Megan Riksen (00:19):

Hello and welcome to the work like a Laker podcast. I'm Megan Riksen and I'm joined by Grace Pushman. Hi, Grace. Hi. How are you today? I'm doing pretty good. How are you? I'm doing well. Thanks. Awesome. So if you're tuning in for the first time, grace and I are both career advisors in the GVSU career center. So we work with students in multiple ways, but basically getting you ready to enter the real world after you graduate from grand Valley. And today we are tackling the topic, how to spot a job scam. And unfortunately, job scams really are increasing recently. We have seen an uptick in scams due to the coronavirus pandemic and the subsequent economic recession. So we thought this was a pretty timely episode to be able to just kind of go through what are these jobs scams, what are kind of these key indicators that you can be looking for to ensure that you're not getting scammed?

Megan Riksen (01:24):

So we'll be talking about email scams. So job scams job offers that you might be receiving via email. And then we'll also be sure to talk a little bit about pyramid schemes and multilevel marketing toward the end, so that you can kind of get a sense for some other ways that you might get scammed. Not that it necessarily is always illegal but just things to kind of be aware of and do your research on. So grace, do you want to kick us off with some of our, our red flags? Yes. So today we're going to talk about six red flags to look for when looking at job scams. And the first one is if you have to pay something upfront, so sometimes you might get an email that says they have a great job offer and they just need you to purchase this $350 purchase first.

Grace Pushman (02:17):

And they might have some other instructions for you. After that, if you see something like that, where you have to pay anything upfront, more than likely, it's a job scam. So definitely you want to double check that, Google it, talk to people, you know, and trust. But I would say that's one of the biggest, if not the biggest red flag there is. So yes, absolutely. If you need to pay some things before anything happens, run away, don't do it. And we're going to say this multiple times, but as grace said, like do your research and consult trusted sources, right? So the career center is obviously here for you. So definitely reach out if you ever are questioning if something is a scam or not. Yes, exactly. All right. So number two, if it sounds too good to be true, like everything in life, it probably is.

Megan Riksen (03:09):

Right. So can you earn $450 a week with just three hours of working from home? Hm. Yeah, that doesn't really sound realistic. And it likely is a scam. So if they contacted you first and are then offering you the job right away. Yup. Sounds too good to be true. Right. What job doesn't have some sort of a process where there is an application and a vetting of some sort through an interview, through a conversation with someone through doing a background check, things like that. So if you're just boom, getting offered a job, you probably know that this is not a legitimate opportunity and then paying attention to how did they contact you? So if it's by email, be sure to check the sender. So who sent you that? If it's a regular Gmail account or any sort of personal account, it's likely that it's a scam, a company, an organization, a nonprofit, they will all have some sort of a domain name that matches their company, their organization, a.edu.com that matches the website of the company. Right. so any of those personal emails are really a telltale sign. And then we also see a lot where the job scammer is trying to pretend that they are a handshake employee. So it might say handshake somewhere in their email address, or even it'll say, you know, like a name GVSU and then it [email protected]. So they try to do that little trick of the eyes, right? So they hope you're not paying much attention. I'm so double checking that email addresses is a great thing to do. Yeah.

Grace Pushman (05:00):

And same, even if you get an email from someone who works at grand Valley, I've had emails before that are signed by people who I work with, but are actually from their email address. So like, if it's coming from grand Valley, it should [email protected] or [email protected]. So just always checking that that's a great tip.

Megan Riksen (05:16):

Yeah. Cause they get tricky. They, they, they are tricky. Right. They're trying to trick you and they're smart. So they, you know, it's public, you can look up who the employees are at GVSU right. Just in the little people find her on the homepage. So it's pretty easy to figure out who works there. So yeah, that's a, that's a really good tip.

Grace Pushman (05:34):

Exactly. Yeah. So number three, red flag number three would be to check for on professional emails. And what this means is if you see a lot of typos, if you see grammar mistakes, if you see that this person doesn't have a professional signature, and what that means is a professional signature should have a person's name, their organization, their title, maybe as well as their contact info. So if it's just like an email that says, you know, here's a great job offer, and then it just has a name at the bottom with no professional email, that might be a sign that it's a scam. But yeah, definitely looking for anything that it doesn't, you know, if there's any mistakes that would be something to definitely kind of get your attention. So look for unprofessional emails.

Grace Pushman (06:16):

Yeah. For sure. One of the ones I saw, it was pretty well written and there weren't a ton of typos, but handshake is spelled with a capital H and then all lowercase, but they had spelled handshake with a capital H and a capital ass and it was just like an indicator. It just put up a red flag for me and yeah. Yeah. I mean, that one is so slight and it would be probably pretty hard to identify, but yeah. Pay attention. And if you're getting that like gut feeling, right. And then you see a couple of those things like, eh,

Grace Pushman (06:45):

And I think that that feeling is the biggest tip. It's not even on this list, but that's all you're done.

Megan Riksen (06:50):

Yes, yes, absolutely. No. Right. Number four then is that the search results just don't add up. So we've said this already, but let's repeat it. Do your research. The internet is a wonderful tool and you can find a ton of information just by doing some like basic digging into a company. So look at their website, try to figure out who this person is that reached out to you. So if you can find a LinkedIn profile, try to see if, how legitimate that seems. There are other places you can go like the better business Bureau you can look for reviews about accompany on places like glass door. You can definitely look in handshake as well. Handshake has a really nice feature where students leave reviews. If they've worked there, they can leave a review of what it was like to work there. So that would be a really good indicator for you if an opportunity was legitimate or not. And yeah, just that company's website as well. If it seems kind of thrown together and kind of like a template almost that's, that's kind of a good sign that you might want to dig a little deeper as well. And yeah, absolutely always contact the career center and ask us if you're unsure. Cause we, yeah, we are always in kind of that high alert mode and can really tell you what we, what we think. Cause we see them probably more frequently cause we always have them sent to us.

Grace Pushman (08:19):

Yes. All right. And let's see, red flag number five would be as if they ask for any of your personal information upfront. So that would be things like asking for your social security number, your bank account number. If they ask that within the first few conversations run the other way, that is not normal. So when you get a job, often you will have to provide the information. So like if you're doing, you know, if you're getting paid and you want direct deposit, for example, you might be speaking with someone in the HR department at your organization to give them that information, but that's way far down in the process of getting hired and it would never come up right away. So definitely be looking for that. It's kind of like, I think similar to when they ask you to pay up front, those are the two biggest things that you want to make sure that if they do that, you're not falling for that because that's where we see. I think a lot of people fall for these scams is that they give their information right away without really double checking that.

Megan Riksen (09:16):

All right. So then number six would be a vague job description. This is another one of those red flags that you want to look for. The description itself can sound pretty good, right? Like it can be well-written it might not contain some of those typos and things like that, but really read it and think, what would I actually be doing, right. What is the day today? Right. Like a typical job description is like, here's the qualifications that we're looking for. But also here are all the job responsibilities the actual day in and day out things that you are going to be doing. So if those are all super vague and, and you still have like so many questions about what this job actually is, that's something to really pay attention to as well. And that's something that you might see as well with multilevel marketing and some of I'll call them direct sales opportunities.

Megan Riksen (10:22):

But grace will be going into those a little bit more after we provide you with a couple of examples. So one of the examples I wanted to share was an email that we received that a student had sent over to the career center asking us if it was legitimate. The first sign was, it was by some someone named Donna. But it was her Gmail account that was listed. And the signature line was core staff services, which seemed a little more legitimate, but that Gmail should have been kind of that first key. I'll read a little bit of it. So it gives the job description. The job description is this person will be responsible for analyzing reporting and ordering production supplies online. This is a part time job that does not deter you from doing any other. You just need a few hours of your time to do this weekly and you can have your own part of the work completed at your leisure time at home salary and wages $350 a week. So, you know, nothing. What do you think grace, like, nothing there is like shouting, but when you kind of add it together, it feels a little suspect.

Grace Pushman (11:35):

I think that that's the most common one I've seen is where they say a few hours of work from home and you're going to make 300 or some kind of some hundreds of dollars worth of money. Yeah.

Megan Riksen (11:46):

Yes, exactly. And then it goes on to then ask for your name, your physical address, not a PO your bank's name. Like why would you ever it doesn't see bank number, but why would you ever need the bank's name now? Personal email. And it's like, really does not want like your grand Valley email at once your personal email. So, you know, it there's just enough going on there that I think it it should trigger you to at least investigate a little bit further.

Grace Pushman (12:19):

Yeah. And don't feel at all concerned about sending it to us because we, we, first of all, it's helpful for us to see these examples so that we can warn other students, but we are happy to look through those and provide feedback. That's what we're here for. So send it in. If you see something that's catching your eye or giving you that.

Megan Riksen (12:35):

Totally. Yep. Absolutely. good. Okay. So do you want to go into a little bit about just kind of some of the other ways that might not be illegal? Sometimes they are. Sometimes they aren't that it's not necessarily like, give me all your money and trying to scam you or, you know, steal your identity, but that just might not be the type of opportunity you think it is. So do you want to go into those a little bit? Grace?

Grace Pushman (13:06):

Yeah. So we were talking Meegan and I were talking about MLMs, which stands for more multilevel marketing versus pyramid scheme. So you'll see, you've probably heard both of those terms and a pyramid scheme is where there's someone who's recruiting other people and there's no actual product. So for example, if I said the one I've seen lately on Facebook has been, Hey, if you guys send me your favorite book and you repost this, you can get up to 36 books and you only have to send one that would be a pyramid scheme. Like there's no guarantee you're actually going to get something. There's no real product involved that, you know, someone is producing for this. So that that's an example. And they can, I mean, they can be a lot that one's a little bit innocent. Right. But they can be a lot worse

Megan Riksen (13:52):

That one's not going to cause a ton of harm if you're just buying a book.

Grace Pushman (13:55):

Right, right. Yeah. an, an MLM, for example, though, a multilevel marketing program, they will have actual product. So they might say, you know, here is what's an example like here, I'm just going to be vague. I don't want to call anyone. Like here's some t-shirts right. That we have produced that are maybe for like working out like a yoga shirt. I don't know if that's a thing I don't work out, but

Megan Riksen (14:20):

I say you have to wear a shirt when you do yoga,

Grace Pushman (14:24):

At least in public. So you know, here's a bunch of shirts. If you buy this product, you can then sell it and make a profit. And then also there's usually the reason it's still kind of in the shape of a pyramid. Cause then you're usually also recruiting other people to sell for you. So you're going to buy this big box of tee shirts, but then if you recruit three people, they can sell it for you and you don't actually have to do any work. Right. So it's still kind of that pyramid scheme, however, they're legal because there is product involved and you can actually make money. Like you probably, you might know people who have made money off these, but what I will say is that that's very rare and most likely you'll be lucky to even break even like sometimes I think people who do make money off this, when you actually look at the amount of hours they put into it, their hourly pay is probably less than minimum wage. So just being very careful and do a lot of research into these before. Well, pyramid schemes are no, but like with multilevel marketing, definitely, you still want to be super careful with them. And I think that they usually are more work than they're worth in my opinion.

Megan Riksen (15:29):

Right. And I'll just do one other quick note about something I see a lot in postings on LinkedIn or indeed where it's a really great job title. But the job description is pretty vague. So it's a marketing coordinator and you get really excited, but then you're reading and you're like, what am I actually marketing? What does this company do? You go to their website and it's kind of that nondescript looking site. You apply and you get a call back within two minutes. You go in for an interview and they're still not telling you much. Those are also signs to just like, yeah. You know, kind of increase your awareness. That things might not be exactly as they seem, right. I mean, you don't even know what they seem like, cause they're not giving you any details. And it might turn out that you're doing some sort of direct sales.

Megan Riksen (16:22):

One I've heard of, for example, is selling ATT at Costco. Now people can do that job and I'm sure you can make money doing that job, but you want to just note what's the structure. Is that something I really want to be doing? Is it all commission or am I actually going to be able to make a living wage right off the bat with this job. So that's just another kind of nuance to all of these scams, which it wouldn't necessarily be a straight up scam, but just something to be aware of.

Grace Pushman (16:50):

Right. And again, I we've said this so many times, but if you're not sure, just check with people you trust and come ask us.

Grace Pushman (16:57):

Absolutely. Yeah. And as we wrap things up here, we will be sure in our show notes to link to our how to recognize and avoid job scams page that we have in the career center website where you can kind of review a lot of this information. And then we will, of course put our contact information in there as well. So you can send us anything that seems a little suspect. So thanks so much for this conversation, grace. Thank you, Megan. All right. Thanks for listening everyone.