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Beware of Employment Scams and Revealing Background Checks

While the economy is showing some sign of recovery, it is still hard times for millions of people.  There are those who have been laid off the job and have been out of work for months, even years.   There are those employees where the entire industry dropped out from under them and now they are in transition, trying to pick up added skill sets for different industries.

There are also the vipers who are preying on these people.  What kind of wretched slimeball you have to be to con people who are short money and looking for a job is beyond me.   These are the kind of useless parasites who possibly fall just below those who sell children and harvest body parts.   The sort we don’t really want or need but must deal with in some fashion, often skirting around their dirty schemes.

We had one woman call earlier this week.   She was perplexed and asked our advice.  Some group has posted want ads from employment on Craig’s List.  They faked the name of  a staffing agency, provided a GMail account and solicited resumes for jobs.  Fine.  Except there is a scam.  Not only it is a bogus employment agency, the scam artists provided the job applicant with a background checking consent form and told her they would conduct a background check on her.  Please fill in her information and submit the form.

The unwitting woman, a person desperate for a job, complied.  Little did she realize that legitimate employment staffing agencies will conduct background checks in-house once your actual application, including skill sets, are properly vetted.  This would include the normal job interview, or several, depending on the job.    The usual stuff and then the background check.

So now this bogus employment agency has the woman’s vital information and she is now at the risk of having her identity stolen.  These scam artists apparently don’t think being out of work, long on debt, and short on money is miserable enough.  They may now open credit accounts in her name, using the information she provided, further deepsixing what I am sure is her already precarious financial status.

So a cautionary note to job seekers and, for that matter, to recruiters finding employment candidates a little skittish when it comes to providing their vital information.   They may have already been clipped by this job scam.  Like the flu or any other malady, different scams at different seasons are going around.   This is the season of a job hungry America.  So beware.

By Gordon Basichis

Gordon Basichis is the Co-Founder of Corra Group, specializing in pre-employment background checks and corporate research. He has been a marketing and media executive and has worked in the entertainment industry, the financial, health care and technology sectors. He is the author of the best selling Beautiful Bad Girl, The Vicki Morgan Story, a non-fiction novel that helped define exotic sexuality in the late twentieth century. He is the author of the Constant Travellers and has recently completed a new book, The Guys Who Spied for China, dealing with Chinese Espionage in the United States. He has been a journalist for several newspapers and is a screenwriter and producer.

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