Beware of Illegal Recruiters Online

Illegal Recruiters have always been the scourge of honest overseas workers. They could be considered dregs of the society because they prey on people’s trust who bank on their promise that they can guarantee lucrative work overseas.

Honest people who have sometimes mortgaged property or accumulated debts in order to pay for processing fees, recruitment fees and a plane ticket in hopes of providing a better life for their families. While undertaking the ultimate sacrifice of experiencing loneliness and discrimination in a foreign land.

Local governments have found ways to curb illegal recruitment by accrediting recruiters to ensure that what they promise is true. Some illegal recruiters however have found ways to curb this regulation and monitoring by taking their schemes online.

One such company was Reserve Petroleum Nederland BV. Their Modus Operandi was to send emails to unsuspecting Filipinos with a fictitious official letter of appointment, promising them of guaranteed employment in the Netherlands.

The letter would be complete with scope of the work, salary package, fringe benefits, grants and other entitlements to attract job seekers. The catch was that they would have to pay for transaction fees, visa’s and/or work/residence permits. But it wouldn’t stop there as other fees would be offered up till the job seeker realized that it was just a scam. When that happens, most likely already a lot of money has been fleeced off him.

How to Check if an Online Recruitment Company is Legit or Not?

1. Telltale clues such as a crappy web page, non refundable payment methods (Western Union, Wire transfer) are but some of the signs. Lack of a business addresses and contact information (email doesn’t count) should also trigger warning signs.
2. Use the search engines to check for negative news about the company. Some companies are wise to employ Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques to push the negative reports of their company down the search results so that it can’t be easily seen. Not all people have the tenacity to look all the way to the 100th page of a search engine result. The best way to do this is to include the negative keywords in your search query to make it more accurate, such as: “[company name] scam” , “[company name] job scam” etc.
3. Some government’s have websites which show a list of accredited online recruiters and job sites. An example of this would be the immigration website of Singapore. Check with the government websites of the country that the recruiter is offering jobs at.
4. Check with your local Embassy. If no list of accredited recruiters are found within the website of the country, it might be good to ask their local embassy for information on that company as well as the jobs that they are offering.

It would also be wise to protect your email address. Email addresses posted publicly online are but one of the ways scammers are able to harvest your email address so that they can email you more online scams.

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