With scam artists trying to make a buck from unsuspecting and vulnerable people every single day, avoiding work-at-home scams are very difficult and it is nearly impossible not to come across or be scammed by these fraudulent opportunities. Continue reading to learn the best ways to avoid these work-at-home scams and find a legitimate work-at-home job.
Spotting Scams
Spotting a scam is simple because most have similar warning signs which usually include requesting money, personal details or bank account information. These are also the best ways to spot a fraudulent job opportunity in a job listing. The most common method scam artists use to hook job seekers is to post a job under a popular job title such as “Data Entry” or “Typing” and wait for a person to contact them about the position. Once contacted, the job is never what was described in the initial job posting and almost always requires the applicant to sell an item or information in order to be compensated. Most of these jobs are posted over and over again on a job board under different job titles and locations.
Avoiding Scams
Sticking to well-known job boards such as CareerBuilder, Monster and HEA-Employment.com is a good way to avoid work-at-home scams. These job boards do not allow business opportunities and misrepresentations in their job listings and remove any false job opportunities immediately. Other job boards collect jobs from all sources as long as the job poster can pay the job posting fee and do not check or verify the job posted so job seekers have to sort through the scams to locate the real jobs. Candidates have to use smart job searching techniques to know what to look for and how to search for jobs to avoid these scams.
Legitimate Jobs vs. Scams
Detailed information is one the best ways to tell if a position is legit or a scam. Legitimate jobs are only posted once under a certain city or state and provide additional details such as the responsibilities and requirements for the job. Authentic jobs will include the company’s name and contact details allowing a potential candidate to view the website or contact the company for more information and to make sure the position and the corporation is legitimate. When searching for a job, always use the advanced search option if available. Many job boards allow searchers to search by keyword or title and exclude certain words in their job search results. One of the best ways to search is by job title, enter “remote” or “telecommute” in the field and the results will only return jobs with these words in the title. Job seekers can also select the companies or sources for the job posting. The people that post scams usually have over 50 jobs posted in a single category while all the others have between one and five jobs available. Only selecting those companies and sources will provide you with the best results.
There are hundreds of scam artists that try to post their opportunities in our job database every month. They are always trying to find inventive ways to get their scams in our job listings so we are constantly on the lookout for these fraudulent jobs to omit as soon as we are notified of their existence, explains Marie Surles – President of HEA-Employment.com.
New scams are being created every day to trick people so everyone must be careful, smart and always ask questions. A little investigating, although time consuming, is well worth it to avoid common mistakes and save you thousands of dollars.