The coronavirus pandemic has invariably caused a rise in unemployment globally and an unfortunate consequence of this has been the rise of job scams and other fake job postings. In the UK a non-profit organisation SAFERjobs is a joint industry and law enforcement organisation designed to support job seekers, agency staff, and contractors with any suspected fraud, malpractice, breach of legislation, or poor experience they may encounter. The organisation has received a steep rise of 70% in reported cases since the pandemic started in 2020. Whilst SAFERjobs focuses on advice and help related to job scams there is a wider concern about the general increase of fake jobs appearing on all online job boards. How can talents spot fake job postings and potential scams?
Asking for Money or too Much Personal Data.
No genuine job poster will ever ask for money at any point in the recruitment and selection process, that’s an easy one to avoid. More difficult are job application processes that ask for way too much personal data, this is more difficult to assess as most applications involve the transfer of a considerable amount of personal data but if it seems too much it may well be an attempt at identity theft.
Numbers Game.
With an average of 250 applications for a single open position research suggests that 80% of applications never get read. Most recruiters use hiring tools and keyword searches which will discount the majority of applications. However, a well written job description should be able to eliminate this 80% from ever applying in the first place. Given these depressing ratios it’s no wonder that talents often see that most hated statement “only successful applicants will be contacted” but with improvements in quality recruitment and selection processes this should never be necessary.
Questionable Business Practices
In the start-up community, particularly the digital tech sector, company founders and managers are under pressure to seek and satisfy a plethora of investors. It is common for a growing start-up to state that they need the investment to recruit new talent. This can lead to the posting of numerous positions for the benefit of the investors, the jobs never existed. Equally, senior managers may ask human resources to collect CVs for some unknown internal budgeting reason. Although these companies are genuine the positions certainly are not. They can be easy to spot over time because they never disappear from job boards and simply get re-posted as new jobs every month when in reality they’ve existed for a year or more. Of course, these jobs will always contain the statement “only successful applicants will be contacted” because human resources never had any intention of replying to a single applicant.
The fact that fake job postings are even an issue is concerning for the entire recruitment sector and needs to be eliminated. It wastes candidate time, leaves a bad impression and damages brand image for the recruiting organisation. Using AI in the recruitment process can help eliminate this wastage by making talent selection more efficient.
One such company who are game changing the face of recruitment by providing a robust process to ensure more efficient recruitment using any channel is Hire Digital, a start-up recruitment company with a global presence that has invested heavily in Artificial Intelligence (AI) to manage the digital tech recruitment process. Their talent management software platform gives digital talent recruiters a strict criterion for posting job adverts and descriptions and their AI works in such a way that it generates a much smaller more targeted candidate list by using up to 40,000 attributes. They key to this is efficiency, recruiters spend less time generating job advertisements and trawling through hundreds of CV’s to get their shortlist, Hire Digital tech can rapidly access up to 1bn talent globally.
Hire Digital is an AI technology with a human touch that is completely revolutionising the recruitment and selection process. It’s two times faster, 50 % cheaper and ten times more accurate than traditional hiring tech. To find out more speak to Robin Brohl at Hire Digital he is a real person and would love to engage with you and help you streamline your recruitment processes.
Data by BeHiring