A year ago, Impa wrote in The Star Blog saying how miserable his life was after being one of the victims of recruitment scam. He wrote, in his own words:
“This is a true experience from myself and a lots of those who involve. Currently, there is so many job agency that advertising recruitment through newspaper.I’m cheated for a job that cost me to pay for the agency RM145. It’s not a lot, but for me I can survive for at least one month with RM145. And now, I’m jobless and don’t have any idea what will I have to eat for the next day. I eat a ‘ kuih ‘ for morning breakfast and didn’t eat anything for lunch and a economic rice for dinner.”
For the past few years, I have met quite a number of job seekers who fell prey to recruitment agency scams before. One of the agencies has an office in Wisma Cosway, somewhere nearby the Bukit Bintang area, Kuala Lumpur. I am not sure if they are still operating today. When seeing these job seekers, what I normally do is advising them to lodge a police report if they want to make any attempt to recuperate their losses.
By the way, I don’t think that the scams have lost its momentum.
Berita Harian reported that the Manpower Department (Jabatan Tenaga Kerja) recently raided a hotel in Kuala Lumpur where a recruitment agency scam is believed to be operating since 2 years ago. The agency duped job seekers into paying an amount of between RM150 and RM170 as a pre-requisite for registering. With newspaper advertisement their main source of advertising avenue, the recruitment agency was also found not registered with the Ministry of Human Resources as well (a registered company needs a separate license to operate as a recruitment agency).
If you are one of the victims, come forward and lodge a report as the company would be charged under Private Recruitment Agency Act 1990, carrying a jail sentence of up to 3 years, or fine RM3000 or both.
If you have read my posting on dealing with recruitment agencies, then you will know that any so-called recruitment agency that offers job opportunities with you having to pay some fees needs to be avoided.
“Established recruitment agencies do not charge any fees for their service to the job seekers. If there are some agencies asking for fees for their service (the fee structure is in the form of either a one-off payment during registration, or some percentage of your first month salary if you’re recruited by their client), my advice is simple: stay away from them.”
Basically what they do is ask you for an upfront fees when you register as a job seeker, with the promise that you will get a job within a certain period of time. Many times, you will end up a disappointed, and poorer job seeker.
So careful guys. Beware of the cowboys. If you are not sure, ask. Or else you will get slaughtered. They are many other types of recruitment scams out there.
Think about it. How can one guarantees you to get a job with some company? I would rather pay RM170 to the Human Resource Executive of IBM (just an example) and let him keep the money if he pushes hard to lobby my resume to the hiring managers in the company rather than paying some job agency and have a ‘guarantee’ to get a job soon.
Also, I can even create a recruitment agency and operate a similar fashion. In fact, I can make it legitimate and provide all the documents and all, saying that you will get a job within 3 months after you have paid me an amount RM170. What I do next is have you wait for 3 months, and then offer you a one-day job with minimum salary, perhaps working as temporary office boy in my office. At a rate of RM5 per hour, employing you for 8 hours or 1 full day cost me RM40++. Roughly, I make RM130 (RM170-RM40) per day for 1 job seeker.
If I can take a mere 3 people to register per day, I will accumulate RM10,140 within 1 month (26 working days). Minus the office rent (RM2000), the bills and bla bla bla of say, RM1000, I can get away with over RM7000 per month. What a nice income.
On the other hand, my friend Lam of Asia Part Time has written quite a few regarding job scams. He even created a post that allows victims to ‘name and shame’ the scammers. Some of them are very much familiar and we often find them in our inbox. I suggest you go there and check it out:
List of Reported Scam Companies, by Asia Part Time.
Other posts you may want to read:
- Scam Job Agencies Terminated Operation
- Job Scams in JobsMalaysia Portal
- How Does a Recruitment Agency Work?
- Q: Dealing With Recruitment Agency
- New Job Scam Which is Not So New
- CIMB Phishing Scam On the Loose
- Job Scam Victim Ended with a Death Sentence
- Job Scam in a Job Offer
Author's bio: Zul is the founder and principal contributor for the SKOR Career blog. He is the author of two books, The Malaysian Job Seeker's Dilemma and Buat Duit Tanpa Kerja Makan Gaji (How to Make Money Without a Job), available in major book stores nationwide. You can reach him at zulkiflimusa[at]gmail.com.
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14 comments ↓
[...] tersebut telah dilaporkan oleh akhbar Berita Harian. (Untuk laporan bahasa Inggeris rujuk laporan Recruitment Agency Scam, Get Real dari laman SKOR [...]
bahaya-bahaya… macam mana pula kita nak apply kerja, kita dikenakan bayaran pula? mesti something wrong nih..
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Salam,
No comment about this entry. But I would like to direct your attention to this new programme (FSTEP) to be organised by BNM. A very good opportunity for all the jobseekers out there!
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I like the idea of the scam recruitment agency. Maybe I will create one!
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Don’t do it you will make more job seekers’ lives miserable.
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Hey Zul, thanks for sharing our post on scam job with your reader. Almost everyday got scam victim share their experience on being scam with us.
My advice to them is, Don’t ever “Pay to Work”! You are pay for work!
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For all the surfers information, I think the recruitment agencies have changed their faces, now into data entry job pulak, they ask for an amount of money, RM170-RM200, then they will ask u to wait for one week. All these will end up with dissapointment. So beware jobs seekers…..
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Many years ago I worked for INTI College and we were asked to apply for stock options in the college at around RM6 per share and was bought in staggered periods whereby lots were allocated within a time frame of few months. So really the share price dropped from that amount to less than RM1 per share. I did not take up the offer and was cold storaged by the management under Tan Yew Seng and Dr Lee Fah Onn. Further, the college were asking lecturers to write for a minimal amount whereby no copyright protection was given thereby leaving the individual to lawsuit should plagiarism charges were levied. Finally, lots of students were passed on their finals including the VP’s daughter who failed but the examiner who was marking her paper was forced to pass her as she was the blood line to the company director.
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By the way forgot to mention lots of the lecturers were forced to buy INTI apartments in Nilai at RM75,000 per lot only to find that they could not rent or sell their apartments due to the poor demand of the units in Nilai. Further Tan Yew Seng thought that by encouraging the lecturers to buy the apartments he could save money on digs for students.
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I would also encourage anyone who has suffered from a recruitment agency scam to lodge a complaint. These people continue to operate this way because they have little fear of getting caught. If everyone that was taken by their scams filed a complaint maybe the crooks would think twice about running this scam.
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[...] Do not fall into scam. If you currently looking for job, don’t fall into recruitment agency scam. [...]
[...] money, make sure you know what you will be doing. In case of Umi, it is even far more tragic than losing money to scam recruitment agencies. We are talking about life at stake [...]
untuk merungkai apakan punca disebaliknya, mohon bantuan sesiapa sudi berkongsi pengalaman terutama mangsa yang pernah tertipu dengan tawaran kerja melalui internet ataupun yang mendapat pekerjaan di luar negara menerusi internet.
terima kasih
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It is definitely frustrating to hear Jobseekers been taken advantage of in the above cases.
As a word of advice, it is very important to:
1) to research and find out if the Recruitment Firm is reputable before approaching them for help.
If they ask you for an upfront payment, please be cautious in making such payments!
Reputable Recruitment firms like Adecco do not charge candidates for our recruitment services. We have been helping 700,000 people find work every day. Talk one of our Recruitment Consultants if you have any questions pertaining to the processes involved in getting your career choice! Best of all, its Free!
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