Attention Jobseekers: Beware of E-mails Bearing Offers

Posted by: Lauren Young on January 09

This entry was written by Savita Iyer, a freelance financial journalist now living in The Netherlands who frequently guest blogs for Working Parents.

Recently, my husband received an ad for the perfect job through an e-mail distribution list that he’s a part of. It was his dream job, just what he has been looking for and under the aegis of New York’s prestigious Columbia University, no less.

Excited, my husband immediately applied, filling out a rather lengthy form that called for answers to a range of different questions, personal as well as professional. He attached his resume and faxed over, as requested, copies of his university degrees.

In New York 10 days later for another job interview, my husband thought it might be a good idea to follow-up and meet the potential employers of the job ad he’d answered. But repeated calls to the phone number of the person listed on the ad went unanswered.

Finally, my husband called up the department at Columbia University that had listed the job. He was immediately told the job ad was a hoax and that the FBI had been notified.

We’ve all received and continue to receive spam in our inboxes. Some of them are so cleverly done, we’d never know they were fake. Others might seem strange but we still wonder whether they could be real.

Yesterday, for instance, I got a mail from someone named Elena, a young Ukranian woman who claimed that the ongoing problems between her country and Russia over gas were causing her real problems and she was looking for someone to send her money so she could buy a wood stove. I opened the mail because its subject line was “Hi from Elena,” and I have a friend named Elena, but its contents also made me stop and wonder for a moment whether the plea was genuine.

Yesterday, my husband received an e-mail response from the fake ad he’d applied to: A job offer complete with salary details. All he had to do was the print out the attached contract and send it back with his signature.

So that was what they were after.

Imagine if my husband – who is actively looking for work — hadn’t called up Columbia University: We may well have signed on the dotted line of that fake job offer. These are desperate times in which many of us figure we have nothing to lose. Something saved us from losing the most important thing we have: Our identity.

Yes, the Ukrainians are certainly suffering from the gas shortage in their country and yes, there are (still) jobs out there, real jobs. But in these very tough times, when so many of us are wondering how we’re going to pay our bills, educate and feed our children, when there are more job seekers than there are jobs, these kinds of “pranks” and “hoaxes” are just uncalled for and I’m sorry to say, criminal. So if any of you hoaxters happen to be reading this, stop what you’re doing and have some respect.

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