How to spot a fake job posting on Craigslist

Craigslist is a popular internet site for buying and selling used goods, finding a date and surprisingly, finding employment! However, in these economic times, net users should exercise precaution when dealing with job postings on craigslist. It can be easy to fall for scams or misleading opportunities due to financial pressures, but employment should always be worthwhile. Here’s a few tips for identifying fraudulent or misrepresented job postings on CL.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. Beware of job postings that list salaries with the words “up to” or “potential earnings.” Also be careful of ads that post salaries with a wide range of dollar amounts such as “Compensation: $35,000-$75,000/year.” No real job has “potential earnings” or a salary that varies by more than $2000-$4000 depending on experience. At most companies, the difference between earning $35k and $75k is 5+ years of experience and an advanced degree. If one job description says that the position pays between a large range of salaries, the job is probably bogus or it’s strictly a sales position. In a case where it is a sales job, your base salary is probably minimum wage, or somewhere near that, and only commission from a successful sale can raise your salary.

2. Watch out for ads that contain lots of typos, misspelled words, improper grammar, etc. Legitimate job postings are carefully thought out, written and proofread before being published to the web. There should be no major errors with language, spelling or punctuation. If the job posting is full of errors, the job was posted by someone who didn’t care to present very professionally, so chances are working for them won’t be much of a professional opportunity either.

3. Avoid job postings that ask you to send money for startup costs or training. No legitimate employer will ever ask you to pay to become employed.

4. It sounds tempting, but be careful of “Home-based” work opportunities. This isn’t to say that legitimate work from home opportunities don’t exist, because they do. But, work-from-home opportunities require a large amount of trust from the employer, integrity from the employee, and extensive experience and/or an advanced degree. No employer is going to offer genuine work-from-home opportunities where employees receive benefits, a competitive salary and the flexibility that goes along with telecommuting, on an entry-level basis.

5. Beware of management jobs that require little to no experience to apply.

6. If the company lists their name in the job posting, do some research about who they are. Visit their website for more information about their business, and check to see if the job posting you found on CL is listed on their page under Employment, Careers, or Job Opportunities. If it’s not there, then the CL posting might be a fake.

Tips & Warnings

• Feel free to check the Craigslist job banks in areas near yours to see if the same job postings are listed. Chances are that if there is a posting that appears in San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco AND Seattle, something’s fowl.
• Exercise precaution with anything that seems too good to be true. Employment is important, but legitimate employment is more important.

[carolcarol]

on 5/30/2009 By telling those "tips"... now spammers can modify their bots... to avoid those problems.Bad.