Careers Toolkit

Red flags

How to protect yourself from recruitment scams

The number of scams involving the impersonation of genuine recruitment companies and the advertisement of fake jobs to steal sensitive personal information reported to Action fraud is rising.

Recruitment scams generally involve scammers luring victims in with the potential of extra work or income before taking their personal information and, in some instances, income. These criminals have been using reputable job websites to target their victims, who place their CV and other work details on the sites to gain work.

The intense candidate-led market of recent years has made candidates being contacted directly by recruitment agencies the norm. While this generally enables a positive experience for job seekers, it can make them particularly vulnerable to a variety of recruitment scams, even when using legitimate job websites.

While recruitment scams vary in sophistication, general red flags are:

Receiving an unexpected message about job opportunities.
Receiving a message from an email address/phone number you do not recognise.
The available work presented to you is too good to be true.
The job advert/communication you receive is generally poorly written and contains errors.
The person you are speaking to asks for money to place you into work or for training.
Receiving emails from addresses that don't end in the exact same URL as the companies' website. For example .com rather than .co.uk

Except for the final point, all of the above can be part of a regular job application process (who doesn't make the odd typo?) However, if you are ever in doubt, please contact the recruitment company directly, not the recruiter contacting you about the role. The company will be able to tell you if they have advertised the position and whether the person you have had contact with works for them.

Unsure about the legitimacy of a Meridian advert?

Meridian Business Support advertises our vacancies and connects with candidates through several websites. Most commonly, we use Indeed, TotalJobs, CV Library, and Google Jobs, along with social media channels such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. All of our jobs are also posted on this website. If you have any doubts about a Meridian advert you have seen, please contact us directly.