Job Search Strategy
What a real recruiter will never ask you to do
A real recruiter will never ask you to pay for anything, deposit a check, buy your own equipment, or hand over bank details before a written offer, and won’t hire you over a chat app without a live interview. If a recruiter asks for any of that, you’re talking to a fake recruiter, however real the company name looks.
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Full episode transcript
It’s seven fifteen on a Sunday morning, and a text lights up your phone. Hi, this is Jess from the talent team at a company you’ve actually heard of. Your background is a match for a remote role. Thirty-eight dollars an hour. Flexible schedule. Reply yes to learn more.
And if you’ve been looking for seven months… nobody has reached out first in weeks. So your thumb is already on the Y.
That’s what I want to talk about today. Fake recruiters. And the short answer is this. The scam is never in the first message. It’s in what comes after. And what comes after always ends in one of a few asks. Money. A check to deposit. Equipment to buy. Or your Social Security number and bank details before there’s a written offer.
Here’s what it looks like from my side of the desk. A real recruiter is one link in a chain. Before anyone messages you about a job, there’s a requisition, a hiring manager who asked for it, a budget someone signed, and a pay range somebody approved. Every step after that has another person in it.
That chain is why real hiring is slow… and a little annoying. It’s also why the money only goes one direction. The employer pays the recruiter. The employer pays you. Nobody in that chain sends the candidate a bill.
A scam has no chain. No requisition, no hiring manager, no approvals. So it can move as fast as you’ll let it. Interview over chat this morning. Offer by dinner. And then the turn. We’ll mail you a check for your home office setup. Translated… deposit our fake check, buy laptops from our vendor, and you’re out the money when the check bounces.
Real hiring is slow because somebody has to approve it. A scam is fast because nobody does.
And here’s the uncomfortable part. Scammers don’t go after the careless. They go after the tired. Seven months in, a message that says your background is a match is the first good news in weeks. The scam is built to feel exactly like that.
So stop judging how the message looks. The writing is clean now, and the logos are right. Judge what it asks for. A real recruiter will never ask you to pay to get hired. Not for training, not for a background check. Never deposit a check from a job you haven’t started. Never accept an offer from someone you haven’t spoken to live. Never hand over your Social Security number or your bank details before a written offer. And never reply yes to a stranger’s text.
And there’s a newer one I need you to hear. Someone who sounds like a real recruiter tells you your resume won’t pass the ATS, and you’ll need their preferred resume writer to fix it before they can submit you. That is false. You do not pass an ATS. There’s no score, and no gate. It stores your resume so a recruiter can search it and read it. A real recruiter tells you what to change, for free. One who sends you to a paid writer first is selling something else.
Check the person, not just the company. Go find the careers page yourself, and see if the job is really there. If something feels off, call the company’s main line and ask if this person works there.
And if you get one, report it. Report Fraud dot F T C dot gov. Then tell one other job seeker, because the same message is going out to thousands of them this week.
Here’s the line I want you to keep. No real employer has ever needed your money to hire you. If a job asks for money before it asks for work… it isn’t a job.
The full never list, and what the real message looks like next to the fake one, are in the post. I’ll talk to you next time.
Angela Malagon · Career Strategist. 15+ years recruiting talent for companies such as Cisco, Google, and Wells Fargo, then job searched against the same systems.
It’s 7:15 on a Sunday morning, and a text lights up your phone. Hi, this is Jess from the talent team at a company you’ve actually heard of. Your background is a match for a remote role, $38/hr, flexible schedule. Reply YES to learn more. It’s month seven, nobody has reached out first in weeks, and your thumb is already on the Y.
Here is the short answer on fake recruiters: the scam is never in the first message. It’s in what comes after, which always ends in one of a few asks. Money, a check to deposit, equipment to buy, a task you have to fund, or your Social Security number and bank details before there’s a written offer. A real recruiter needs your time and, eventually, your yes. Nothing else.
They’re better at looking real than they used to be. The writing is clean, the logo is right. So stop judging how the message looks and learn what it asks for. That list is short, and you can learn it today, before the next text arrives.
How real recruiting works, and the part a scam can’t fake
From the outside, a recruiter is a person who messages you. From the inside, a recruiter is one link in a chain. Before I could message anyone about a job, there was a requisition in the applicant tracking system, a hiring manager who asked for it, a budget finance signed, and an approved pay range. Every step after that has another person in it: the hiring manager, a panel, the comp team, a background check vendor.
That chain is why real hiring is slow and a little annoying. It’s also why money only moves in one direction. The employer pays the recruiter, and the employer pays you. That’s true at an agency too, which is why a staffing agency works for the employer, not for you, and why neither one ever sends the candidate a bill.
A scam has no chain. There’s no requisition, no hiring manager, no approval, so it can move as fast as you’ll let it. Interview this morning, over chat. Offer by dinner. Then comes the turn, usually dressed up in an onboarding word: We’ll mail you a check for your home office setup. Translated: deposit our fake check, buy laptops from our approved vendor, and you’re out the money when the check bounces.
Real hiring is slow because somebody has to approve it. A scam is fast because nobody does. If you want to see how many signatures sit between a final interview and a real offer, here’s what happens after the final round.
Why scammers go after the long search
Scammers don’t target the careless. They target the tired. Seven months in, a message that opens with your background is a match is the first good news in weeks, and the scam is built to feel exactly like that.
It’s working on a lot of people. The FTC reported that job scam reports tripled from 2020 to 2024, and reported losses went from $90 million to $501 million over the same stretch. Task scams, which barely existed in 2020, made up nearly 40 percent of job scam reports in the first half of 2024.
Picture two messages in the same week. The first comes from a company email address, names the role you applied to in September, and asks for twenty minutes on Thursday. It’s a little stiff. The second arrives an hour after you turn on Open to Work. It’s warm, flattering, and it wants to move today. If you’ve been out long enough, the second one feels more like a real job. That’s the whole trick.
And the money is only part of it. Hand over your Social Security number, and you’ve bought a second problem that can last years.
How to tell if a recruiter is fake: the never list
You don’t need to spot every fake. You need to spot the ask. Every scam has to get to one of these eventually, and a real recruiter will never ask you to do any of them.
- Never pay to get hired. Not for training, a certification, a background check, or a resume rewrite someone says you need before they’ll submit you. No employer charges candidates to apply.
- Never deposit a check from a job you haven’t started. Real companies ship equipment from their own IT team. They don’t mail you money to spend at their vendor.
- Never accept an offer from someone you haven’t spoken to live. A real process puts you on the phone or video with the hiring manager. An interview held entirely in a Telegram or WhatsApp chat is not an interview.
- Never hand over your Social Security number or bank details before a written offer. You’ll give both after you accept, through an HR system or a background check portal. Not in a chat window.
- Never trust the contact details they send you. Find the company’s careers page yourself. Check that the job is posted there and the email domain matches. A Gmail address or a lookalike domain is the tell.
- Never reply YES to a stranger’s text. The FTC’s first warning is about generic, unexpected job texts. The YES tells them your number is live, which is all they wanted. While you’re at it, take your cell number off your public LinkedIn contact info. Real recruiters can message you there.
- Never fund your own paycheck. If you have to deposit money to unlock what you’ve earned rating products or apps, it’s a task scam. The FTC puts it plainly: “No matter what the system says you earned, you didn’t.”
- Look up the person, not just the company. A brand-new LinkedIn profile with a handful of connections and no coworkers at that company is your cue to call the company’s main line and ask whether this person works there.
- Report it, then tell someone. File at ReportFraud.ftc.gov, flag it on the platform, and tell the company being impersonated. Then warn one other job seeker. The same message is going out to thousands of them.
The newest one: “your resume won’t pass the ATS”
This one doesn’t feel like a scam, because the person sounds like a recruiter and sometimes is one. You get a message, maybe even a screening call, and then: Your resume won’t pass the ATS. Before I can submit you, you’ll need it rewritten. I work with a resume writer who knows our system. Translated: someone is getting a cut, or there was never a job.
You do not “pass” an ATS. There’s no score to clear and no gate that opens. An applicant tracking system stores your application so a recruiter can search it and read it. The ATS doesn’t reject your resume. People and screening questions do.
A real recruiter who thinks your resume undersells you tells you what to change, for free, because placing you is how she gets paid. One who needs you to buy a rewrite from her preferred writer before she’ll submit you is selling something else. Say no, and don’t pay.
The fake and the real one, side by side
These messages are made up. The patterns are not.
The fake
Hi! I’m Jess with the talent team at [Company]. Your profile is a great match for our remote Data Entry Specialist role, $38/hr, flexible hours, no experience needed.
Interviews are happening on Telegram today. Once you’re hired, we’ll send a check for your equipment, purchased through our approved vendor.
The real one
Hi [Name], I’m a recruiter on the [Company] talent team. You applied for our Senior Operations Analyst role in September, and the hiring manager would like to talk.
Do you have 20 minutes Thursday or Friday for a phone screen? The posting, with the pay range, is on our careers page if you’d like to look at it again.
Same company name, same week. The fake offers you everything up front. The real one asks for twenty minutes and points you back to the company’s own website.
The part I’d want you to screenshot
You can’t stop scammers from finding your number. You can decide what you’ll never do, and decide it now, while you’re calm, instead of at 7:15 on a Sunday when someone finally sounds glad to hear from you.
And keep going after the real ones, because you don’t have to wait for one to find you.
No real employer has ever needed your money to hire you. If a job asks for money before it asks for work, it isn’t a job.
If you want a search with fewer strangers in it
Being targeted doesn’t mean you’re naive. It means you’ve been looking long enough to get noticed. The fix is a search aimed at companies you picked, run through people you can verify.
That’s Job Search Strategy, $400. I research your market and your target companies before we talk, we spend 60 minutes building the plan, and you leave with a 30-day plan for where your hours go. It is not a pep talk, and it is not a course. And apply the never list to me, too: every price is published on the Work With Me page, and I will never text you out of nowhere.
Send the contact form and you’ll get a personal reply from me within 48 hours. Not a bot, not a template. If you’d rather work through it yourself first, the Job Search Library is free, and The Job Posting Decoder is where you check a posting’s tells before you spend an evening on it.
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