Navigating Job Scams for Young Professionals

good morning I'm Shelley mey with dreamcatcher career coaching and this is my podcast young professionals career Catalyst my guest today is Mark Anthony Dyson a freelance writer of career related articles for Forbes entrepreneur and Business Insider and the host of a podcast called the job scam report Mark is otherwise known as the voice of job Seekers welcome to the young professionals career Catalyst mark so excited to speak with you today uh great to speak with you as well should I just clarify I've contributed to those Publications as as a guest not as a writer so okay so just want to make that clear that I don't write for all three I know people who do and have written for all three but not me I'm not I'm not quite there yet I'm still growing up okay sounds good so um obviously you do a lot of uh conversations around job scams and a lot of Articles around that topic what was your major in college my major in college was Communications ah okay so you could say that I am doing what I'm supposed to do right but it didn't quite work at the path to that didn't quite work out that way because I took some twists and turns in that matter but that was my degree okay and did did you have some were you envisioning doing something specific with that degree well there was a lot of things I wanted to do there was never just one thing I wanted to do but I did get it I started out in college with that major doing um some radio College radio and I got a chance to do that I did a little College TV as well both as a reporter they called it something else then I don't know after got what the the name was but that's what it was so I started out there but then after I graduated and then after I left the radio station decid to do uh some other thing that did retail management uh for a while uh eventually led me to doing some Association uh work as in customer service then eventually got uh in leadership in those capacities so um you know there you go that's about 20 25 years worth right there right right well we all have those little twists and turns in our careers so yeah sometimes it takes a while to end up in that perfect spot right right right and I did a bunch of other things too I mean um you know full disclosure I had probably about 23 24 jobs um but you know that's the way it is and I think a lot of um this generation is going to have that as well going to have that challenge and they're already taking on that challenge by you know we know that the job hopping which I think will eventually make its way back by the end of the year but that's a whole another discussion I don't want to take you on a d okay so you've been working in the career development Sphere for quite a while how did you first get involved in that uh by accident my brother in law had thought I wrote well enough to where he said why don't you write resumés you can do that you write this stuff you can do resumés so I did and accidentally followed the trail of learning learning the modern uh techniques of writing resumés and eventually built a business around it and got out of resume writing uh because of the voice of job Seekers so the voice of job Seekers took me another Journey uh so that was kind of fun to be a part of and to experience the evolution so here I am is the voice of job Seekers but you know we'll get into everything else is go along okay um so the Better Business Bureau claims that job scams are costing job Seekers like two billion dollars in losses annually so which populations get scammed most frequently well the more frequent population the people who are getting scammed are the young people right people were talking about the genzies and the Millennials have gotten scammed a lot more now the Nuance of it is that older people are getting scammed too but they're getting scammed with more money okay as opposed to younger people are getting scammed more frequently okay and I think it's just that their desperation for trying to launch that career that makes the Young Folks more susceptible to these job scams correct yes and I think a lot of them are into entertaining more opportunities wish more of them were more thoughtful and strategic about their moves which they can't be and a lot of them are but a lot of people in this economy have gotten caught up in the the obstacles and how tough it is with the ghost jobs and going through multiple rounds of interviews and so when you get somebody that says hey you should look at this opportunity you're perfect for it it sounds really good but what scammers use is social engineering they bait you with something that you want so that they you can get uh so they can get what they want which is your personal information yes yes so what caused you to become so interested in job scams about a couple years ago I was starting to write articles about it and then you know I get notes from job Seekers even though I write mostly in I don't do career coaching and I'm not writing resumés so I'm not actively in it I'm kind of passively in it because I since I dabble in that space and I Network heavily in that space and I write on LinkedIn about job search and careers I get the questions I get the inquiry so it led me down a path to where people were really getting scammed in different way that we've never seen before so I start to follow the story and follow one story down where I wrote something for linda.com about Job fishing and that is where the technology that we have today enables us to you know mock companies and build websites that kind of look like companies now the websites can't be the same that's why you'll see if it's IBM somebody will put ibm.com for instance that might be exaggeration but large in part that's what people eyes and ears they want to see that right and they want to believe so they just go along and they went along and and they got job fished or and job fishing eventually means kind of like catfishing for jobs they built an illusion that something exists but it really doesn't so good and so therefore people start to get scammed out of their personal information and their cash now now most people think that that cash is their is the reason why and that's the loss the real gold mine in this whole thing is your personal information because it could be reused and repurposed over and over and over again and someone else collects a long list and they sell it off to other scammers or sell it off to other other places where they all will make money right and these things have many layers but how I got started was that article and then I start to follow a little bit more and start to I wrote another article the following year for the same publication and that time I talked about how talked about Job scams and how to avoid them and I think the articles are 10 ways and then I what I did after the article believe it or not I went and made Google Alerts following scam so I became that stormchaser um but with job scams and I start to look at every articles every day and there were multiple articles every day not just here in the United States but around the world so people had there were different Dynamics and there were different ways that people were being scamed not just one and people right now they want to you can put in uh the Better Business Bureau scam tracker okay right now there's more than 30 almost 35,000 uh reported incidents of of job scams and different types of scams yes so it's if you really want to see what the trends are in scams which I think everybody should at least take a look one time to see what's happening although you can look at LinkedIn and get an idea of what's really relevant but all I have to say is that that's how I got on that path to look at what scams were about and how important they are to the safety of our culture period but the job Seekers especially since they're the most vulnerable and this whole thing right right so the purpose is obviously to get your personal information um so what what are some ways that they're using that information to um carry out their scam well the way that that uh you're talking about the scammers how they're using that personal information well one of the scariest things that people can do is to be an imposter of you so let's say they got your personal information they got your Social Security phone number and other ID information they can go act as you and apply to a whole bunch of jobs that you'll eventually get turn down for more than likely or you may get hired and that scammer builds a bad reputation in your name with your information so therefore they become you in a sense from afar because you know scammers are basically in the pajamas in some other country with 40,000 people on their laptop pretending that they could be at a large scale right so for you you could be applying to a job in companies that you want and you've been blacklisted you're not getting any response and you don't know why that's War One the loads can actually lead you and could damage you for good wow I never really thought of it that way well it's a it's already happening it's already something that's really prevalent in our society and there's other things that scammers can do with your information like I said they can sell it to another scammer right or they can hack your zel accounts your cash apps accounts if they have the right information they can build other accounts in your name that you're not supposed to have and scam other people get caught knowing that the laws are probably minimiz and what they can do to certain scammers and don't get me wrong the FBI is very involved in these scams but they're after the ring they're after scammer ring for individuals who losing $2,000 $3,000 they're going to take note of it but that's not their priority right their priority their priority is are the six figure uh six figure scam so they're gon to look after the Rings and house organized so uh so that people get on but you should still report it because you want to report it to those entities that effect uh that that you put on those applications or that you gave to that fake scammer uh social security number you of course called the Social Security Department let them know your bank you gave them your banking information absolutely if you give credit card you call it that institution and all the institutions that are that are important uh that you gave as personal information that nobody's supposed to have right you want to call those entities and report it and then uh we can go even further down the down the road than that but all that say is that there there's a great amount of damage that could be done and may have been done to a whole lot of people that they don't know about and at least you should be aware and you start documenting your your tracks right right absolutely so what types of job scams have you seen most recently well let me give you this several man there's a lot of them that are out there to point to one let me let me give you a scenario of how this and this was from an article from a few months ago okay you may not have heard of resum looters no resum a lot of people don't because it happened over across the way across seas and those you watching internationally I won't go through but you look up resume looters there are there few articles about it what they were able to do they were able to hack job portals John PTO is where like the career builders except it was in that particular country and they were able to get more than 30,000 uh personal information that people either put on applications or on resumés oh my and as we know from like different viruses and things like that what happens over there is going to happen over here sure so that's why not just job Seekers need to be confir be concerned but also employers need to be concerned as well oh and because we can that's a whole another discussion but focusing on job Seekers again those per personal information that it can come back to haunt you in ways that you don't even realize right so that's why you have to take precaution for everything so the question you'll get then is is well should I stop applying the job portals well no because unfortunately it's a cash 22 recruiters and employers rely on these portals because that's how they get the the jobs filled so not that but you can be more careful in the way that you mass that information so that's going to cause some inconveniences for a lot of folks but on a large scale that's how you know scams are going to affect job Seekers a large apart from things that may not be in your control to begin with you did all the right things unfortunately the people who have whose intent is is contrary to yours as is a job yeah it's such a shame that you have to be this paranoid it's really a shame well I think this I think people can avoid some of the paranoia um if you consider that a lot of people mass apply to jobs on job boards yes right and they've done it for years now how I've been in the game 15 years and and me and a lot of my colleagues and people are in our industry have been saying stop it for years but people continue to do it so they don't remember what jobs they appli to because I applied and I've gotten comments still to this day I've applied to 500 jobs in the last three months and and Lord knows if you can just back to you can't take that information you put on those applications and resumés you just can't take that back right and instead of just being more intentional and researching the company make sure the company's real make sure they're legal make sure they don't have a whole bunch of reviews and complaints and you could do that by putting in the company name and put reviews scams things like that okay narrow it down to a list of several it could be you can have 50 do uh 50 jobs or 50 companies on that list but you know their real companies who and I would pick the ones that really care about how they are treating job Seekers and how they're treating your data right we don't have to go down but that's make that part of your Criterion and concentrate getting into those companies so you spend more time getting to know employees you know finding out if that's going to be the right company for you for you to uh get as much into so you can uh base your answers off the Intel that you've gotten you know those kind of things be much more intentional so even if you even that's all right I love it you know I love love do somebody came to the front door right right but you know all in all to say is that the people were a lot more intentional took more time and they can avoid lot the scams they and it doesn't hurt to question people and question everything and anything that you see especially if it doesn't sound right but even if it sounds right you have a right to research everybody who may say hey I got a job or even if somebody refers you somebody refers you to a scam job they are also a criminal as well because they're Pro probably in the ring and you know and anything like that you know make sure it's somebody that you trust or you feel good about that you could verify they actually do work for a real company and that company and not just some company that they do some good work and there was a scam like that and that scam is still going around on Twitter uh you know some LinkedIn as well I've seen a few of those a lot of that on Twitter somebody will say hey I know this person they work for this particular company I can connect you with them and they said let's go over to WhatsApp and and talk and that's the one place you don't want to go is a WhatsApp or any messaging type of uh app where you're off the grid and people can have these and mislead you and Lead You Down the Road you don't want to go down that's a good tip I never really thought about that you know I always I always recommend that people apply directly on the company's website but even so I mean like you said somebody some unscrupulous person can get into that database and steal applicants information anyway so well here's a tip when you get a let's say we can use apple let's say Apple's one and you get an email from someone and you know the email address that they have you would think it would be spelled the right well right way somebody might put AP p.com you know that's not right you know that's not funny and that's not going to be the your because a lot of people don't understand how email addresses really work it's supposed to coincide with the company's name or somewhat so you take that end you put it in a search engine and and you see if that what comes up and it may come up uh don't use this address it's a scam or or there might be an advisory that might show up on Google or Bing or whatever you use saying that this is known to be a scam uh or it may come up something completely different that looks different than what you put in so that's another way that people can check kind of and you think some people who say oh gosh that's such Common Sense well there's a lot of people fallen for misspelled company names thinking it was right because we think we'll say whoa everybody makes a spelling mistake I'm not a great spell so I'm gonna give this person a break no no no no because this person supposed to be recruited that's the part they're supposed to have on right if they make a mistake anywhere is not through their email address that's true absolutely so what are some other job scam warning signs or red flags that we should look out for oh great question and you know there's there's a bunch of them that uh um I'll give you some quick ones um one is you should be suspicious if you get a call from out of nowhere if you get a call from out of nowhere and they're saying You' be right and you're going at looking at your LinkedIn profile you know most people don't write a great profile or they write barely enough they said really you think I'd be right for this great job now it the mindset of the job Seeker a lot of times if they've been on a long job search with a lot of them have six plus months they're GNA be more vulnerable than somebody who's already working so that's something keep in mind depending where they're where you're at and I think there you know scammers are are techsavvy but they're also great marketers and they have a lot of information on you than you think that they have other than your LinkedIn profile because they watch your posts they watch you know they've been looking you may not have done it on LinkedIn but on your Facebook page depending on how public it is you had a rant saying how hard it was to find a job so that makes you a perfect candidate for them so those are kind of things to kind of look out the other signs if it's too good to be true um talked about before taking you off to a messenging messenger app people are getting scammed have gotten scammed through Zoom even people have used Zoom to have these meetings they don't use the video part they just use the messaging part ah they start to have these Zoom or these WhatsApp or whatever the messenger um might be they start to have the interview of course they're gonna pass nobody fails these things you imagine failing SC the scam interview right right I wonder what that looks like if you were watching you you failed the scam intervie let me know there's another road go down but you know something else is asking when they ask for personal information too early yes nobody should be asking you for your Social Security number before you have an interview right or your bank account information account information I I I'm just saying they may have your phone number by the way I would use a Google Voice number okay especially and there's also a service called youil youil is awesome for those who have Android doesn't work on Apple products Android products and other phones outside of Apple uh where they can give you a number you can use for to ask your real number so nobody won't have that and I recommend that part of it because if you give somebody your real number they can use that to build some other apps like cash app and zel app in your with your number uh and that could be a little problematic uh you know down the line and we already talked about strange email addresses websites uh websites are supposed to be perfect right I especially if they claim to be Nidia Nidia doesn't have a single mistake on their we if they do you wouldn't know it or they rush you and say I know that we have something posted on our website however this is a special circumstance don't buy it right right don't bu well we want to get this position filled right away uh not with the little bit information asking for you your personal information so those are some of the scams I have on if I can menure right here I write the job scam report on substack yes and go and there's a document with 19 different signs as you can look at I'll be updating that on a regular basis that is under a subscription so you would have to subscribe to get that all in all to say is that you can also you know look elsewhere to get signs okay I try to keep it in real time right updated okay so has I imagine AI has made it even harder to spot a job scam correct yes it it has and a lot of people are thinking that these tools that are out here are all working as far as an AI to that would track AI data and there's not one that's fullprof yet that's still a long way off so I think people will need to understand that they will need to do the groundwork in the other areas to verify the that you know these are you know AI is only dealing with the communication they can't deal with whe in real time whether a company is still hiring or not or or whether that person that's presenting this to you is a real person associated with the job those things you're going to have to do that work right right I noticed I had an email from someone recently and they were asking me to to do some weird Financial stuff and I'm looking at the email and everything was spell spelled perfectly and it was correct grammar and I'm like well typically you can spot it because there is a misspelling or some other little giveaway and and what you're reading but this was so well written it was so convincing I mean fortunately I knew it was a scam but right I'm sure they used AI I'm sure it was somebody over in another country you know that concocted this scheme and and used AI to write this perfect email to me fortunately I was like okay this but there's a human factor to that and I've seen a a bunch of those if you when you see this writing and this perfect and all that the next question question I have to ask myself is that do people really talk this way right you know they will use and it's kind of hard to describe you got to look at a whole bunch of them going wait a second I have recruited friends they don't talk that way or they wouldn't relate in this kind of way in a way that kind of you know that's nonpersonal right is one way to describe it is that you're talking about me you're talking you you're talking about your company that way and you go look it up and you can also ask the company go and ask the company did you send this communication right that's probably the best way to to Really unveil the whole scheme exactly ultimately you know that's another part said what would somebody would I present something like this I mean barring this the grammar and the spelling all that could be perfect but you know recruiters are generally kind of they're kind of a little bit more personal direct they don't have a lot of time to waste and giving you all this whole thing uh so um and you can always go especially when most of them are on LinkedIn you can go and check to see if they've made an announcement of that particular or you can connect with them to see if they really have because LinkedIn profiles have a verification now where they've gone through the two-step verification now that's probably better than any other social network that I could think of and if you know something better please feel free to let me know okay so um basically if you have fallen victim to a job scammer what can you do to protect yourself um there's a lot of things that uh people can do and uh uh do to protect themselves after they've been scammed uh one thing is to definitely report it you can go to ic3.gov that is an internet crime site that's from the government and you can report it there the second Parts as we talked about before all the entities that you may have given them your private information social security phone number Bank information Etc Lord knows should you give them medical information that becomes a whole another story oh boy but but you want to report to those entities as well if you were approached on LinkedIn you want to notify LinkedIn or Twitter or X as people call it or Facebook wherever you approach that's a these are cyber crimes that the government is considered very serious okay so they're trying to get to the bottom of it have realistic expectations but you're not done there after you've done the reporting you need to look at your computer if you go on to one of their sites or open any of their attachments or anything that's connected with them you should run your security scan Suite hopefully you have a security scan Suite to be able to open these things because they may have or they may have given you a gift of spy wear malware virus things of the like oh to you want to avoid because those have tracking uh Bots and systems that are in it and they can see what you're doing so no matter what you do um you know you're going to be tracked if you're conducting private information or private transactions online in public spaces stop it right and that's a basic that people forget about in this particular environment yes Starbucks is great WiFi some greater than others but if you use a VPN which is virtual private Network that will help deter some of that okay not guarantee it will just help deter some of that but you run you want to start running your scam your scam uh your SC scans c c NS on a regular basis especially after that okay so that you're protect you continue to protect your computer and your private information along the way yes and that's those are some of the things and it may vary from person to person how deep that they've actually gotten into it some people don't fill out application you think well I avoided it but if you open the attachment you're sub rejected if you've gone to the site and then left immediately you're still vulnerable right that's don't take any of that for granted because they are what I try to say U you know a lot of times they get you before they got you right they have your information a lot of times you're just verifying information that you are the person that they have information on right but what's missing is that those personal datas that will help them get jobs duplicate your identity steal other people's information to extort products from other people all kinds of things so you want to avoid that as much as you possibly can yeah absolutely and obviously if you have fallen victim you need to notify the credit bureaus as well right yes absolutely yes and and you know if you're especially if you see that one charge and even if the bank takes it off you want to make sure that you contact the three that might be involved because okay that may not be their first try okay they might be trying again and again and again good point especially since you gave them that information they know so you may need to have your credit card checked or you know most apps these days you you know if you're using it to pay you can also freeze that card and you fre and you can freeze your your credit reports as well okay yeah that's a good tip as well well thank you so much for being my guest today mark this is really so much information and it's really vital that everyone understands how susceptible we can be to these scams so I really appreciate your time not a problem I love doing it here uh this is very important is the voice of job Seekers is like I've got to take this on to see where it leads so I'm still learning I am still uh learning and you know the scammers they're using the uh there's a term that that uh is used is uh I'm trying to think of what you know what that term is so I said it earlier social engineering yes and what they do is depending on your behaviors they're able to um get personal information or get you started down the road and I just want to share this a little bit of information I think this would give people a better idea of what's and how things actually work with scammers social engineering basically is it's it's they're using uh sophisticated Tech schemes to manipulate you to get you to give your personal information okay and they're using some your natural propensities to do it so of course applying the jobs of one but as there's also the Curiosity Factor as well and yeah I don't know if you're familiar with Frank AB abig Gale no he's the guy that would they made the movie about Catch Me If You Can oh okay he's the security expert these days he's been uh he always you can catch most of stuff on YouTube he doesn't do the social networks from what I could tell because I tried looking for his uh his LinkedIn profile couldn't find one but he doesn't need one but uh some of the Fortune 500 companies that he consulted and the training his first um not getting people to give up private company information he would drop or uh strategically plac or misplaced depending how you look at USB uh drives and somehow it's communicated that this is like dirty information about the company so you would drop you know scores of them and if people picked them up and put it in the drive at the computer they failed oh no yes yes they failed and you know that's a good way to you know for him you know it kind of proves that you know that people really do need the training and the company has already figured that out but it shows how bad it is and how people again use your natural inclination and so oh I got the goods of my company right he got you and so that's that's why they are not using say hey I'm a scammer um you know and I need your information to complete this Tas to bring back to the ring Master they're using jobs is that bait right as that USB and they know that even though you don't know what in it or what's in it for you they know that they're going to get something from it eventually because for them it's a numbers game right they have 40,000 a database of 40,000 if they can only get a thousand that could mean you know for Life they're set they like I said they get you before they got you right exactly yeah so what's the best way for our our audience to get in touch with you Mark um contextually I want to be right even though you see the voice of job Seekers on on side you can go there and I talk about scam some but I have a dedicated community on substack it's Mark Anthony dyson. substack sus.com you go there subscribe I have a newsletter that comes out that right now goes to more than 3,000 subscribers and you get updates on scams and I plan to even update a little bit more frequently now being that there's an uptick in concern so please go subscribe there if you really want to get into it there's a paid subscription version where you can get really deep and get more information and get deeper into it because I think the deeper people go the more informed that's how we're fighting the scams now right the knowledge and awareness and that will help people uh make better decisions absolutely information is power yeah well thank you again Mark to my audience I want to thank you for tuning in today don't forget to watch like and comment on the earlier episodes of young professionals career Catalyst on my YouTube channel and tune in next week for the next episode of Young

good morning I&#39;m Shelley mey with dreamcatcher career coaching and this is my podcast young professionals career Catalyst my guest today is Mark Anthony Dyson a freelance writer of career related articles for Forbes entrepreneur and Business Insider and the host of a podcast called the job scam report Mark is otherwise known as the voice of job Seekers welcome to the young professionals career Catalyst mark so excited to speak with you today uh great to speak with you as well should I just clarify I&#39;ve contributed to those Publications as as a guest not as a writer so okay so just want to make that clear that I don&#39;t write for all three I know people who do and have written for all three but not me I&#39;m not I&#39;m not quite there yet I&#39;m still growing up okay sounds good so um obviously you do a lot of uh conversations around job scams and a lot of Articles around that topic what was your major in college my major in college was Communications ah okay so you could say that I am doing what I&#39;m supposed to do right but it didn&#39;t quite work at the path to that didn&#39;t quite work out that way because I took some twists and turns in that matter but that was my degree okay and did did you have some were you envisioning doing something specific with that degree well there was a lot of things I wanted to do there was never just one thing I wanted to do but I did get it I started out in college with that major doing um some radio College radio and I got a chance to do that I did a little College TV as well both as a reporter they called it something else then I don&#39;t know after got what the the name was but that&#39;s what it was so I started out there but then after I graduated and then after I left the radio station decid to do uh some other thing that did retail management uh for a while uh eventually led me to doing some Association uh work as in customer service then eventually got uh in leadership in those capacities so um you know there you go that&#39;s about 20 25 years worth right there right right well we all have those little twists and turns in our careers so yeah sometimes it takes a while to end up in that perfect spot right right right and I did a bunch of other things too I mean um you know full disclosure I had probably about 23 24 jobs um but you know that&#39;s the way it is and I think a lot of um this generation is going to have that as well going to have that challenge and they&#39;re already taking on that challenge by you know we know that the job hopping which I think will eventually make its way back by the end of the year but that&#39;s a whole another discussion I don&#39;t want to take you on a d okay so you&#39;ve been working in the career development Sphere for quite a while how did you first get involved in that uh by accident my brother in law had thought I wrote well enough to where he said why don&#39;t you write resumés you can do that you write this stuff you can do resumés so I did and accidentally followed the trail of learning learning the modern uh techniques of writing resumés and eventually built a business around it and got out of resume writing uh because of the voice of job Seekers so the voice of job Seekers took me another Journey uh so that was kind of fun to be a part of and to experience the evolution so here I am is the voice of job Seekers but you know we&#39;ll get into everything else is go along okay um so the Better Business Bureau claims that job scams are costing job Seekers like two billion dollars in losses annually so which populations get scammed most frequently well the more frequent population the people who are getting scammed are the young people right people were talking about the genzies and the Millennials have gotten scammed a lot more now the Nuance of it is that older people are getting scammed too but they&#39;re getting scammed with more money okay as opposed to younger people are getting scammed more frequently okay and I think it&#39;s just that their desperation for trying to launch that career that makes the Young Folks more susceptible to these job scams correct yes and I think a lot of them are into entertaining more opportunities wish more of them were more thoughtful and strategic about their moves which they can&#39;t be and a lot of them are but a lot of people in this economy have gotten caught up in the the obstacles and how tough it is with the ghost jobs and going through multiple rounds of interviews and so when you get somebody that says hey you should look at this opportunity you&#39;re perfect for it it sounds really good but what scammers use is social engineering they bait you with something that you want so that they you can get uh so they can get what they want which is your personal information yes yes so what caused you to become so interested in job scams about a couple years ago I was starting to write articles about it and then you know I get notes from job Seekers even though I write mostly in I don&#39;t do career coaching and I&#39;m not writing resumés so I&#39;m not actively in it I&#39;m kind of passively in it because I since I dabble in that space and I Network heavily in that space and I write on LinkedIn about job search and careers I get the questions I get the inquiry so it led me down a path to where people were really getting scammed in different way that we&#39;ve never seen before so I start to follow the story and follow one story down where I wrote something for linda.com about Job fishing and that is where the technology that we have today enables us to you know mock companies and build websites that kind of look like companies now the websites can&#39;t be the same that&#39;s why you&#39;ll see if it&#39;s IBM somebody will put ibm.com for instance that might be exaggeration but large in part that&#39;s what people eyes and ears they want to see that right and they want to believe so they just go along and they went along and and they got job fished or and job fishing eventually means kind of like catfishing for jobs they built an illusion that something exists but it really doesn&#39;t so good and so therefore people start to get scammed out of their personal information and their cash now now most people think that that cash is their is the reason why and that&#39;s the loss the real gold mine in this whole thing is your personal information because it could be reused and repurposed over and over and over again and someone else collects a long list and they sell it off to other scammers or sell it off to other other places where they all will make money right and these things have many layers but how I got started was that article and then I start to follow a little bit more and start to I wrote another article the following year for the same publication and that time I talked about how talked about Job scams and how to avoid them and I think the articles are 10 ways and then I what I did after the article believe it or not I went and made Google Alerts following scam so I became that stormchaser um but with job scams and I start to look at every articles every day and there were multiple articles every day not just here in the United States but around the world so people had there were different Dynamics and there were different ways that people were being scamed not just one and people right now they want to you can put in uh the Better Business Bureau scam tracker okay right now there&#39;s more than 30 almost 35,000 uh reported incidents of of job scams and different types of scams yes so it&#39;s if you really want to see what the trends are in scams which I think everybody should at least take a look one time to see what&#39;s happening although you can look at LinkedIn and get an idea of what&#39;s really relevant but all I have to say is that that&#39;s how I got on that path to look at what scams were about and how important they are to the safety of our culture period but the job Seekers especially since they&#39;re the most vulnerable and this whole thing right right so the purpose is obviously to get your personal information um so what what are some ways that they&#39;re using that information to um carry out their scam well the way that that uh you&#39;re talking about the scammers how they&#39;re using that personal information well one of the scariest things that people can do is to be an imposter of you so let&#39;s say they got your personal information they got your Social Security phone number and other ID information they can go act as you and apply to a whole bunch of jobs that you&#39;ll eventually get turn down for more than likely or you may get hired and that scammer builds a bad reputation in your name with your information so therefore they become you in a sense from afar because you know scammers are basically in the pajamas in some other country with 40,000 people on their laptop pretending that they could be at a large scale right so for you you could be applying to a job in companies that you want and you&#39;ve been blacklisted you&#39;re not getting any response and you don&#39;t know why that&#39;s War One the loads can actually lead you and could damage you for good wow I never really thought of it that way well it&#39;s a it&#39;s already happening it&#39;s already something that&#39;s really prevalent in our society and there&#39;s other things that scammers can do with your information like I said they can sell it to another scammer right or they can hack your zel accounts your cash apps accounts if they have the right information they can build other accounts in your name that you&#39;re not supposed to have and scam other people get caught knowing that the laws are probably minimiz and what they can do to certain scammers and don&#39;t get me wrong the FBI is very involved in these scams but they&#39;re after the ring they&#39;re after scammer ring for individuals who losing $2,000 $3,000 they&#39;re going to take note of it but that&#39;s not their priority right their priority their priority is are the six figure uh six figure scam so they&#39;re gon to look after the Rings and house organized so uh so that people get on but you should still report it because you want to report it to those entities that effect uh that that you put on those applications or that you gave to that fake scammer uh social security number you of course called the Social Security Department let them know your bank you gave them your banking information absolutely if you give credit card you call it that institution and all the institutions that are that are important uh that you gave as personal information that nobody&#39;s supposed to have right you want to call those entities and report it and then uh we can go even further down the down the road than that but all that say is that there there&#39;s a great amount of damage that could be done and may have been done to a whole lot of people that they don&#39;t know about and at least you should be aware and you start documenting your your tracks right right absolutely so what types of job scams have you seen most recently well let me give you this several man there&#39;s a lot of them that are out there to point to one let me let me give you a scenario of how this and this was from an article from a few months ago okay you may not have heard of resum looters no resum a lot of people don&#39;t because it happened over across the way across seas and those you watching internationally I won&#39;t go through but you look up resume looters there are there few articles about it what they were able to do they were able to hack job portals John PTO is where like the career builders except it was in that particular country and they were able to get more than 30,000 uh personal information that people either put on applications or on resumés oh my and as we know from like different viruses and things like that what happens over there is going to happen over here sure so that&#39;s why not just job Seekers need to be confir be concerned but also employers need to be concerned as well oh and because we can that&#39;s a whole another discussion but focusing on job Seekers again those per personal information that it can come back to haunt you in ways that you don&#39;t even realize right so that&#39;s why you have to take precaution for everything so the question you&#39;ll get then is is well should I stop applying the job portals well no because unfortunately it&#39;s a cash 22 recruiters and employers rely on these portals because that&#39;s how they get the the jobs filled so not that but you can be more careful in the way that you mass that information so that&#39;s going to cause some inconveniences for a lot of folks but on a large scale that&#39;s how you know scams are going to affect job Seekers a large apart from things that may not be in your control to begin with you did all the right things unfortunately the people who have whose intent is is contrary to yours as is a job yeah it&#39;s such a shame that you have to be this paranoid it&#39;s really a shame well I think this I think people can avoid some of the paranoia um if you consider that a lot of people mass apply to jobs on job boards yes right and they&#39;ve done it for years now how I&#39;ve been in the game 15 years and and me and a lot of my colleagues and people are in our industry have been saying stop it for years but people continue to do it so they don&#39;t remember what jobs they appli to because I applied and I&#39;ve gotten comments still to this day I&#39;ve applied to 500 jobs in the last three months and and Lord knows if you can just back to you can&#39;t take that information you put on those applications and resumés you just can&#39;t take that back right and instead of just being more intentional and researching the company make sure the company&#39;s real make sure they&#39;re legal make sure they don&#39;t have a whole bunch of reviews and complaints and you could do that by putting in the company name and put reviews scams things like that okay narrow it down to a list of several it could be you can have 50 do uh 50 jobs or 50 companies on that list but you know their real companies who and I would pick the ones that really care about how they are treating job Seekers and how they&#39;re treating your data right we don&#39;t have to go down but that&#39;s make that part of your Criterion and concentrate getting into those companies so you spend more time getting to know employees you know finding out if that&#39;s going to be the right company for you for you to uh get as much into so you can uh base your answers off the Intel that you&#39;ve gotten you know those kind of things be much more intentional so even if you even that&#39;s all right I love it you know I love love do somebody came to the front door right right but you know all in all to say is that the people were a lot more intentional took more time and they can avoid lot the scams they and it doesn&#39;t hurt to question people and question everything and anything that you see especially if it doesn&#39;t sound right but even if it sounds right you have a right to research everybody who may say hey I got a job or even if somebody refers you somebody refers you to a scam job they are also a criminal as well because they&#39;re Pro probably in the ring and you know and anything like that you know make sure it&#39;s somebody that you trust or you feel good about that you could verify they actually do work for a real company and that company and not just some company that they do some good work and there was a scam like that and that scam is still going around on Twitter uh you know some LinkedIn as well I&#39;ve seen a few of those a lot of that on Twitter somebody will say hey I know this person they work for this particular company I can connect you with them and they said let&#39;s go over to WhatsApp and and talk and that&#39;s the one place you don&#39;t want to go is a WhatsApp or any messaging type of uh app where you&#39;re off the grid and people can have these and mislead you and Lead You Down the Road you don&#39;t want to go down that&#39;s a good tip I never really thought about that you know I always I always recommend that people apply directly on the company&#39;s website but even so I mean like you said somebody some unscrupulous person can get into that database and steal applicants information anyway so well here&#39;s a tip when you get a let&#39;s say we can use apple let&#39;s say Apple&#39;s one and you get an email from someone and you know the email address that they have you would think it would be spelled the right well right way somebody might put AP p.com you know that&#39;s not right you know that&#39;s not funny and that&#39;s not going to be the your because a lot of people don&#39;t understand how email addresses really work it&#39;s supposed to coincide with the company&#39;s name or somewhat so you take that end you put it in a search engine and and you see if that what comes up and it may come up uh don&#39;t use this address it&#39;s a scam or or there might be an advisory that might show up on Google or Bing or whatever you use saying that this is known to be a scam uh or it may come up something completely different that looks different than what you put in so that&#39;s another way that people can check kind of and you think some people who say oh gosh that&#39;s such Common Sense well there&#39;s a lot of people fallen for misspelled company names thinking it was right because we think we&#39;ll say whoa everybody makes a spelling mistake I&#39;m not a great spell so I&#39;m gonna give this person a break no no no no because this person supposed to be recruited that&#39;s the part they&#39;re supposed to have on right if they make a mistake anywhere is not through their email address that&#39;s true absolutely so what are some other job scam warning signs or red flags that we should look out for oh great question and you know there&#39;s there&#39;s a bunch of them that uh um I&#39;ll give you some quick ones um one is you should be suspicious if you get a call from out of nowhere if you get a call from out of nowhere and they&#39;re saying You&#39; be right and you&#39;re going at looking at your LinkedIn profile you know most people don&#39;t write a great profile or they write barely enough they said really you think I&#39;d be right for this great job now it the mindset of the job Seeker a lot of times if they&#39;ve been on a long job search with a lot of them have six plus months they&#39;re GNA be more vulnerable than somebody who&#39;s already working so that&#39;s something keep in mind depending where they&#39;re where you&#39;re at and I think there you know scammers are are techsavvy but they&#39;re also great marketers and they have a lot of information on you than you think that they have other than your LinkedIn profile because they watch your posts they watch you know they&#39;ve been looking you may not have done it on LinkedIn but on your Facebook page depending on how public it is you had a rant saying how hard it was to find a job so that makes you a perfect candidate for them so those are kind of things to kind of look out the other signs if it&#39;s too good to be true um talked about before taking you off to a messenging messenger app people are getting scammed have gotten scammed through Zoom even people have used Zoom to have these meetings they don&#39;t use the video part they just use the messaging part ah they start to have these Zoom or these WhatsApp or whatever the messenger um might be they start to have the interview of course they&#39;re gonna pass nobody fails these things you imagine failing SC the scam interview right right I wonder what that looks like if you were watching you you failed the scam intervie let me know there&#39;s another road go down but you know something else is asking when they ask for personal information too early yes nobody should be asking you for your Social Security number before you have an interview right or your bank account information account information I I I&#39;m just saying they may have your phone number by the way I would use a Google Voice number okay especially and there&#39;s also a service called youil youil is awesome for those who have Android doesn&#39;t work on Apple products Android products and other phones outside of Apple uh where they can give you a number you can use for to ask your real number so nobody won&#39;t have that and I recommend that part of it because if you give somebody your real number they can use that to build some other apps like cash app and zel app in your with your number uh and that could be a little problematic uh you know down the line and we already talked about strange email addresses websites uh websites are supposed to be perfect right I especially if they claim to be Nidia Nidia doesn&#39;t have a single mistake on their we if they do you wouldn&#39;t know it or they rush you and say I know that we have something posted on our website however this is a special circumstance don&#39;t buy it right right don&#39;t bu well we want to get this position filled right away uh not with the little bit information asking for you your personal information so those are some of the scams I have on if I can menure right here I write the job scam report on substack yes and go and there&#39;s a document with 19 different signs as you can look at I&#39;ll be updating that on a regular basis that is under a subscription so you would have to subscribe to get that all in all to say is that you can also you know look elsewhere to get signs okay I try to keep it in real time right updated okay so has I imagine AI has made it even harder to spot a job scam correct yes it it has and a lot of people are thinking that these tools that are out here are all working as far as an AI to that would track AI data and there&#39;s not one that&#39;s fullprof yet that&#39;s still a long way off so I think people will need to understand that they will need to do the groundwork in the other areas to verify the that you know these are you know AI is only dealing with the communication they can&#39;t deal with whe in real time whether a company is still hiring or not or or whether that person that&#39;s presenting this to you is a real person associated with the job those things you&#39;re going to have to do that work right right I noticed I had an email from someone recently and they were asking me to to do some weird Financial stuff and I&#39;m looking at the email and everything was spell spelled perfectly and it was correct grammar and I&#39;m like well typically you can spot it because there is a misspelling or some other little giveaway and and what you&#39;re reading but this was so well written it was so convincing I mean fortunately I knew it was a scam but right I&#39;m sure they used AI I&#39;m sure it was somebody over in another country you know that concocted this scheme and and used AI to write this perfect email to me fortunately I was like okay this but there&#39;s a human factor to that and I&#39;ve seen a a bunch of those if you when you see this writing and this perfect and all that the next question question I have to ask myself is that do people really talk this way right you know they will use and it&#39;s kind of hard to describe you got to look at a whole bunch of them going wait a second I have recruited friends they don&#39;t talk that way or they wouldn&#39;t relate in this kind of way in a way that kind of you know that&#39;s nonpersonal right is one way to describe it is that you&#39;re talking about me you&#39;re talking you you&#39;re talking about your company that way and you go look it up and you can also ask the company go and ask the company did you send this communication right that&#39;s probably the best way to to Really unveil the whole scheme exactly ultimately you know that&#39;s another part said what would somebody would I present something like this I mean barring this the grammar and the spelling all that could be perfect but you know recruiters are generally kind of they&#39;re kind of a little bit more personal direct they don&#39;t have a lot of time to waste and giving you all this whole thing uh so um and you can always go especially when most of them are on LinkedIn you can go and check to see if they&#39;ve made an announcement of that particular or you can connect with them to see if they really have because LinkedIn profiles have a verification now where they&#39;ve gone through the two-step verification now that&#39;s probably better than any other social network that I could think of and if you know something better please feel free to let me know okay so um basically if you have fallen victim to a job scammer what can you do to protect yourself um there&#39;s a lot of things that uh people can do and uh uh do to protect themselves after they&#39;ve been scammed uh one thing is to definitely report it you can go to ic3.gov that is an internet crime site that&#39;s from the government and you can report it there the second Parts as we talked about before all the entities that you may have given them your private information social security phone number Bank information Etc Lord knows should you give them medical information that becomes a whole another story oh boy but but you want to report to those entities as well if you were approached on LinkedIn you want to notify LinkedIn or Twitter or X as people call it or Facebook wherever you approach that&#39;s a these are cyber crimes that the government is considered very serious okay so they&#39;re trying to get to the bottom of it have realistic expectations but you&#39;re not done there after you&#39;ve done the reporting you need to look at your computer if you go on to one of their sites or open any of their attachments or anything that&#39;s connected with them you should run your security scan Suite hopefully you have a security scan Suite to be able to open these things because they may have or they may have given you a gift of spy wear malware virus things of the like oh to you want to avoid because those have tracking uh Bots and systems that are in it and they can see what you&#39;re doing so no matter what you do um you know you&#39;re going to be tracked if you&#39;re conducting private information or private transactions online in public spaces stop it right and that&#39;s a basic that people forget about in this particular environment yes Starbucks is great WiFi some greater than others but if you use a VPN which is virtual private Network that will help deter some of that okay not guarantee it will just help deter some of that but you run you want to start running your scam your scam uh your SC scans c c NS on a regular basis especially after that okay so that you&#39;re protect you continue to protect your computer and your private information along the way yes and that&#39;s those are some of the things and it may vary from person to person how deep that they&#39;ve actually gotten into it some people don&#39;t fill out application you think well I avoided it but if you open the attachment you&#39;re sub rejected if you&#39;ve gone to the site and then left immediately you&#39;re still vulnerable right that&#39;s don&#39;t take any of that for granted because they are what I try to say U you know a lot of times they get you before they got you right they have your information a lot of times you&#39;re just verifying information that you are the person that they have information on right but what&#39;s missing is that those personal datas that will help them get jobs duplicate your identity steal other people&#39;s information to extort products from other people all kinds of things so you want to avoid that as much as you possibly can yeah absolutely and obviously if you have fallen victim you need to notify the credit bureaus as well right yes absolutely yes and and you know if you&#39;re especially if you see that one charge and even if the bank takes it off you want to make sure that you contact the three that might be involved because okay that may not be their first try okay they might be trying again and again and again good point especially since you gave them that information they know so you may need to have your credit card checked or you know most apps these days you you know if you&#39;re using it to pay you can also freeze that card and you fre and you can freeze your your credit reports as well okay yeah that&#39;s a good tip as well well thank you so much for being my guest today mark this is really so much information and it&#39;s really vital that everyone understands how susceptible we can be to these scams so I really appreciate your time not a problem I love doing it here uh this is very important is the voice of job Seekers is like I&#39;ve got to take this on to see where it leads so I&#39;m still learning I am still uh learning and you know the scammers they&#39;re using the uh there&#39;s a term that that uh is used is uh I&#39;m trying to think of what you know what that term is so I said it earlier social engineering yes and what they do is depending on your behaviors they&#39;re able to um get personal information or get you started down the road and I just want to share this a little bit of information I think this would give people a better idea of what&#39;s and how things actually work with scammers social engineering basically is it&#39;s it&#39;s they&#39;re using uh sophisticated Tech schemes to manipulate you to get you to give your personal information okay and they&#39;re using some your natural propensities to do it so of course applying the jobs of one but as there&#39;s also the Curiosity Factor as well and yeah I don&#39;t know if you&#39;re familiar with Frank AB abig Gale no he&#39;s the guy that would they made the movie about Catch Me If You Can oh okay he&#39;s the security expert these days he&#39;s been uh he always you can catch most of stuff on YouTube he doesn&#39;t do the social networks from what I could tell because I tried looking for his uh his LinkedIn profile couldn&#39;t find one but he doesn&#39;t need one but uh some of the Fortune 500 companies that he consulted and the training his first um not getting people to give up private company information he would drop or uh strategically plac or misplaced depending how you look at USB uh drives and somehow it&#39;s communicated that this is like dirty information about the company so you would drop you know scores of them and if people picked them up and put it in the drive at the computer they failed oh no yes yes they failed and you know that&#39;s a good way to you know for him you know it kind of proves that you know that people really do need the training and the company has already figured that out but it shows how bad it is and how people again use your natural inclination and so oh I got the goods of my company right he got you and so that&#39;s that&#39;s why they are not using say hey I&#39;m a scammer um you know and I need your information to complete this Tas to bring back to the ring Master they&#39;re using jobs is that bait right as that USB and they know that even though you don&#39;t know what in it or what&#39;s in it for you they know that they&#39;re going to get something from it eventually because for them it&#39;s a numbers game right they have 40,000 a database of 40,000 if they can only get a thousand that could mean you know for Life they&#39;re set they like I said they get you before they got you right exactly yeah so what&#39;s the best way for our our audience to get in touch with you Mark um contextually I want to be right even though you see the voice of job Seekers on on side you can go there and I talk about scam some but I have a dedicated community on substack it&#39;s Mark Anthony dyson. substack sus.com you go there subscribe I have a newsletter that comes out that right now goes to more than 3,000 subscribers and you get updates on scams and I plan to even update a little bit more frequently now being that there&#39;s an uptick in concern so please go subscribe there if you really want to get into it there&#39;s a paid subscription version where you can get really deep and get more information and get deeper into it because I think the deeper people go the more informed that&#39;s how we&#39;re fighting the scams now right the knowledge and awareness and that will help people uh make better decisions absolutely information is power yeah well thank you again Mark to my audience I want to thank you for tuning in today don&#39;t forget to watch like and comment on the earlier episodes of young professionals career Catalyst on my YouTube channel and tune in next week for the next episode of Young

Transcript for:Navigating Job Scams for Young Professionals

Transcript for:
Navigating Job Scams for Young Professionals