I Got Scammed on Indeed
I never thought it would happen to me…but it did.
Indeed has always been my go-to website for finding my next place of employment. Sometimes, I spend hours browsing Indeed, even when I’m happily employed so I can see what’s out there.
I never thought that it would be a place that would lead me right to getting scammed, but unfortunately, that’s how the cookie crumbles on the internet sometimes.
Getting the Text Message
For weeks, I had been sending out my resume to different remote jobs on Indeed that sounded interesting. I’m currently a freelance writer, which means I’m always looking for another source of income.
I’m also trying to dip my toes into the editing and proofreading world. I was getting my resume out to a ton of jobs that used these particular set of skills to see if I got anyone to bite.
Freelancing means that I don’t have a lot of stability when it comes to income sometimes. So I was on the lookout for a job that would grant me more stability in the long run.
That’s when the text message arrived in my inbox. Telling me that an Albert F. Herbert from Spring Blossom Publishing was interested in my resume and wanted to interview me for a proofreader position.
I was thrilled and immediately interested.
The first thing I did was look up the publishing company through Google. A website came up that didn’t spark up any red flags. It was a company from the UK, that had books for sale on many different platforms including Amazon. There were new releases, upcoming releases, and tons of different categories of books.
So I accepted the interview.
The Interview Seemed Normal
Remote work is currently on the rise due to the state of the pandemic we’re in. Basically, everyone wants a remote job!
I’d never applied to a remote job through Indeed before and had an interview that was on a messaging system so I wasn’t sure how it would go. The interviewer asked me to use an app called Telegram, which should have been my first red flag.
We began chatting about what the job would entail. I would receive things to do at the beginning of the day and then get to work on them throughout the day by tracking my hours worked.
Honestly, it sounded perfect. Almost too good to be true. This had me a little worried, but I pressed on.
He told me more about the company and even about other roles within the company. We were going over a lot of background information, which is why I thought this was a normal remote job.
He even sent me the link to the publishing website that I had pulled up on Google earlier. This made me believe even more that this was a real job!
Finally, he started asking me questions about myself. I answered them like I would if we were face to face or on the phone.
Personally, I thought the interview was going well. I gave him my background information, why I thought I would do well at the job, some negatives and positives about myself, and even what type of animal I would be.
This Is Where It Got Weird
Now he said that I was onto the last set of questions. I was thrilled!
The interview had gone so well. I really thought I had nailed it, but this is where it had turned a bit strange.
The last set of questions were as followed:
Do you have a credit card?
What phone provider do you use?
Is your phone prepaid or postpaid?
These questions definitely caught me off guard and now I was feeling very on edge.
No interviewer should ever need to know the answers to these questions. I tried to come up with an excuse thinking that they might need to know these things since it was remote work.
This simply isn’t true!
I thought that they wouldn’t be that harmless to answer, but if you look up phone carrier scams, then you will find out exactly why a scammer will want to know what phone provider you have.
Essentially they can call your phone provider pretending to be you. They will request a new SIM card which will give them complete control over your phone which means they can get into your bank account, take over social media accounts, delete emails, or do pretty much anything that they please.
I Got the ‘Job’
Once I dodged the last set of questions the interviewer said that he needed to forward our conversation over to his hiring manager to make the final decision. I needed to sit tight and wait on the answer.
Surprise, surprise! I got the job.
At this point, I knew I was being scammed and I was so disappointed. No company was going to hire me within barely two minutes of looking over an interview.
His next question, “What company do you bank with so we can verify payment?”
I immediately closed the program and shut the lid on my laptop. I had been scammed.
Getting Over It
After this whole thing happened, I went and got an iced coffee. Coffee can usually always cheer me up.
Then I decided to look for other stories about people getting scammed through Indeed. I knew I couldn’t be the only person to fall victim to this sort of thing.
Unfortunately, there were plenty of other stories like mine, but most of them were much worse. Some people saw the red flags but decided to look past them because they needed a job so badly.
Especially in the world that we’re currently living in where remote work is so important, it is much easier to scam someone on the internet.
In the end, it was more hassle than anything when they were scammed for thousands of dollars.
In my case, I was only scammed an hour and a half of my time, but some people are scammed for so much more. I hope that since I spent time with the scammer that someone else who would have fallen victim for it had gotten away.
Is Indeed Still Worth It?
Truthfully, I am still going to be using Indeed to send out my resume and look for new jobs in my area or remotely. I know now that there are scam artists everywhere that we turn, but it’s a chance that I’m going to have to take.
Indeed has helped me find my last job, as well as a place for many of my friends and family members to find jobs that they’ve thrived in.
Should Indeed work a bit harder to eliminate these scams? Yes, definitely!
Scammers can have access to tons of personal information by looking over your resume. If you’re job searching, then chances are your resume is open to the public meaning you have no idea who has access to that information.
The bottom line is that you need to think twice before sending out personal information to anyone on the internet. Questions that seem harmless could let scammers have excess to bank accounts, phone records, tax information, or just about anything. Make sure to use caution and do your research.
The last thing that you should always remember when job searching is that if it is too good to be true, then it probably is.
