There has recently been a significant rise in jobs scams, often featuring fraudsters impersonating recruitment companies or consultants.
At PageGroup, we are making every possible effort to spread awareness of the tactics employed by fraudsters, and to protect individuals and organisations from scams using our company name.
An example of how scamming can look like (in this case via Telegram)
Warning signs when being contacted
Below is a list of warning signs that could indicate you have been contacted by scammer posing as a recruitment consultant:
A purported PageGroup consultant requesting you to:
- Provide personal financial details.
- Pay a fee in order to be put forward as a candidate for a role.
- Pay money on behalf of another individual.
Online contact on from a purported recruitment consultant with:
- A lack of activity, information, or contact details on their profile.
- A suspicious profile picture.
- Poor spelling and/or grammar.
- Communications of any sort guaranteeing employment or income.
PageGroup will never request direct payment from a candidate. All email communications will from us be sent from official PageGroup/Michael Page/Page Executive/Page Personnel/Page Outsourcing email addresses.
Warning sites for webpages
There has also been a rise in cases of fraudsters cloning the sites of legitimate recruitment consultancies in an attempt to steal money and/or the personal details of job seekers and hiring managers.
To check the legitimacy of a site, we could encourage you to verify the SSL certificate. In most browsers this can be done by clicking the padlock on the far left of the URL. If it doesn’t have one, this could be a sign of a scam website.
More information
For more information on recruitment scams and how to spot them, check out the dedicated page by Action Fraud, the National Fraud and Cyber Crime Reporting Centre.
For information on who to contact if you suspect you have been targeted by a recruitment scam, please visit https://www.suisse-epolice.ch. To let PageGroup know about a potential scam using our name, please get in touch with your local office here.
