It is generally well known that there are lots of scams to do with organisations offering fake jobs and enticing people to apply for them. Sometimes they charge for an application or charge for advice on how to get the job or just add the incoming c.v.s to their database of prospective candidates for other jobs and there are probably other reasons as well.
But the reverse situation also applies.
People will make fake applications for jobs or fake contact letters looking for work.
Why?
There are a variety of reasons for this odd behaviour, including:-
- Some people want to practice making applications. Not too bad a reason.
- Some unscrupulous recruitment agencies use this method to find out if there are any jobs available at an organisation
- Some scammers use this to find out information about organisations so as to tailor their spam lists.
- Some research organisations will make large numbers of fake job applications to gather data e.g. in 2009 the BBC commissioned a researcher to create lots of fake applications to test whether changing the person’s name made a difference to reject rates.
- The attached cv may contain a virus or other malware
Brooklands Radio sometimes receives applications from people in Eastern European countries but the applications aren’t for any specific role or even at a radio station and appear under various different names and email addresses. There is likely some kind of scam in operation but it’s hard to tell what it is.
If you have any experiences with these approaches or other scammers and time-wasters do let me know – by email.
