That’s why these job scams are doubly harmful, said Holland. “The crime is it reduces students’ confidence in applying for jobs. And it hurts legitimate companies trying to hire students for legitimate jobs.”
Even more deceptive, the ads appear on the universities’ own job-recruiting websites, lending them a credibility that makes many students feel it’s safe to apply.
“We’ve had about 10 this fall alone,” said Marci Kirk Holland, manager at the UC-Davis Internship and Career Center.
At California State University-Sacramento, a “handful” of phony ads have popped up in recent years, said CSUS Career Center Director Beth Merritt Miller.
Campus career officials at UC-Davis and CSUS say they work hard to vet the hundreds of ads that appear daily on their websites. The bad ones, they note, represent a very small slice of the daily postings.
Most of the ads that slip through, they say, are those sent via NACElink, an online job-posting service that provides access to national companies that want to reach students on multiple college campuses. Efforts to reach a NACElink representative were unsuccessful.
After a few phony ads first appeared on the CSUS online job board, Miller said, her staff ramped up its vetting process of the site’s 500 to 1,000 daily postings. If something doesn’t add up, they check business licenses or ask the employer to provide verification.
In addition, she said, CSU career centers statewide alert each other to suspicious posts.
On the UC-Davis Aggie Links job site, the phony ads are left up—with a warning notice. “We want students to see these ads are fraudulent,” said Holland.
The FTC and others say the online perpetrators are hard to trace and shut down.
How to avoid getting scammed? When an unseen, online employer makes a tantalizing job offer, use common sense and do some internet digging.
It’s easy for a con artist’s company to have a website, or even be incorporated. “That’s not a badge of legitimacy,” said the FTC’s Kundig. “You have to dig below that. … Google [the company and person’s name] and look for complaints. Do some research.”
Anyone who’s encountered an online job scam, even if no money was lost, should file an online complaint with the FTC online at FTC.gov. “Filling out that form is our first step in trying to put somebody out of business,” said Kundig.
For college-age job seekers like Sebiaa, it’s been an eye-opener. Although “really bummed” when her too-good-to-be-true job offer turned out to be fake, Sebiaa said she’s learned to trust her instincts.
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