Online Job Scams – How to Detect One?

 

Working from home is a trend. Most people would prefer the luxury of staying at home enjoying cooked food, bonding with family, not wearing office attires and not mingling with people they hate in the office. No wonder, a lot of websites came up with the idea of freelance and part time jobs that could be done online and remotely – from home.

But along this trend are online threats. Some people take advantage of jobseeker’s interest to find jobs. They work in so many ways. Some scammers would post job advertisements that work and look just like a legitimate one. When someone applies for the job, these scammers do the usual recruitment process where there is an interview, exchanges of emails, series of tests and checking of portfolios. At a later part when the victim is told he’s hired, a fee would be asked for a software or tool he will be using to aid him with the job. There are also other scammers who would suddenly disappear after a job is done and submitted, leaving the victim unpaid.

So how can one recognize if a certain online job is a scam? And what are some ways to get rid of them? Here are some of my suggestions:

1. Legitimate job posts would have the recruiter’s name and contact information. The email address should have the company domain name (e.g. jenny.williams@naturalway.com). Some recruiters prefer anonimyzing their contact information for privacy reasons. This is completely understandable. In this case, you might want to check the second suggestion.
2. A legitimate job would ask you for a formal interview and not just an exchange of message on a chat box. Some employers would even ask you for samples of your work, personality tests, and other exams.
3. Use the internet to search for all information you see on the job post. Make sure to look the name of the company or the name of the recruiter. The internet can tell you a lot.
4. An illegitimate job post would use strange sentences or grammar and would have a generic subject line and sets of skill requirements. Some of them would even have a contact link that directs you to a landing page outside the job posting. Make sure you have knowledge on identifying an illegitimate job post. I found this link helpful: http://talkabout.hubpages.com/hub/Job-Hunting–10-Red-Flags-that-the-Job-Post-in-Craigs-List-may-be-a-Scam
5. Never ever pay someone for anything.  A legitimate job would not ask you for money but would provide you a job. Never give out your credit card details and make sure to clear your browsers, cookies and history as defense against spywares.

These are just few of my tips but there could be more out there. As online scams mutate, their styles and modus operandi change every now and then. It is always best to be cautious at what we do.

So what’s my credential? I have worked as a fraud analyst for a money transfer company. I have been almost a victim myself so I know how it exactly looks and feels like.

What about WordPress?

I was really curious on what differs WordPress from all other free blog sites so that’s the reason I am writing this blog for the first time in WordPress.

What made me consider WordPress?

I just realized it is the most commonly used blog site. I work from home and most of the clients I work with would require a skill in maintaining and designing in it.

From my first impression and what I think makes it outstanding (apart from it being popular) is that WordPress lets you incorporate all sorts of things you’d like to show to your viewers and it simply makes you connect to the outside world in almost all ways possible  – which is definitely the purpose of blogging.

But technically speaking, the reason WordPress is such a popular CMS (Content Management System) is because it is a free and open source blogging tool. For laymen, this means it is liberally licensed to grant users the right to use, copy, study, change, and improve its design through the availability of its source code.

There are other open source CMS applications available out there like Joomla and Drupal. But compared to WordPress, these applications do not provide unique branding and design. In other words, they are made out of templates programmers have created. It is possible to accomplish a unique branding feature in these sites but it would surely take a lot of time and effort, not to mention technical know-how. And this leads me to the second disadvantage of Joomla and Drupal – they are not user friendly. For a novice like me, who does not know anything about programming, this would surely be a pain.

Blogging is one of the collaboration tools. True enough, especially for a person who works from home, communication is very vital – whether it be between you and your client, your colleague, your tech support, or your customer.

There are two kinds of web log or simply, blog: Internal blog and External blog.

Internal blog is accessible through an intranet and is apparently only for authorised persons only. If it is being used in a company, then employees can view and participate in it. It is most commonly used in meetings or discussions.

External blog, on the other hand, is publicly accessible to everyone. In this type of blog everyone can participate, comment, share their thoughts or views. This blog is an external blog.

While blog is really an interesting way of letting out your thoughts on the internet, a blogger also has to make sure he or she abides by rules of social networking and netiquette.