unfortunately in the vast landscape of opportunities there lurk deceptive schemes praying on the hopeful and eager from fake job post to identity theft traps the risks are real which is why today I'm chatting with recently hired Jeremy Rivera a developer Advocate who shares the scams he encountered during his job search where we'll discuss how you can keep yourself safe out there uh so Jeremy can you share any experiences you've had with scams during your job search yeah I I could very much clea
rly think of a very early on you know when I graduated from my education I had been very much openly applying to as many jobs as I could and that was bad practice you know retrospectively thinking about that and I had gotten some responses and I think they really prayed on my initial HT with text Bas and one of them was an email questionnaire and we went through a lot of different stuff like what what technologies had you been exposed OS to uh have you played with this language how how many proj
ects have you had you know what were your salary your expectations and it was a pretty lengthy document and then once I filled that out I had sent it over and they responded you know within due time I would say between you know 20 minutes to an hour I was at the airport at the time I clearly remember this and they were like hey you know let us know you know super fast if you're if you're ready to jump on this opportunity we want you to know that you're hired so at that point that kind of raised
the red flag because there was no phone call there was no video conferencing you know available between our relationship we really had only been messaging for probably three or four days now it was under the guys of the company that I had actually applied to you know and again there are you know Bad actors out there so I had called up a friend who had been working as a software engineer for some time now and he's like ah he he was like I'm not really feeling a good vibe here and lo and behold I
I didn't respond I did my research the company uh had been flagged a couple of times on on a Spam site and so I blocked the number I blocked the email and that was it I had another company reach out via email and it was a similar story but slightly different and I think they did a little bit better this time they they had the domain of the website right and I went to the website I searched for the employees who worked there to see the domain of the email and it was the exact same so when they ca
me forward I I had seen it it looked very legitimate but as I was emailing the individual he did not want to set up a call he was very adamant like no we don't need to do that I was like no no we could just have a chat you know and he's like no so I emailed I don't know if it was the CEO at the time of this website and I was like hey by the way this person is using your email I want to know if it's you or if it's somebody else and he he emailed me back pretty pretty fast and he was like no if no
t us we are aware of the problem we have contacted the service provider which I believe was Google domains at the time and he's like this is an ni we thank you for bringing it in can you please forward the information and so I I did that and again it was it was block rinse repeat you know push that out and then I really started to think about what my strategy was in terms of sending out these Mass applies I want to tell you about something real quick that can really change the game in regards to
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company you had actually applied to and then they had responded with um is that correct or both of these were conversations that you initiated or were they cold Outreach from somebody else coming into you from what I could tell it was it was either let's say I had applied on in at the time or LinkedIn you know I was pretty heavy on those sites back then as well I was trying to get my first job right so they would set up a fake business profile you know on one of these sites because those sites
do not typically have great screening processes for those who watch clst SCS so they' set up a fake one they even connected it to my workday right so I had had submitted my information via my workday and then they had messaged me with the information hey Jeremy you know did you did you verify this I'm like okay yeah I can verify it and then once we did that that's when the next step would come and it would be I I've seen the document approach a couple times in my experience well they'd send me a
document questionnaire and now I'd see like if I get a document like what's your experience what are your expectations it's typically a immediate red flag for me because if a person or a company or organization really wants to hire you as a junior they probably want to hear your voice they probably want to see your face how you condu yourself there has to be some sort of human Connection in that interview process and now it's like whenever I receive an email check the grandma right because retr
oactively I had looked at the stuff that was coming from these fake postings and you could sometimes see if there's a missing r or missing s the grammar's not proper or S structure doesn't quite seem right they're missing punctuation they don't have an email signature some of those are very obvious things okay and sometimes it's not just applications it's not people coming out to you though but sometimes they even spoofed the email domains of actual companies that you're you're talking to uh so
even that NE not necessarily is safe uh so red flags here you mentioned grammar to watch out for you mentioned don't filling don't fill out any sort of spreadsheet questionnaire beforehand um what what additional steps when going forward after these experiences how would you kind of verify the legitimacy of a job posting then if they actually had valid listings on things like indeed and Linked In sometimes and I know to the perspective listener that this might be a difficult thing it's go on the
actual website to apply right because you have these marketplaces like indd LinkedIn you know even Google jobs at times if you could verify that that job posting even exists on that website then it's more more than likely legitimate but with all the job postings that get posted each and every single day there's not always a good way to to know so I I'd say to most people like now you know hey slow down just a little bit look at the job that you're applying for on the website and then go from th
ere right if you still want to use indeed or or you know LinkedIn because I know sometimes when you apply the software will allow you to do like an all search with one of those accounts and then pre-fill your resume that's okay that's fine you know but verify with the site that this is a legitimate job posting rather than you know a scam one yeah and I think you mentioned you networking earlier in a bit I think being connected with other Junior developers uh and sharing this information in real
time with each other is another way that you can keep yourself safe you know safety and numbers if you identify a nefarious uh job application well maybe you know you can share that and save somebody else as well and vice versa uh so let's yes so let's say you're putting a lot of personal information out there uh when you are apped opportunities uh you your phone number your email sometimes they ask for a home address still um how did you keep your personal information safe while you were applyi
ng for jobs did you do anything different there let's see when I kept information safe it would be and again this this depends on where you're applying and then how much you're applying if you're spam applying like some some Juniors do or some three Juniors do you may or may not want to include your phone number in the resume or your address I do not include my full address in my resume I include the city or I include the nearest major city near me and then if I get feedback from like hey if it'
s a an on-site position then yes I will give them my address but on my resume I I keep my resume strictly an email specifically designated for jobs not my personal email just I I made it I I have a a domain for that specifically destinated for jobs I have my actual phone number on there because very to block you know a bad actor and I again I do not have my home address on there yeah right so that's the only information I don't have my birthday I don't have anything else yeah that's good it's a
good call I like the specific job search email I know some people have gone as far as to create with something like Google Voice um like their own specific phone number the fors the real phone number so that that every gets compromised they can just you know turn it all off and and and lose it all but that's good advice there uh so you shared some of your own personal stories um are there any other examples of some scams that got caught up in with people that you're aware of in your network yeah
I actually I I hadn't met this guy personally but I know him because he's he's within my network and he's a network of a network and then we eventually linked up you know and Linkedin DMS and just talked about technology but his particular experience was shock shocking because apparently he had went through that process he had went through the process there was an email exchange that was available and it was crazy because he said that he actually got through video calls he had got through a cou
ple phone calls and it was a fully remote position and he got he got to the point where he got a an offer lugger filled out a W2 sent over his bank information and then the company disappeared the company completely ghosted they took the site down like all of it you know they they had a a side up and I've seen it I've seen it is I had someone send me you know hey is this a scam sometimes they have sites sometimes they have landing pages and then since it is a developer they're looking for a deve
loper job they might go under the premise like hey we know our site doesn't look so great that's why we're bringing you want oh man yeah I've seen it before I don't know if these are all STS but if a company is posting like hey we might have like 30 positions opening up soon comment interested and then you see a bunch of people you know with they're open to to work Banner commenting interested on it to me I that doesn't seem legitimate to me because there's not a job posting there's not an appli
cation process to it it's like oh comma interested send us your information after we DM you yeah that's kind of a red flag they're just trying to capture your who's interested and trying to take you out of the process of like a formal application and yeah and for your friend that got caught up in all of that uh do you know how that started was that him applying to a position or was that him responding to an inbound email do you know how that got kicked off I could typically on LinkedIn you could
see at times when one of your networks will comment on something or when when they engage with the post so he actually engaged with the post I had seen it and then he reposted it with hey has anyone heard of ex company and then I commented I was like hey I'm I'm willing to send you a private DM again because I didn't do my due diligence to know about the company but when I looked into it it's like H maybe not so we actually chatted on the phone um I think last Friday it was recent and I was lik
e hey I would do your research because what I'm saying you probably wouldn't like right I think a lot of people have had similar experience you know because he's like oh this company and again it was one of the ones I mentioned syner just the guy they reached out to me they they wanted to offer me a job and I looked at the he sent me the screenshots he did the interested thing they're like hey let's talk let's chat and lo and behold it ended up being fiful yeah and that's incredibly uh unfortuna
te and he's W not GNA be the first one and it's going to keep happening uh so do you know what Avenues your friend took to recover from that situation you mentioned his bank account was now leaked and now you know compromised uh how did he rectify the situation did did the bank allow him to you know change his account number or like how did that all work do you know I believe the bank allowed him to change his account number um again I I think at the moment with with everything with AI and every
one doing the broots and everything that the banks they Pro they've heard of this you know type of situation before so it's still unfortunate right it's still the gentleman lost time he had to go into the bank and he had to do the process of getting cleared for another bank account getting a separate route number so that's paperwork in a couple hours of his life he's going to get back and what he did to be active about it instead of dwell on that blunder per se he he put it all up on his his Lin
kedIn and he he gave it to the community he gave it to his Network he's like hey guys look out for next company um I don't remember the name for this one specifically and he's like he laid out the exact process that they used for him and he told people hey be careful because these people exist these people are out there and they're not the only ones yeah you know we live in a an interesting time in which people do pray on on na and we may we listed a couple in this episode right here but they co
uld just as easily take down that domain and create another website under a different name and start all over so it's about uh the name even at this point in time but you know staying engaged with other people in your network and just sharing that information in real time so you can stay up to date with the the latest Bad actors uh so I don't want to spend the the entire time talking about this negative part of your job search ultimately you were successful uh and really grateful for you coming
on to share your story so I want to give you an opportunity just now looking back on your job search experience uh were there any key learnings along the way you know outside the scope of of you know getting scammed that you think would be valuable for new developers coming into the market to know yeah if you're a new developer and you're going into the job Force I always always am a big proponent of staying policy we will typically hear a lot of news from from various different sources that the
job market is crazy right now and there's a big Talent po but my biggest recommendation is to tailor your resume for the companies which you apply to really look at the job posting and then if they list specific technology that you may not have exposure in do not not apply like go apply and then try to see if you could maybe make a small project watch a tutorial then do something yourself with that technology that specify and thereby you could you can hit that keyword that keep going I actually
the first developer job that I had gotten it was because is I had created a storefront and I utilized in strip API right so that that one that one word the strip stripe API that that they just pulled just pulled the the resume and he told me that he's like got hired he's like what inrig me was that you are used to this and we actually use stripe heavily you know on the dayto day so that was a good thing that I had learned after the fact after I had gotten the job that they are really looking at
these spe words right I don't think they're always looking at the five to seven years of experience that is listed there but that you have acquaintance and some sort of familiarity with the technology maybe not being a master at it but that you have had exposure you know your way around it to the point in which they could give you an assignment they do not have to heavily train you because they might not have the resources and then you could just go in and start start coding yeah that's the big
secret of it you're not asked every time you list a skill to rank it on a scale of one to how proficient you are with it uh you can be you know 5 years with JavaScript or you know 5 days with JavaScript it's the same when you put it on the resume uh and that's what the interview is for interview is the opportunity for you to defend your your competency and that skill but easy enough to to put it on just by doing you know some quick Googling or you know playing with it just as you mentioned that
's great advice before we wrap up though I also want to give you an opportunity to give a shout out to any uh tools people organizations uh anything that you found helped you in your job search Journey that you want to highlight to the community I had a lot of help actually from the career services that my institutions provided so I did graduate from University um but I also graduated from my software care camp and that's how I broke Tech right so that boot camp is triple 10 and they have Career
Services up to six months after graduating the program I was fortunate enough that I I got kind of forced into the C services because I got hired before I finished the program right I was about halfway through the program but I knew that I kept applying if I kept applying there is a numbers component to it but statistically I should get interviews sooner and then more interviews because of the quantity of applications I put out again as you've seen with this interview that's not always a good t
hing right bet the companies that you want to apply to probably start applying to the job that you really want taor your resume to that but I wouldn't be in this position without the education that I've receiv received and I do think boot camps are still very relevant today in 2024 and I couldn't recommend triple finball awesome well thank you so much Jeremy for sharing your story and helping keep other new developers coming into the space safe as they are embark on their own uh job search Journ
ey so thank you for joining and we will see you all next time thanks for tuning in to the junior jobs podcast if you enjoyed the show please remember to like And subscribe as that helps us reach more developers in need and don't forget to check the show notes for details on today's sponsor and other job search services that we provide
Comments
What are other scams job seekers should watch out for?