Once again, I find myself browsing sites that have job listings, searching for something that would be good for me. This feels like starting over at the beginning, and also feels like the start of something brand new.
There have been some significant changes to the local Craigslist lately. Before, I would go to this website, click “jobs”, and a page full of listings, starting with the most recent, would appear. Not anymore! There is now a page that appears first, which says “SCAM alert!”
“SCAM ALERT – affiliate scammers are posting bogus ads promising (nonexistent!) employment, paid research trials, or other compensation, but then notifying repliers that they’ll need to jump through a hoop first, directing them to:
*background checking services
*credit checking or reporting sites
*sites where you are instructed to enter your resume or other personal information
*sites where you are asked to sign up for a “free” trial offer
*sites offering training or education
*sites offering a “system” for making money
*survey or focus group sites
*sites designed to deliver malware or misuse your identifying information
all in hopes of earning affiliate marketing commissions or otherwise profiting at the expense of persons seeking employment.”
Craigslist then goes on to tell you that there are many variations on these scams, and warns that many of them offer nonexistent compensation. This means that at the bottom of the ad, the little part that says “Compensation” is left blank, or has some ridiculous description meant to confuse a person about how much the job is paying. Under that is advice on how to mess with the spammers, by reporting their affiliate link, and then there is the link you need to click on to actually look at the job listings.
I find this troubling. Recently, I noticed that some of the job listings were posted by job searchers, as a warning to the rest of us about specific scams they were aware of. These posters were saying that we, the job hunters, needed to band together, and flag all the job ads that were obviously spam. Many of the posters felt that Craigslist wasn’t bothering to weed out the spammers, and people had gotten tired of seeing listing after listing of jobs that weren’t really jobs in the first place. Perhaps this new screen that pops up before you can look at the jobs is Craigslist’s way of responding to the complaints.
There was an ongoing… “conversation”, for lack of a better word, about an job listing for laborers. Whomever placed the ad wanted to hire skilled electricians and carpenters at what many people felt was an insultingly low price. There were angry comments suggesting that the person who wrote the ad should go do the work themselves, because no one who actually spent the time and effort to become a skilled electrician or skilled carpenter was ever going to accept a job that payed as little as that one did.
There were comments about the belief that the ad writer was intending to avoid hiring workers who were in a union, and hoping to find some workers on Craigslist that he could pay “under the table” (at a much lower rate). Many comments mentioning how sleazy this employer was to decide it was ok to do such nefarious (and potentially illegal) hiring practices followed. Comments about how people like this anonymous employer were the reason it was so hard to find a decent job right now. The general belief was that now that the economy was so bad, it gave despicable and dishonest people an opening to cause harm to their fellow man, by refusing to pay someone what the years of their skill and experience was actually worth. There was much speculation about if this is how things would be from now on.
Another chain of comments stemmed from a different job that was a scam. Somebody posing as a realtor wanted to hire people to go around to specific properties, and take a bunch of photos of those properties from different angles. The pay was not clearly listed. Instead, there was some mention about how a person would get paid a certain dollar amount for each property they take photos of. On paper, it sounded like easy work.
But then, the comments rolled in. People found they were having problems getting paid from this realtor, once they turned in the requested photos. Soon, they placed their own ads about this job, with the words “SPAM ALERT” in the title. There were comments stating that it was impossible to make any money from this because the properties were located “all over the hills”, and that you would spend more on the gas it took to drive to them than you would be able to make in the job itself. People found that some of their photos were rejected, which meant they spent the gas to get to the property, and the time it took to get the photos to the realtor and got absolutely nothing in return. After that, comments flooded in pointing out that this particular realtor wasn’t using his or her own license number, and there was something fishy about the fact that they were using a bank account under a different name, or something to that effect.
Spammers make me angry! There are more unemployed people right now than there has been in a long time, (or maybe ever, I don’t know). To prey on the desperation of people who are just trying to find a way to pay their bills before the lights get turned off, or they lose the house is nothing more than pure evil. It is good that Craigslist has started to point out to people how to spot Job Spam, and what to do about it, because I believe this will cut down on the number of people who unknowingly send a bunch of personal information to what they think is a potential employer. It makes me sad that things have come to this, however. I lose a little faith in humanity when I see things like this.
Now, I am pretty good at spotting spam (see previous blogs where I harassed a spam artist who posted a fake job on Craigslist), so I have continued to use it to hunt for jobs. So, I am not saying avoid using Craigslist at all costs. I looked around a bit at Craigslists that were for other cities, and noticed that not all of them needed the warning screen to be put in place before you can see the jobs. Perhaps some places actually do have honest, real, employers existing there, wanting to hire workers. The main point I am trying to make with this blog today is this: Beware! You can’t trust everything you read on the internet, and this includes what may look like a potential job.
Tags: Craigslist