Michael Page Recruitment is a well-known large recruitment agency.

Scammers sometimes choose such an agency to impersonate when making fake job offers.

“We have received a very impressive feedback concerning you based on your preceding work experience in your current company”.

You can see this is a general statement that could apply to anyone at any time.

The sender has no idea of my name, job situation or anything else so is making general statements such as

“We would like to discuss the available job opening with you”.

No mention of what the job is supposed to be.

Then comes the supposed clincher.

“Sadly, in accordance with current data protection (GDPR) as well as Data Protection Act 2018 we are not allowed to share additional details in an unsecure email text.”,

This is not true of course – GDPR is about safeguarding data on customers, suppliers, staff etc. not job offers.

Then the message claims if I click the link to open the attached documents then I will see the prospective employer and financial details.

But the sender’s email address is a give-a-way as it is @convergence.it which is not Michael Page.

All rubbish

If you have any experiences with these scams do let me know, by email.

Numerous emails appear almost every day from employermatch.co.uk and the same messages from careercandy.com and wherejobs.co.uk

The titles of the emails are strange, such as:-

1. Help Requested
2. Urgent Tesco Openings in Walton-on-Thames

There is no Tesco in Walton-on-Thames and there isn’t one planned.

3. Urgent ASDA Employment in Weybridge

There is no ASDA in Weybridge – the nearest is about 10 miles away.

4. Cabin Crew needed in Walton-on-Thames

No airplanes in Walton-on-Thames that I know of.

Employer Match is not a recruitment agency and does not appear to have any jobs to advertise.

Instead they copy job adverts from recruitment agencies and present them as if their own and send out huge volumes of emails with misleading titles and misleading content.

e.g. one email had a Librarian Assistant as the first job vacancy but if you click on it then the site changes to Retail Choice advertising site, showing an assistant manager job vacancy – nothing to do with libraries.

On the Employer Match website there is a search facility – if you put Library assistant and press search – it tells you there are 1,355 Library Assistant jobs near Weybridge.  I would guess that there are at most half a dozen such job vacancies within the whole of Surrey and it would need hundreds of libraries to employ a total of 1,355 Library assistants.  Weybridge has just one library with only a handful of staff in total.

How does Employer Match make money from their spam emails and website?

That is unknown.

The website claims the company is registered in Poole, Dorset but the home page shows jobs in America and the website seems to be hosted from America.

It does seem to be a strange new form of Marketing that is producing huge amounts of misleading spam messages.

Best avoided.

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Respectable websites carry adverts for UK Mystery Shopper.

Such as a picture of the Aldi supermarket sign plus the words “Free £100 Voucher”

Sounds interesting but it’s a link to the UK Mystery Shopper website where the story is rather different.

UK Mystery Shopper describes itself as a website where consumers can access and read member’s reviews of some of the UK’s most popular restaurants and stores.

Surprisingly there are very few reviews to be read.

The sales lines follow:

• Earn £10 per hour with our jobs.
• Mystery Shopping Jobs Giveaway £100 in free shopping if selected.
• Free food shopping

And so on

There is an APPLY Now button. Simply enter your details and they’ll let you know if you’ve been chosen as a mystery shopper.

But you have to pay £34 to register.

Why?

If you have to pay to register an interest in a job then it’s a scam.

What do you get for your £34?

They may send you a list of companies that supposedly use mystery shoppers.

But the companies that do this are easily found on the Internet and they pay peanuts because there are so many people who want these jobs.

Is this in effect an illegal lottery where hundreds or thousands of people pay £34 but there’s little pay out or maybe occasionally someone gets a voucher.

That’s not a good deal – it’s better to play the actual lottery.
As for getting a job through them as a mystery shopper – there’s probably more chance of winning a jackpot on the National Lottery.

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There are increasing numbers of fake job adverts on the Internet, email and in newspapers.

If someone you don’t know contacts you and effectively offers you a job then unless you have in demand skills and have been headhunted by an agency, it’s very likely to be a scam.

There are other warning signs that a job advert is a scam.

• The pay is much higher than you would expect for the work or for your skills.
• You are effectively told the job is yours without the need for interviews etc.
• The conditions are too good e.g. part-time for a full time salary, working from home for whatever hours you wish etc.
• The interview is by Skype – may mean there are no offices (except during the ties of the Coronavirus Lockdown)
• The job requirements are so vague as to let almost anyone qualify
• Unprofessional emails or letters – poor grammar, spelling mistakes etc.
• Emails that don’t include company name and contact information or are sent from a personal email account e.g. a Hotmail or Gmail or Yahoo account etc.

If you do agree to an online interview – make sure to ask lots of questions and don’t give out any confidential information.

Research

Do your research on the company. Do they really have such a vacancy?

For any real company there will be useful information on the Internet. If there is only a record of the company’s existence but no website or anything else – then beware.

Try typing the company name or the senders email address and the word scam in your search engine.

Sometimes scammers will use a real company’s name and perhaps misspell it slightly  e.g. If you get an email from marksandspencr.com then it’s a fake.

Confidential Information

Some scammers ask for your bank account information supposedly so they can set-up your salary payment or they may ask you to create a new bank account and give them the details.  You will not receive any money unless it is crooked money they want you to transfer to someone else.

If asked to fill in an insurance form or credit check or anything else needing confidential information – don’t. That should only happen once you are in the job and know it is real.

Request for Payment

A request for payment of any kind before starting employment is going to mean a scam.

You may be asked to pay for training, a uniform, a professional review of your cv etc. These should not happen in a legitimate situation.

Be careful and check out the details.

If you have any experiences with these scammers, do let me know, by email.