How to recognize job scams?
Deputy Human Resources Minister, Datuk Noraini Ahmad has urged the job seekers to be careful and conduct background check before applying for job, or accepting any job offer.
More and more job seekers are being victimized by scammers and criminals in the recent years, and to make matter worse, some of them were even caught carrying illegal goods, especially drugs.
A number of Malaysian women have been detained overseas for drug trafficking offence, with most of them claiming to have no knowledge of the company’s wrong doing. The most tragic in the recent run was the Umi Azlim’s case, who was sentenced to death after being caught trafficking 3kg of heroin in Guangzhou, China. Surely, such a case with leave any parent dejected.
“My advice to them is to check the validity of the companies with the ministry. We don’t want any more cases where victims only knew they had been duped after landing in foreign countries,” – Noraini
The problem with checking the employer’s background is that, some of them will appear to be operating under a legitimate business name and are even registered with the SSM (Suruhanjaya Syarikat Malaysia). The fact that they can show the prospective employees they have a professional looking website goes to show that scammers are getting more and more clever these days.
How to know if a job is a scam?
The next 3 steps tell you how make the right judgment if a job can possibly be a scam.
1. Sounds too good to be true
In the case of Umi, she confessed to being lured with a hefty sum of money to transport ‘some items’ to oversea. What could that items be? Weapons? Drugs? A body? A combination of an easy job and large some of money would often translate to something suspicious. Will you not sense something amiss? Would you not be curious on what kind of job and people you’re dealing with?
2. They ask for money
This is the type of recruitment scammers who ask for money from candidates with the promise of giving them job in return. Some of those who fall victim to them willingly hand over few hundreds of ringgits, even reluctantly. Most of the time, these job seekers are left in the cold in the end – no call, no job, no news and no hope. These scammers also have nice office set ups in some of the prominent buildings in the city, making it difficult for unsuspecting job seekers to deny the arrangement.
3. They use fancy and pretty position titles
The same scammers also often resort to using fancy, pretty and innocent position titles which make the job even more interesting. You know, position titles like Operation Executive, Management Trainee, Business Specialist, Business Development Executive, Marketing Executive and bla bla bla. They smear the reputation of real companies that provide real position titles like real Operation Executive, real Management Trainee, real Business Specialist and such.
What do these 3 tell you?
The most important thing that we should learn from the above is that the most useful tool that will help us make a right judgment and decision is not the SSM. It is not the Ministry of Human Resources either. The tool is inside us and is found located in between of our ears. That’s right, it’s our brain. You see, being genius has a lot to do with using our brain, but to make to use a brain, one does not have to be genius. Go figure.
Image: Wishbonix.com