Jobsite Fraud - be careful out there!

I noticed there is a conference being held in London's Cafe Royal this quarter, where some of the leading jobsites (fish4 group for example) are gathering to discuss online fraud that occurs on jobsites. See www.onrec.com for details.

This of course happens in developing markets also, but it is little talked about and we have some local examples that you should be wary of.

So what kind of online fraud would happen on a jobsite or in recruitment in general?
Well it's simply about exploiting a situation, usually to extract cash from someone.

I had an airline client who was using an agency in Kazakhstan to interview customer service staff before they would be offered and flown into the Middle East to start work. The staff turned up to work with their uniforms already; which was a first for the training department who usually issue them. Turns out the agent had provided them at a cost of $500 to each
candidate. Most corporate recruiters are used to agency fraud though and have learned how to deal with it.

A client in Kuwait was telling me last week how he learned that joinees were having to pay back a fee to the agents from their first two months wages.
He made all the staff sign a paper that they had been scammed, and for how much. He then made the agent fly into Kuwait with a bag of cash, and go down a line of staff to hand them back the amount they had paid each.

Online fraud is usually attempted on a big scale, and it happened recently to one of the most successful jobsites based out of Dubai.

An agency in Nigeria advertised a position for a GM based in Nigeria. Hundreds applied, and 400 were individually told that they had been selected (after a phone interview and several email communications). The 400 were then asked to transfer $1,500 (each) to the agency which would be used for visa purposes and reimbursed by the employer once they arrived into the country.

Now I don't know how many unfortunate jobseekers made the transfer; but that's a $600K fraud! And this is just one job opening, from one agency on one site this year. The implications for jobseekers and employers are frightening.

So, how do you prevent this sort of thing happening? Well only the established jobsites can really have the resources to have preventative measures in place. You should ask your jobsites what lengths they go to in validating that all the employers and agencies using their site are legitimate.

It matters to you because once a site gets a reputation for this happening, jobseekers will not trust the site. Imagine you see an ad for a 20-30 year old cabin crew role; and your first thought has to be to check out if it's safe to apply? Imagine being offered a job that ends up costing you $1,500.

Of course most people responsible in recruitment departments for paying for adverts/jobsites know now that they should only use SSL protected or 'secure' sites with decent online payment gateways in place. But finding out if the site has a good reputation amongst jobseekers is a much harder task and one that could have a large impact on eRecruitment right across Asia,
ME & Africa.