Recruitment Scams Are Getting Better. Here's How to Spot Them.
OKAYA
Fake recruiters target IT candidates constantly, and the scams have gotten polished. The tells that give them away — and how real firms operate.
A candidate called us last year to "confirm some details before sending the deposit." The deposit, it turned out, was $400 for a laptop that a company would ship for her remote onboarding — a company she believed was us. Same logo. A recruiter name lifted from LinkedIn. An email address one letter off from our domain.
We caught that one in time. Not everyone calls first.
Job scams have moved on from the clumsy days of obvious phishing. The current generation uses real company names, real recruiter identities, polished offer letters, and increasingly, video interviews. IT candidates are prime targets — the salaries justify big fake offers, and remote work has made hire-without-meeting feel normal. So here's what two decades in this industry tell us about separating real recruiting from theater.
The one rule that ends most scams
Money never flows from candidate to employer. Not for equipment, not for training, not for background checks, not for visa processing, not for anything. A real employer or staffing firm carries every one of those costs. The moment anyone in a hiring process asks you to pay, send gift cards, or deposit a check and forward part of it somewhere — the process is fake. There is no legitimate version of that request. None.
Beyond the golden rule, the tells cluster.
The email domain is almost right
A hyphenated or slightly altered version of a real company's domain is the oldest trick still working. Scammers count on you reading the name and skimming the rest. Check the actual domain, character by character, and be extra suspicious of recruiters writing from Gmail or Outlook addresses while claiming to represent a company.
The process is frictionless in ways real hiring never is
An offer after one text-only chat. A manager interview conducted entirely over Telegram or WhatsApp. Compensation noticeably above market for a role with no technical screening. Real hiring involves a phone call with a human being, technical questions, and a pace that gives everyone time to think. Scams are optimized to keep you moving too fast to check.
They harvest documents before there's a real offer
A legitimate firm needs identity documents at onboarding — after an offer, through a proper HR system or in person. Anyone demanding your SSN, passport scan, or banking details in the first conversations is collecting data, not recruiting. That information arriving early should end the conversation.
Urgency is the whole personality
"The client needs an answer tonight." "This rate expires tomorrow." Real deadlines exist in staffing, but they survive a day of due diligence. Manufactured urgency exists specifically so you won't make the phone call that unravels the story.
So what does legitimate look like? A recruiter who knows the client and can talk about the team and the project in specifics. A phone conversation early. Email from the firm's actual domain. Paperwork through a real system, at the right stage. And no request for money, ever, at any point, for any reason.
If something feels off, verify the lazy way — it works. Find the staffing firm's website yourself (don't use links from the suspicious email), call the main number, and ask whether the recruiter and role exist. Any real firm will happily check; we'd far rather field that call than see a fake offer with our name on it get someone.
For the record: OKAYA recruiters only contact candidates from @okayainc.com addresses, and we never ask candidates for payment at any stage of recruiting. If you receive something suspicious carrying our name, forward it to [email protected] — we investigate every report.
Common questions
I already sent my SSN or bank details. What now? Move fast: contact your bank, put a freeze on your credit with the three bureaus (it's free), and file reports at reportfraud.ftc.gov and ic3.gov. Speed limits the damage.
Are these scams only on sketchy job boards? No — the major job platforms all carry them, because scammers post where candidates are. The platform doesn't vouch for the recruiter. The verification steps do.
A recruiter texted me first. Is that automatically a scam? Not automatically — recruiters do text. But a legitimate one moves to a phone call and a company-domain email quickly, and a scammer resists both. Push for the call; watch what happens.