Posted by For every great and diligent recruiter in the market, there is an equal amount of recruiters that use scam tactics in order to lure applicants to an undesirable role.
Recruiters looking to fill these roles will say just about anything to get you to submit that resume and agree to them exclusively representing you. Unfortunately, what appears to be an exciting new job opportunity often devolves into a complete waste of time once the recruiter brings in the actual people from the company to explain the role more accurately.
Here are 5 ways that recruiters attempt to lure you into a role that you would never apply to if you had a correct description.
They Call a Sales Role a Marketing Job
I can’t tell you how many times a marketing job was pitched to me that was actually just a sales job in disguise. I once was under the impression from a recruiter that I’d be writing ad copy and working on the company’s marketing strategies and drove over an hour to an interview that presented a role that was door-to-door sales that paid off commission.
When I found out the truth I was extremely frustrated and left the office with haste. There’s nothing wrong with sales, but a lot of undesirable roles in that particular field do not include a salary and recruiters use all kinds of tactics to attract people to it. They’ll even sell you the dream of you making a really high salary but won’t tell you that the data is taken from the commission of the company’s best performing employee. And while that information might be true, it’s not the norm.
Fake Contract-to-Hire
Short-term contract roles are fine and sometimes convenient for people who don’t want to make a long-term commitment. However, applicants looking for permanent roles are sometimes told by recruiters that a role is contract to hire and later find out from the company that they never had any intention of bringing them on permanently.
Sometimes it could get even worse. The company itself might even lead you to believe that it’s contact-to-hire and allow you to work most of your allotted time before filling you in on the truth. This is devastating for employees who need to pay their mortgage or rent.
They Promise Interviews they Can’t Get
Recruiters will often aggressively rush you to give them your resume and a bunch of other information that they shouldn’t need at this point in the process. Any recruiter asking for too much information off rip should be taken as a red flag.
These types of recruiters are usually trying to boost their number of applicants in attempt to look good in front of their boss. They pretend to have an interview lined up for you but never actually deliver. You will probably never hear from this person again after giving them your resume.
They Tell You You’re Perfect for the Role
Recruiters sometimes read a few lines from your resume and a few lines from the job requirements and decide that you are the perfect person for the role. They are also oftentimes non-technical and simply match words on your resume to make the decision to call you to apply.
Those attributes could be the most insignificant parts of both the job and the resume and make you the opposite of perfect for the role. You should ask every recruiter the right questions in order to find out exactly what the role requires as they are normally only working the call from their perspective.
They Literally Make Up a Fake Job
This has happened to me before and it was devastating. A gentleman who interviewed me was pretending to be from Sirius XM and was actually a recruiter who was looking to inflate his numbers. He even sent me an offer letter and all the paper work for the job. After filling it all out, I learned a few weeks later that the job had been canceled by the first recruiter I spoke to.
He wasn’t aware of the scammer in his company until about a month later. I called Sirius to investigate and found out that the interview was staged. Sirius told me they never conduct interviews outside of their office and my interview had been done in a diner. This should have been a red flag but I never thought there were people out there interviewing for fake jobs.
Rant or Reason 