Refer a Remote Work Expert As a Guest On The Show
Ever found yourself questioning the legitimacy of a remote job post on social media? Join us as we talk about a personal experience with a suspicious Facebook job listing that lacked critical details and transparency. We’ll walk you through the red flags that signal scams or poorly presented opportunities and provide actionable tips to identify trustworthy remote job listings. Learn how clear communication and proper hiring practices can make all the difference in your job search journey.
Moving forward, we uncover the essential steps to evaluate remote work opportunities thoroughly. Discover the importance of researching a company’s history, niche, and financial health, and how PR and news sources can offer insights into a business and its key people. We also stress the value of direct communication with hiring managers to understand the company culture and recruitment practices. Lastly, protect your personal information online with expert advice from Sarah Sutton of FlexJobs.com on recognizing and avoiding remote work scams. Tune in for this comprehensive guide to ensuring a safe and secure job search!
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0:00
When it comes to finding remote work. One of the biggest challenges and one of the biggest, I suppose, pains is that there are so many scammy type adverts and scammy type businesses out there. So that makes it really difficult to really pick out the ones that are legitimate, and in my mind, it makes it well something that makes it slightly more difficult. It makes it well something that makes it slightly more difficult. They're not only the scammy adverts, they're also ones that don't deliberately, or aren't scams necessarily, but just look dubious. So they may not be deliberately, like you know, trying to scam people, but they they just look dubious in the way that they go about, uh, presenting themselves online or in the process of hiring people. Let me explain what I mean. So today I saw an advert online and it looked like whoever'd written that advert just didn't know anything about hiring or sort of understanding people's thoughts and all that sort of thing when it comes to hiring people. Because what they'd done is and this may not be, that may not have been a scam, it just may have been just one of these dubious ones that I'm talking about so what they'd done is they'd written a post on Facebook describing the post, just describing the role, describing the business, but they didn't actually give any sort of name of the business, they didn't really go into much detail about the role and on the bottom of the post they attached a comment or appended a comment, which had a Google form on it, and they were asking people to fill the format with personal details. Now, like I said, that may have been a totally innocent, non-scammy person who was legitimately trying to find a quick and cheap way of hiring people as soon as possible, but it just looked dubious. And there were a couple of people in fact, who had signed the form and signed the Google form and had left their personal details on the form or at least confirmed that they would do that, and there were some people inquiring about it as well, asking more questions. But again, what made it look even more dubious was that the person who was hiring wasn't really prepared to go into detail about you know the name of the company and wasn't prepared to go into details about the actual role itself.
Alex Wilson-Campbell:
2:25
So there are the outright scammers out there who you know it's totally obvious that they're scammers, but they're the ones as well, or the people in business out there who know little or nothing about how to hire people and engage people and they just look totally dubious. And it may be that they're lazy when it comes to their practices of hiring, or it may be that they're just totally ignorant in terms of not knowing how to go about it and really reassure people. And there are those businesses, obviously businesses that are obviously well, yeah, they're obviously legitimate. You can see for yourself in terms of what they're about. They are pretty clear in how they communicate online. They fill you with a sense of optimism and a sense of security about what they do and who they are. And I just wanted to give you a few pointers in terms of what you should look, a few things just to look out for if you're trying to get hired by one of these remote businesses or being hired in general, because it doesn't just apply to remote businesses. Scammers and dubious job posts don't just apply in that avenue, in that arena. So there's just a few things just to help you along the way with your research and help you to build like a sort of a profile of the businesses to understand what they're all about.
Alex Wilson-Campbell:
3:47
So when I'm doing my research, I look at the business itself. So I want to see when it's established. You know? What year was it established? What niche does it serve? Does the business have a track record in serving the people within that niche, and what do those people say about the business? Are there any testimonials that you can have a look at to understand the business?
Alex Wilson-Campbell:
4:09
Any you know any further and you know, sometimes you may be able to look at places like hoovers, or certain publications may print information about the financial, financial shape of the business. That's not always the case, especially if it's a recent business, one that's just started, but you can look at those sorts of things as well where the business is concerned and then look at which is linked to this. Look at the PR and look at news. So things like Google News, for example, google News may give you sort of like a snapshot about the business, what it's about. Certain magazines may profile or have interviewed the CEOs or key members of the actual business, so you can get an understanding and you can actually begin to put some faces to the name of the business and understand that there are actually people behind the name.
Alex Wilson-Campbell:
5:07
So, yeah, look at PR and news as well and then, as well as that, go a bit further when it comes to the key people and by key people I mean people like the chief executive officer management team, the founders, the board members look at them and see again what they're all about. How long have they been in the business for themselves? How long have they been doing what they're doing? Are there any interviews on youtube that you can get an idea and get a feel of the sort of person that they, that they, are? Are they sort of out there trying to publicize their business? Are they talking about their business in a way that reassures you? So these are all just I mean, okay, none of these things that I'm talking about now are full, you know, a foolproof, foolproof, but they can go some way to help you to begin to understand if this business is a dubious business or if this business is a scammy business or a business that is legitimate. So, yeah, the key people.
Alex Wilson-Campbell:
6:08
And then look a bit further. Look at the team. Again, I mean this just gives you an idea as to how well established they are, what they do, and then you know it can give you an idea as to how you may fit into the team. But again, all of this information is a way of helping to reassure you that you know it's not just the CEO and his, you know, and his dog or whatever it may be, it's. There's a sort of a there are people behind it, people who support that business. And, by the way, I'm not saying that one person businesses are by any means dubious or scammy, I'm just saying that by seeing a team behind the actual individual or the CEO, it can sometimes be that little bit more reassuring to you, bit more reassuring to you.
Alex Wilson-Campbell:
7:00
And then what I'd look at then is how do they go about hiring? I mean, as I mentioned in this particular example, the one where I saw the post on Facebook and the Google form which the person had asked the prospective candidates to fill out, that's just totally dubious and totally not the right way to go about things, because it doesn't really reassure anybody, it doesn't give anybody the sense that there is some real effort going into the whole process of recruiting. So if you are looking to, you know, really sort of do your due diligence, also have a look at how they go about their recruiting. It may be that you even talk to somebody within the business, pick up the phone and speak to the hiring manager or speak to the person in HR and find out more about the role, find out more about the business, and that, too, can give you some some really valuable insight as to what you may be getting into. So, yeah, that's it really.
Alex Wilson-Campbell:
8:08
I mean, those are, as I said, those are just starting points for you to begin your research, and it's always important that if you do see people online asking you to fill in your details as I did today with this form, asking for things like email address and address, first name, last name that you really just stop a minute, think about it before you you act and then you know, really begin to see and really begin to pick out things that can help you to understand if you should go ahead or not, and in that case, I would or in the case that I mentioned, I'd certainly say, yeah, don't be filling out any dubious google forms online.
Alex Wilson-Campbell:
8:51
I hope that's helped. As I said, there's a lot more to really think about when it comes to spotting the scammers and the dubious employers, but I hope that has really helped you. If you want to hear more about how to sort of avoid or at least be aware of the scammers, have a listen to the interview that I did with Sarah Sutton of flexjobscom. I did that during the Remote Work Life Summit and if you want a ticket, if you want your free ticket, just go to remoteworklifeio. That's remoteworklifeio. Okay, I'll speak to you soon.
