out there as far as a public domain. And they're able to get credit reports and become you. That's the worst case scenario.

A lot of people say, well, they took my cash. A few times people have gotten their life savings taken. or hundreds of thousands, tens of thousands of dollars, that's something to really motivate you to kind of listen up and see how you can avoid these scams and avoid your personal information from being taken and given to other scammers as well.

They also weaponize your lack of knowledge about scams if you're unaware. And a lot of victims... They get attacked at first without even knowing they're being attacked. And we say it's attack, but your approach saying, hey, this is a great job. Why don't you apply for it?

That's what I, it is attack. And again, it is a crime because it's a fake job looking for an opportunity to take your personal information. Your cash is just kind of the side thing that they'll do.

But your personal information actually has a much more value than what the. And that's what they really want is to get as much information to become you. Scammers, they use really subtle ways to get to you.

They use fake profiles of real recruiters, employers. They use company pages that look exactly, well, if you don't look that close, they look a lot like the real company. They use websites that way as well. And more than likely, if you've been on a website where a company is, you know, saying that we have jobs, they've taken that information and duped it.

Sometimes even with spelling errors and all that, and that's usually a clue because real companies are not careless in that kind of way. So that is, but those, what I'm saying is, is that these are very common among people who are looking to take. your money and people who are looking to scam you.

So we'll talk about those things, but this gives you an idea of who basically they've been able to take advantage of. You're thinking, well, you know, if you've been a victim, please feel free to share your story because this is important and this is life. And you sharing your story, even if you didn't fall for it, but you were by telling your community. people you know, and especially your online community, that really adds a layer of protection that scammers don't want, is that they want the anonymity.

as much as possible and they want to be able to get more for less exposure as possible. So the more you expose to them, the more that makes everyone else safer. So let's go on. Like I said, these are touch points. I can get deeper.

But these are scams that you should avoid. And this is in terms of just every company, recruiter, hiring manager. refer, could possibly be a scammer and to you. And you should treat them that way.

And you should want to treat them that way because there are so many that are happening that are so prevalent. And it's basically inundating your timelines in some kind of way, your phone calls in some kind of way, your text messages and your email. So you have to, and one way to modernize your job search as well as we. talking about modernizing your job searches, is that you should deeply research every company recruiter until you get satisfaction that they're true. But a lot of times these clues are so subtle it's possible to be fooled, but you've got to look at all that's involved.

So if you find something, what I've been advising lately is if you find one thing that is false, you probably want to disengage from that. person that's communicating. It is possible because these scams are so close to the real thing that they are masquerading and acting as imposters of the real thing that if you're applying to a lot of different jobs and you're getting a lot of different interests from folks, it's possible that some of that might be legitimate.

So there might be an opportunity you might miss or two. I'm not encouraging that, but I'm saying for safety's sake, you can't take the chance of being invaded, your privacy being invaded. Because, again, you need to treat that like gold. So even that, and I put here refer, yes, even the people who refer you, unless you've known them for years and years, I would be very skeptical and check their backgrounds.

And you can do that. And if you can't check. their backgrounds, then you're either going to have to have a very straightforward conversation and say, hey, I'm trying to avoid scams.

What makes you think that you're not? Or it makes me think that you're not. Or get their LinkedIn profile just to check. If they don't have long histories or you see a lot of duplicate messages and things like that, or just trying to sell the company by referring, then you know that's kind of suspicious.

And you should. Hello, your communication with that person. And yes, if it's on LinkedIn, if you use LinkedIn, which a lot of us do, and I'm talking in terms of everybody should be on LinkedIn or has been on LinkedIn, but there's a lot of scammers, but there's a lot of great people as well. You need to be able to tell the difference. You may need to report that person to LinkedIn.

So, Mark, we do have a couple of comments. Tammy says... I'm sure.

Yeah, yeah. Well, you asked for this, Mark. So here's some comments. Tammy says, I think scammers and sellers are leveraging LinkedIn's open to work banner to identify victims and customers. And then we also have Nikki saying people are posting bogus work opportunities in many local community groups on Facebook.

I see them all the time. Work at home opportunities are a very popular one. Yep. We're going to get to all those.

The open to work is very popular. And like I said, other social networks, there are scams all of the time. And usually a good barometer is that that's a little bit too good to be true. Now that speaks to a person's curiosity or...

if they've been long-term unemployed, kind of desperate. That speaks to them, and that draws their curiosity. And curiosity is a double-edged sword, more or less. You could be too curious to say, hey, let me see how far this goes, or curious about that person and their background, and I'm going to lead with suspicion first rather than with trust.

A lot of people tend to lead with trust. first. And in this day and age, you almost have to lead with suspicion first.

Unless, again, you've had that long-term relationship with that person and you trust that person personally. But, yeah, everybody else should be somewhat suspect. So hopefully I know we're going to get into the open to work because that's a whole discussion. One last question for you, Mark, and then you can go on to text. Sure.

So another Mark wants to know, how do you recommend that we actually vet? companies and recruiters. What are like the top three things you think that we should check on? Great question.

You're confronted with a company and let's say you get an email from a recruiter. Everything behind the at sign should match the company. So if you were to take that and put it in the URL or put it in Google rather.

The real company should show up. And if that site is different than that URL, you know that that's going to be a problem. Fake companies and fake employers also misspell words, how should I say it, on purpose. In other words, if it's Microsoft, we know how Microsoft is spelled. But if they added an extra T, you definitely should be suspicious.

and should treat it as such. You should get to the point to where you cut that off automatically, don't respond to it, and report it. I would even say, if you can, even report it to the company and let them know that there are scammers trying to lure people into a wrong place and a wrong website, and they'll check it out.

From what I understand, Microsoft has been more aggressive lately in checking out. these scammers that are related. Now, keep in mind too that Microsoft also owns LinkedIn.

So on that site right now, LinkedIn isn't doing as much as they should be, but they are a great place to check out a company page which also is part of the part two is to check out the site, see if it's legitimate through Google, check out the LinkedIn page. The LinkedIn page might be dupe and it might- So you want to do kind of a broad search when you go through LinkedIn and look for the company. So let's use Microsoft again.

Just put in Microsoft and look at the pages and see if that page actually shows up. A lot of those pages don't necessarily show up on search because they're misspelled. So you could put in the misspelled and the corrected spell and see the vast difference. Microsoft has a lot of different followers. A fake page.

Might have a few thousand, but if you dig a little bit deeper into like the employees and the people, you might see just LinkedIn users or names that don't necessarily match the faith. So you might have an American name that matches somebody that obviously looks a whole lot different than the culture that they say they're from. And thirdly, You should also check out the person that's referring you. If it's a referral, check out to see who they are.

Check their LinkedIn profile. Google them. If you don't want to go to a LinkedIn profile so that they can't see you checking them out, go Google them and see how they come up. So if you're being approached by a recruiter, more than likely they should show up on the real company page. If they don't, you should be a suspect.

So those are three of the many ways that you can know. Another way, a lot of people get offers and get lured from text. If you've never engaged a company from that person, in other words, if you're not involved in the hiring process, some companies do text after they've been contacted at first.

The recruiter will ask, would you like to be contacted by text? so we can keep updated. If you haven't, and this is straight text, I would report it as junk and bail on it because it is more than likely a scam or something to really be suspect of.

If somebody made a mistake or whatever, let's say if it was a real opportunity, they'll go to LinkedIn or they'll reach you by email. But text isn't the only way. Text is just a way, a layer for people to... to scam you and to get you in because it's there's not a whole lot to bet other than the Texas stuff.

So hopefully that answers all three of Mark's questions. All right. So, and that goes along here. I don't even have to really go on with this particular one. Is that, or I already said it, that if it's from an unknown source, don't engage.

Don't click on attachments from either text or email. Those are to be leery of. Again, you always want to get deeper into the information, but if it's from an unknown source, just try to keep it moving.

Scammers have fake LinkedIn profiles and social media accounts. We talk about it happens on Facebook. It does happen on X, Instagram, all of them.

LinkedIn is a little bit different because people visit LinkedIn specifically for job information, career information. whether it's to grow in their professional development, to network with others, or to find out other possibilities of jobs. You can apply to jobs on LinkedIn.

So it's really become this one-stop career site for people, and LinkedIn's done a great job with that. But scammers have, because of the technology, they create fake profiles and they create company profiles. They may even lure you to...

that apply through another site. And we'll get to that in a second. But they are trying to get you to believe and get trust that if you have a profile, then I should be trusted. But if you dig deeper in the profile many times, you'll find that there are dates and places and things that look more like they were copied from another profile that was a real profile than that person's profile. And there's a lot of red flags that will be raised through that, even if you look at it.

But if you look at people's past posts, that's a very interesting and telling sign of the activity. I looked at one recently, and I didn't bring a screenshot of it, but there was one where that person basically just posted comments, send me a connection. And that has a lot to do with the open to work.

Banner that I know that people are asking about. You may have even seen a banner called hashtag desperate, but the open to work is something special. I'm going to get to that in a moment, but that's really important because a lot of times people are targeted because they have that banner or because they use the hashtag.

The hashtag is the one that actually generates those fake profiles to say, send me a connection, like they're going to be really helpful. likely they're not going to be helpful. In fact, they'll deter you the wrong way. So you want to watch for those, avoid them at all costs.

And feel free to expose them as well. You know, it takes a certain amount of audacity to do that, but really that helps their LinkedIn community. If you get a chance to look for a guy named Jay Jones, he's called the profiler.

I'm giving him a shout out. He's great at... exposing these LinkedIn profiles that are great. Specifically from people who say that they're resume writers, career coaches, et cetera, people who are supposed to help you build your marketing materials and get you ready for interviews. Those are his specialty in particular.

And a lot of what he shows is what everybody can take away, something to help. them identify LinkedIn profiles. But one of the ways you want to look for the authenticity, a lot of times the photo doesn't even look right. Sometimes they even look like, and a lot of times they actually look like something you find on Google as a generic photo.

So you want to look for those things. There's even a way for you to look at a Google photo or a LinkedIn photo to check to see if that... That photo's even authentic. But again, you look at people's posts and where they are and some of their history, you don't see the things that are inconsistent and don't match. And you should definitely avoid those people.

Five, avoid transactions or communication on messaging apps. Scammers tend to take their victims or potential victims to another platform and use a messaging feature to engage them. I've heard of cases where they use Facebook and Instagram. But a lot of them use the WhatsApp and Zoom features of those platforms because they're able to, they say, well, hey, let's have it further.

And they all take you there for interviews. And who does interviews on Zoom and WhatsApp, right? But they try to and they do. But that's not what the platform actually is for. So if they're taking you on to those platforms, avoid them at all costs.

They tend to. They can easily delete their accounts after they've scammed you, after they've gotten whatever information they want, and you're trying to find them, you won't find them. It's the same way on LinkedIn, too, but WhatsApp is a little bit easier to use to create hundreds and hundreds of accounts for scammers. So just try to keep and try to avoid those as well.

Six, avoid giving it personal information before they conclude the interview. A lot of these scammers ask for the information up front about your social security number, your bank account number, and it kind of leads you on. You're thinking that this is hopeful because you look like they're going to hire me. Some of them hire or pretend hire without vetting you, without doing anything. And a lot of people, that gives them, it's a red flag.

And most of the time, it's a sign of... Something's a little off and it's really something that's a lot off because they are emphasizing your personal information first rather than finding out if you qualify for the job. A real recruiter, a real interviewer cares about what value you're bringing to them first as far as the job. They want to make sure that you are 100% or if not 100%, maybe 80% and 100% qualified.

for the job first rather than finding out what your bank account information is. So you definitely want to beware of anything that doesn't. If they say you're hired, you've gone too far already. But if you are just at the beginning, you feel like this is kind of weird that we're doing this via Zoom on chat, no less. They don't show their face or they show something.

They show some kind of avatar. Disengage. and report them, please. And also tell the story online.

And I bet you if you were to start looking for their LinkedIn profile that you saw one particular time, they're gone. A lot of times that's happened. Part is that LinkedIn may have deleted it. I've been the user that deleted it. So you want to take those things into consideration.

They are quick to act as far as being found out. and avoid avoiding being found out. Another sign you want to avoid is if that website that you go to, let's say you're checking it out, it's bare.

That like there's very little information about the company that is generic. There are no faces of people who are, and it may have been duplicated. Again, you want to go back to the basic of checking and make sure that URL that...

Let's say, again, Microsoft has XGT. If you're there, you want to disengage. But if you get this far, there's a couple of other steps you're going to want to take because likely the fake sites will have some kind of malware, spyware virus for them to track your whereabouts online and possibly check your passwords and to get those to get into like your accounts and things that you look on. online. Be especially careful when you have a phone and you're doing this on as well.

Phones, most people don't put like virusware and spyware and software on it. You definitely want to have it on your phone as well as what's called a virtual private network. And a lot of times people, and this might be an offshoot, but those are good to use so that If you go to like a Starbucks or to a hotel where there are, you know, it's being shared publicly, you can mask your whereabouts.

In other words, a VPN will make it look like you come from Indonesia instead of Indiana. So that way they're more likely to not see you in the hotel and you'll become less of a target. And plus, they're encrypted as well. The encryption, they are not able to penetrate through because they use the software that doesn't allow them to. But the fake websites, there are some legitimate companies that actually have terrible websites.

It is up to you to kind of discern between what's right and what's wrong. So then you want to try to find a contact person on LinkedIn that has a legitimate profile. actively recruiting for jobs for that particular company and just ask them directly and say, hey, is this really your site? And ask them that question.

Don't be afraid to go those extra steps. In fact, you're going to find yourself going those extra steps very often in the modern job search because you want to make sure you've got the right person recruiting for the right job at the right company. So all of that makes a big difference.

They'll make a big difference in your life. So you really don't want your personal information gotten by the wrong person because they are very aggressively looking to become you. So let's say they become you. They have your Social Security, your bank account information. Then they can go not just apply for credit cards and get cards and any other kind of fiscal assets.

They can also... make your name look bad by applying to a bunch of jobs in one company. Now, if a company sees that one person is applying to a whole bunch of companies, you know what they do?

They blacklist them. So you want to stay away from that scenario, too. They can make your reputation bad without you even knowing it.

Let's say you are smart enough to target Disney as an employer, and you want to work in whatever department. But you're not getting any response when you apply. And they may even possibly say, hey, you've applied to all these jobs.

So therefore, you know, you're no longer invited to be part of Disney. Say, wait a second, I just applied to one job. That could possibly happen in today's environment.

In fact, it is now. There's a recent CNET article. that talks about how there are fake employees or applicants who are scammers who are trying to be fake employees and they're implying in your name. And we can go deeper on how much damage that can be done there, but you definitely want to stay away from that. Scammers, they ask you to give, or better yet, they ask you to purchase.

equipment, computer software. Most of you have even heard about people saying that they paid for equipment to a third-party company. They never got the check from the company, and they were to deposit it in their bank for the equipment, but the bank found out that there's no sufficient funds, or they may even find out later that they gave the money, but they take the money back. and then some because they're charging you for the insubstantial fund.

And they're charging you even for the whole thing. And depending upon your bank, they may not even let you know that it's happened or not. So you should never pay to be an employee where value is being exchanged. Never.

But a lot of people have. And, you know. The reimbursement part and the whole thing, they disappeared by that. So you want to avoid those scenarios as well.

Here we go. Talk about open work badges and hashtags. Let's talk about the hashtag first before we talk about the badge.

The hashtag, people often will post something saying, I'm looking for work. And they used a hashtag. The hashtag originally was sort of a way to bookmark conversations about a particular subject.

So let's say I'm a recruiter and I want to look up everybody who has the hashtag open to work and to see if I could find qualified candidates. Now, the easier ways for them to do it, the catch is that it depends if the recruiter has the tools to look up without the hashtag rather than with it. But what's happened is. is that scammers either have targeted people with the hashtag open to work.

and send them DMs about scams, which I'm almost sure they do that to every single person there. Or they send, they lure them another way, in a passive way, and saying, hey, send me a connection notes in the comments. And usually that's just automatically generated through an artificial intelligence bot, which is a technology a lot of them will use to... in order to reply to everybody. So that bookmarks for them who they can victimize or some way lure them into being a scam.

I recommend you not use the Open to Work, but you'll find different discussions about the Open to Work badge, which is a green badge. It's different than the one I have here. I have a new one called Desperate.

That's something that nobody wants to be, but it's a thing. It's not as popular as open work. That has years of data, as opposed to desperate badge is something that's kind of really new.

But I want you to beware, desperate is kind of the message you really don't want to send to employers. But open to work is kind of something special. And the open to work is something that is from LinkedIn.

It's something, it's the badge you're talking about. That is something they do operate. Now, LinkedIn, it has not responded as people would like as far as, you know, getting their visibility.

To some degrees, yes, to some degrees, no. That's arguable. The part that I want to concentrate on is saying that it makes you look desperate and far from the truth, in my opinion, and for most recruiters who actively look for open to work.

badges, they have a tool that they use that is called the LinkedIn Recruiter Tool. They pay a lot of money for that tool to use, and they can see whoever has the badge. Now, if you are using the badge, you've stopped using the badge, the advantage of using the badge is you can set the settings that you can set the Open to Work badge. Either you want it public or not public, but where recruiters can see. Try using it without being public.

So only you would put it to see. This makes their job a lot easier and it finds the right candidates faster for them so that they can get to the right person. Of course, they're going to make sure that you're a qualified person.

They're going to make sure that you are really the person associated with the profile on LinkedIn. But all in all, you want to be sure that... And the best way to use it, set it to private so that only legitimate LinkedIn recruiters or recruiters, period, will see the badge.

There might be some recruiters who are fake that are looking for the badge. That's arguable. I've heard a few cases that have happened.

To be honest, it's huge. Way too big. fewer than the other scenario and the other scenario, but it does increase your chances of getting in front of the right recruiter.

So it's better to set that badge in private so that only recruiters, and that way you cut quite a bit of people who can have access to you and your situation. And finally, there's more that... I can go through, but I tried to cover the 10 that are most common here is that, and I talked about before, is that there's those who are, you know, they're pretending to be resume writers and career coaches, people that you would pay money to, to have them develop a resume or to give you advice or to help you prepare for interviews and what have you.

A lot of them do that. And the common scenario is that people are, the scammers are copying well-known, even people who have companies and create company pages, individual profiles, excuse me, and they're able to replicate their profiles in such a way to make them seem like they have all the prudential. When really all you have to do is take the name that they said that they are. and you can go to where the credential like for instance as a CPRW probably seen that a lot.

or certified professional resume writer. There's a site you can go to to check out where they are. You can just Google it and check their name to see if they actually have the credentials. You can also Google a little bit further to make sure that their photos are matching.

Go to their sites and make sure that, again, another case where you have to make sure that spellings are correct. And sometimes they even use, it could be 1T. It could be one S away from being the correct site.

So you want to check those. You want to check reviews. Sometimes they're fake reviews. You could go on LinkedIn and check the reviews and then check the person that's reviewing to make sure that they're a real person.

The fake ones always have to fake people that are actually doing it because they do it in rings at night. does something. And again, they'll try to steal the credentials, but usually the ones that I know have a great internet presence.

So it's kind of hard to duplicate them as opposed to if somebody's just starting out business and doesn't have a large following or a business yet, they might be more, have a chance to be, you know, duplicated, their information duplicated. So you want to keep that. And just to kind of wrap up, you know, to talk about waste and bottom, not just your job search. I talked about a few of them already, but to kind of recap, definitely consider safety first and stop applying to hundreds of jobs per month. It is no longer a numbers game like it was back in 1999, 2000, where you go to CareerBuilder and...

you can apply for five jobs and probably two out of those five you can almost assure that they that you'll get a call for interview uh you want to vet everything that anybody says in fact i would even go on to the next one is to so that you want to pump target the real companies just be aggressive and just you know you're 10 to 50 uh companies where you want to work that idea that you've researched that you They have all the right things that you want and the things that they can do for your career, that there's some exchange of value where you can add value. You feel great about the culture from what you've read so far and that you've researched. And it's better that way.

So that way you're not tempted by all the offers. The one way takes, the way I suggest you do it, takes a little bit at first, but ultimately it's better. that it comes the more that you target companies and start reaching out to them and start finding ways to maybe even networking into it, into a job or into a company, which is my next one. That's a great way to do it.

LinkedIn is still the best place to do that. Engage other people to find out what they do and see if they can bring your name up or if they can give you suggestions or tell you about the interview process. Anything to give you a little bit of a leg up really helps. And finally, security tools. Definitely, I'm going to emphasize your phone, having the right security tools.

Avoiding the scam likely is by using RoboKiller for VPN. They are free. If you use iPhone, they have a VPN along with it.

Although I tend to use IPVanish, which is a company that has been doing it for a long time. I pay the yearly subscription so I can have all my devices under one to keep them safe because I do travel. And, you know, I'm in hotels and Starbucks and Panera Breads to use Internet. So I hope all of that.

Really helps. And, you know, we didn't get a chance to talk about the other things, about the rise of artificial intelligence and deep fake videos and some of the other things you see here. But that's why I created the Job Scam Report, so that people want to go deep right now.

A lot of that content is very free. All you do is just go subscribe to it. I'm not selling a whole lot just yet, but in the future it will come.

But I definitely want to be. of service first which has always been the case so that concludes the powerpoint presentation And probably went along a little longer than Robert because of the beginning. No, you did great, Mark. You did great. And I stopped asking questions because I was going to keep derailing you.

So I think we still have plenty of questions to get to, though. And we'll take about 10 minutes and try to knock out as many as we can here. So Anne asks, what should we do if we get a text from someone who we think is a scammer, a job scammer? So besides blocking the message, should we report them?

And who do we report them to? Well, a text I recommend just don't engage and just you have the option to report and put it in junk just so that you don't get the text again. Because again, from an unknown source, you didn't agree to the text already violates your personal space. An anonymous attendee asks, are there any services you recommend to keep a separate phone number from your home phone number?

You know, a lot of times nowadays. That's a stupid question. Yeah. What do you think, Mark?

Stupid question. And I get that, and I'll tell you the reason why I think this is important. And I didn't mention it because it's amongst the other 30 things that I could have done. But using Google Voice is great. If you have an Android, I recommend YouMail.

Y-O-U-M-A-I-L. And those two give you, how should I, screen numbers. Actually, they're phone numbers still. And people contact you. If you use that during your job search, you're putting things up on job portals or you put it on your LinkedIn.

That way, they don't have access to your home number or your cell number. So the second number, the Google Voice. and email used with cell numbers. I don't know if any of the major phone companies, if you have like a landline, let's say, I don't think they're doing anything just yet.

But I just, I know we got rid of our landline. There was just too many scam calls. And we know a lot of people. So we didn't want that to happen.

And it took me some time to do it, but I decided to do it. But finally, my wife and I, we, agreed that this is time to go. And it's been much more peaceful since. So email, Google Voice, Google Voice, if you already have a Gmail, it comes as part of the suite.

So Christina has a question, or really it's more of a comment that maybe you can react to. Christina says, I believe that it's not legal for an employer, recruiter, or website to request of a job seeker their social security number and their date of birth. If I see one that does, I usually enter 99999999 for my social security number and something similar for my date of birth. And I never enter my home number on the address line.

And if not required, I don't even give my street name. So any thoughts, Mark, on that? Have you come across companies that...

will request a social security number for a job seeker? Well, a lot of them, as I stated earlier, they ask early on. The scammers will ask early on, even before they get to an interview, of that information, and employers just don't do that. They don't. They don't ask for that until they know that you qualify.

They're going to invest in hiring you, and in return, you're investing in giving them the value you need to. promote their company. So really, if it's at first, you shouldn't give any, why go through all that information?

But if you get to the end and you're so suspicious, then you can cut it off at any particular point if you don't trust them. The advantage, they're making sure to keep in mind, they make sure that you're a real person with the real credentials as well. So you're vetting each other.

So... You want to give, I mean, when you say a home number, I guess these days, that would be your cell number. But if it is a landline, then give them your cell or give them that Google Voice number. But yeah, you want to make sure that that person is legitimate for them for a social security number.

And that's something that's essential because that has to do with tax on both ends, for you and for them. So you want to keep those things in mind in the application. So just...

I'm assuming the context is that that's somebody fake. You shouldn't even give that much. You didn't give them any information because it's a waste of time. So Tammy wants to know, do you have any thoughts on LinkedIn's new verification feature? Yes.

LinkedIn has a new verification feature that is better right now for individual accounts rather than company accounts. Company accounts, they don't use the verification the same way. The different companies that LinkedIn uses for verification, one of them is Clear.

Clear is the same thing you use, some of you may use for travel to get through TC faster and skip it even. Those are fine. There's some other companies they use, but they're using legitimate companies for the individual accounts for verification. I think that's one of the things you could actually look for. Although there have been some...

profiles with verification and people with thousands of of uh of followers and connection but then you gotta also dive a little bit deeper is how they behave online um do you trust the way that they interact with people and if they don't interact at all that should be suspicious as well if you have a few thousand folks but you don't interact with anyone how does that work so you verification, I think, is a very good thing. It's a step in the right direction. And especially if you're meeting people who are new, then, or you see somebody you want to connect with new, that's a better way to connect, though everybody hasn't used it yet. So, and there's, I can go deeper than that.

But I think it is a good thing. So Angela notes that some gig-based companies like Trusted Herd and InstaWork will ask for social security numbers before applying for gigs. And Angela says she always enters in fake social security numbers. And then Georgia points out that several federal agencies like the post office will request your social security number and date of birth when you're initially applying. And that's, and I was going to say...

They've been doing that for decades, so we know that's going to be a trusted source if they still do it. If they still do it. A lot of them, like when you apply to a federal job, it's likely they ask for a lot of that information first, in addition to everything that you've ever done.

But that's a very secure site. I haven't heard fake employees on USA Jobs. dot gov is the site with federal so yeah but you know if it's a startup or if it's nvidia some of those sites have pages which you should look for by the way to see how their hiring process is to be handled if you somebody approaches you and says they're doing something special but their page says something i disengage automatically from that person that's referring you because NVIDIA has very clear, and so do many other companies, have very clear standards and policies of how they go about hiring. So folks, we've hit three o'clock. There's a couple of questions we didn't quite get to.

However, I am-We can answer those. I got a couple of minutes. Good, Mark.

We just started a couple of minutes late. Yeah. All right. So, well, first of all, Bill in the chat put a link to a list.

that's curated by mass.gov. So our state government has a list of recruiters and staffing companies that are legit. So these are all Massachusetts-based ones. So it's not going to help you verify if they're from another state or another country, but at least for Massachusetts ones, there is a list on the state website.

That's good to know. Yeah. So Ethan has a question, says, in the past, I was able to detect and avoid job scams. However, I must say that I have not done such a good job lately.

I think some came through LinkedIn where I lowered my defenses and I responded to those too quickly. My question is, once that happens, my email and my text gets inundated. And so do you have any recommendations on email tools that can filter out or in the emails that I actually want to see?

Yeah, depending on the emails. So the one. I'll give an example. Like if you use Gmail, Gmail, you can. There's ways you could just put them in the spam folder, just like you do Outlook and probably a bunch of others where you put them in Outlook or you put them in a spam folder and you'll treat them as such.

You can also block and report them for phishing as well. And those will help filter them away from your incoming. If you're doing a job search, you can have a separate Gmail. You can create as many Gmail accounts as you want as opposed to have per address. So you can create I have several Gmails for different purposes.

But if you have one just for your job search, then you can kind of keep better track on how they got there to you. And it's probably easier to even filter a lot of those out and report them. If they keep doing it, if they keep reporting them phishing and putting them as you know reporting and phishing uh which i recommend doing and blocking them uh then eventually they end up going away but sometimes they may even make it through to inbox but those are usually the best filters and they work really well uh so an anonymous attendee sort of has a situation that she recently encountered I received several texts from someone supposedly with Randstad, which is a national temp recruiting firm.

Yeah, I'm familiar with that. Yeah. So they were pitching me on working for them from home.

The recruiter was very anxious to start my training as soon as possible. I agreed to a phone conversation the next day, but then decided it was too good to be true. I googled their phone number and their pitch, and it sounded very sketchy.

As a result, I blocked them. And then the next day, so they blocked the text. And then the next day I got a call asking why they blocked the number. So then I blocked that phone number. And then they tried calling on another number.

So was I right to think that this was a scam? Yes, absolutely. You don't feel good about that communication.

It was sort of like the creepy boyfriend, right? He tries to get a hold of you through text and he emails you and calls you. And you really are not into him. And therefore, now he becomes a serial lurker. So treat them as such.

So yes, absolutely. I wish everybody would have done the same thing. Yeah.

And trust your gut, folks. Trust your gut. And trust your instincts. You don't want to, I mean, ultimately, it is up to you whether you want to, you know, deal with somebody who...

It could be legit, but if they have scammy behavior, I call it, in other words, they act like they're going to take advantage of you in some kind of way, then you have every right to block them. You want to be with people you feel good about, not with people who you're always going to have to look behind your shoulder. Let's see.

Angela says, I also recommend everyone set up. a two-factor authentication on their accounts. I was hacked over Wi-Fi because I didn't have a two-factor authentication set up on my account.

Susan says, thank you, Mark. This was a terrific presentation. There's also some other nice comments in the chat. Bea and Brigham say thanks as well. So folks, let's give Mark a big virtual round of applause for a great presentation.

Mark, do you have any last words for the audience? Please put safety first. I can't emphasize. Yeah, there are things like strategy and you've heard those things.

If you talk to Bob, Bob, I know it was very thorough in talking about strategy and targeting companies and just being very and having intent when you are engaging employers, but being safe. And 2024 and 2025 and beyond are the operative words these days. And I hope more of you will be safer and be smart about it. Yeah. Good words to end on, Mark.

Thanks so much for a great presentation. Folks, next Monday, we're back. I believe that's November 4th, 2 o'clock. We're going to do an AMA and Ask Me Anything with resume and LinkedIn coach Virginia Franco. Someone else who recommended to me from Bob, matter of fact.

Virginia is awesome. Yeah, that's what I hear. I hear it. Yeah, Virginia is awesome.

Yeah, I love Virginia. I know her. Yeah.

Excellent. You all know each other, I feel. So folks, bring your questions for Virginia. OK, it's going to be very interactive. Looking forward to that one.

So thank you all so, so much. Make sure to take the feedback survey when you exit the Zoom and look for an email from me tomorrow with a link to this recording and information about some other upcoming webinars. So thank you all so, so much.

And I hope everyone enjoys the rest of their day. Thanks again, Mark. Thanks.

Transcript for:Staying Safe in Job Searches

Transcript for:
Staying Safe in Job Searches