Beware of scam spam

Yesterday I learned of a scam e-mail from a colleague in a Careers Service at another university. It purported to come from a major oil company and the e-mail said that the recipient had been automatically selected to work for them in their London office for £7500 per month, that he would not be interviewed until he arrived in London and that a work permit was being approved for him. All he had to do was ring the Immigration Service in London to complete his application on the phone number in the e-mail.

Luckily the student who received the e-mail rang their Careers Service to check it out before he did anything. The Careers Service was immediately suspicious and rang the oil company concerned who confirmed that it was indeed a scam.

Anyone with an e-mail address will be used to receiving spam. Usually it is fairly easy to spot. But if you are looking for a job, and perhaps have posted your CV on a few jobs sites or registered with agencies, or maybe even applied to this very company, you might be tempted to think that a job offer might be real.

Sadly it is almost certainly coincidence. Scammers come up with these tricks in the hope that just a few of the thousands of people they e-mail will believe it and follow the instructions, probably the scammers were after bank details or personal information to use in identity fraud. In this instance an EU citizen would immediately realise that they did not need a permit but an international graduate might be fooled.

So how can you spot a scam job offer when you are making applications and waiting for companies to contact you?

• Did you apply to this company? If you didn’t why would they be contacting you, how would they have found this e-mail address? If you register with an agency, the agency will be the ones who contact you.
• Does the offer sound realistic? A job paying £7,500 per month is very unlikely for even the most outstanding recent graduate! And how likely is a company to hire someone without interviewing them?
• See also our guide for spotting scam jobs.

As my mum always says – if something sounds too good to be true – it’s not true!

If the offer sounds OK, perhaps it’s from a company you have applied for but something strikes you as not quite right or you just want to check – contact the company. Don’t use any contact details given in the e-mail, find the switchboard number from the company website or from www.yell.com and ask to speak to Human Resources, Graduate Recruitment or the individual named in the e-mail (one quick way to find out if they actually work there!)

If you feel awkward contacting the company or if you have any concerns, contact your Careers Service. We generally have contacts in most major companies and will always be happy to check out the situation for you.