BEWARE of Job Scams
April 1, 2009 by Geoff Jennings
Dodgy job ads are a very hot topic at the moment. The ramifications of making fake job ads a part of a business repertoire are serious. This practice can hijack the level of trust the community has for a business and the businesses in the industry; but it also affects people on a personal level. It raises hopes where there were previously none. Nasty.
As the market leading job board and the main target, Seek are the end of the line when it comes to the publication of job scams. Are they doing enough to prevent these? Do they have dedicated people on board tracking this? Or, indeed, do they bear little responsibility for the integrity of their advertisements?
The forum most used for discussion on this topic is Whirlpool. They are moderating these discussions concerning this topic at a rapid pace.
One such discussion – Beware Of Job Scams – only three hours old – was pulled.
Here’s what it said:
There are two broad distinctions that need to be understood on this subject.
Firstly, there is a very big distinction between a recruitment agency and a media organisation. Many of the comments on Whirlpool fail to make this distinction. SEEK has been quite clear in our own participation in the Whirlpool community and elsewhere that we are not a recruitment agency.
We have absolutely no control over the way that some recruitment agencies communicate with their customers.
We recognise that there are some poor practices in some recruitment agencies out there – the minority. There is a lot the recruitment agency industry can do to help their customers understand the recruitment process better and improve service and communication levels to them. There is not a great deal SEEK can do about that although we’d very much support that in any way we could – at the RCSA conference last year that was a key subject of our CEO’s keynote to the recruitment industry.
We are not – and never intend to be – some sort of policeman to the recruitment industry.
Anyone with any complaints about recruitment agencies should absolutely take that up as a consumer with the ACCC. I know the industry body the RCSA has also been trying to look at standards and perhaps they might want to respond to the public on this issue on behalf of the industry. We have certainly welcomed discussions with them on this subject to the degree that we are able to assist. Policing the industry however is not the role of a media company like SEEK.
Secondly, there’s a very big distinction between ads that involve criminal attempts to defraud jobseekers and ads that are misleading or accurate.
I completely reject the notion that SEEK is “the end of the line when it comes to job scams.”.
Granted as the market leader we might attract more attention from criminals than others. The reality is there is not a single job board or media organisation in Australia that is not a target of criminals and spammers, including your own blog Geoff. Like you, we do everything we can to fight back.
We throw considerable resources – both financial, technical and human – at this issue. We have dedicated teams that deal specifically with consumer protection. Over the last year we’ve put in a huge amount of effort to reduce fraudulent and criminal activity on our site, working with external security agencies, government and many others on the issue – including our competitors.
This program has been very successful to the degree that last month only four ads were detected that potentially involved criminal fraud. They were all detected within less than fifteen minutes. We’ll continue to talk regularly with our competitors on this subject – its an industry problem and affects all job boards, not just SEEK – if anyone in the industry wants to give me a call on this at any time they are welcome. SEEK will never solve criminality by itself and we appreciate the support and co-operation of many others in the industry on this subject. In short, we and the industry have a zero tolerance approach on this.
Misleading advertising is quite a different problem and requires a different solution. SEEK is committed to going beyond both the spirit and the letter of the ACCC guidelines on employment advertising when it comes to our jobseeker experience on SEEK.
Any jobseeker can report any ad on our site for investigation. We remove all manner of advertisements and accounts daily. We don’t tolerate behaviour that tries to rig our search engine or give one advertiser an advantage over another in accessing the jobseeker market. Likewise we try as hard as we can to give jobseekers equal access to all relevant opportunities. We don’t tolerate advertising that does not constitute a genuine employment opportunity. We don’t tolerate advertising where jobseekers have to part with money as part of a selection process. We apply very tough standards to anything that resembles network marketing, pyramid and ponzi schemes and so on. We don’t carry franchise, licensing or distributorship opportunities and heavily restrict advertising that might offend jobseekers particularly employment in the adult industry. We’re applying much tougher standards to lists of jobs in ads, as well as advertising that basically promotes a recruitment agency or employer in the guise of a job ad. We’re applying much tougher standards to anything that might appear in the ‘Work from Home’ category. We’ve been quite public and transparent about all of this.
Obviously we are not in a position where we can always verify that every single ad on the site directly relates to one real open vacancy in the economy. As a recruiter, you know Geoff that you’re not going to give me the names and phone numbers of your clients so that I can check your bona fides and right to advertise certain employers roles.
The ‘real vacancy’ standard is the standard applied by the ACCC and we support that standard. It is up to advertisers to comply with the ACCC provisions. I would encourage any jobseeker or whirlpool poster who suspects an advertiser of posting fake vacancies to our site or any other site to report it to us using the ‘report this ad’ feature which is on every ad, and also where appropriate, lodge a complaint with the ACCC.
Finally, you can see from Whirlpool that consumers are well across this stuff. Whilst some might confuse the standards of SEEK with the behaviour of a tiny minority of SEEK’s customers, ultimately job seekers are going to vote with their CV’s and simply not deal with advertisers whose standards are below their expectations – especially when they become clients.
Thanks for your insights Carey.
Just so it’s clear: I was not being prescriptive about the role of job boards like Seek in policing job scammers and fake job ads. But, like any messenger, any source that spreads news and information (and it is in this regard that job boards and media outlets share a common aim) must necessarily bear a responsibility in ensuring their messages do no harm.
Fake job ads and job scams do harm and recruiters and job boards must work in unison to protect itself (in the form of reputation) and the public from damage.
Blogs like this one contribute to discourse which serves two main purposes: 1) it sets standards by admonishing recruiters who engage in the practice of fake job advertising 2) By seeking a way (pardon the pun) to alleviate unethical practices.
In this light, here is a link to the ACCC:
http://www.scamwatch.gov.au/content/index.phtml/tag/JobEmploymentScams
Carey you state that at Seek you “…don’t tolerate behaviour that tries to rig our search engine or give one advertiser an advantage over another in accessing the jobseeker market. Likewise we try as hard as we can to give jobseekers equal access to all relevant opportunities”.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought you gave advertisers the opportunity to “rig” the order of ads displayed by allowing them to pay to move their ad up the rankings?
Or is that an urban myth?
Its definitely an urban myth. There is absolutely no connection between spend and position within search results.
We have a Premium Ads product that allows you to sponsor the very top position in a category – the ad has a different physical appearance.
We have a different Standout Ads product that allows your ad more physical prominence in the search results with no affect on position within the search results – you just stand out where your ad happens to appear. .
We’ will never make a connection between spend and position either – it would destroy the search experience for jobseekers.