9 Ways to Spot Recruitment Scams in Ghana

The prevalence of job in ghana recruitment scams appears to have taken a centre stage in Ghana and Africa as a whole. How can limitless, desperate job seekers protect themselves from falling victim of such unscrupulous scammers?

According to jobdirecta.com, Scam job tricks and fake interview invitations seem to rear their ugly heads in Ghana and Africa as a whole. This is attributable to the high unemployment situation and job seekers out of frustration trying their luck on any job related offer without paying heed to job scammers.

I am sure if you are not yet a victim of a scam job, you know or have heard of someone fall prey to such mischievous schemes. Apart from the possibility of taking monies from unsuspecting job seekers, they end up wasting time as well. Cheeky Scammers ain’t? They say time is money but these greedy scammers make you lose both at the same time! Most annoying situations is when people use scarce transport fares to attend to scam job interview invitations only to realise they are being introduced to some shady commission-based market business.

These scammers are becoming more sophisticated with time thus it is important to spot some of their modus operandi to foil any of their attempts to swindle you. So far as unemployment doesn’t seem to improve they will keep introducing new techniques or ‘format’ as some people like to call it.

Some general scam job tricks that should give you a hint of fake recruitment and interview invitations are discussed below.

1. Invitation for an interview by text message
It is worth mentioning that no credible company will invite you for recruitment by text message. Apart from the fact that it is unprofessional, most companies preferred mode of communication to job seekers is via email and call from landlines or company numbers.

if you have not subscribed to any job alerts with any telecommunications service provider, it is advisable to ignore such messages outright. If you are subscribed make sure messages are coming directly from your subscribed source.

2. Invitation by mobile phone call
Mot is very rare for reputable companies to deal with job seekers via mobile numbers. For your own safety unless you are ready to do your online checks on the company, avoid such job invites via mobile at all cost. Even though landlines may be potentially genuine, jobseekers are advised to do proper checks on company websites if they have one or company LinkedIn profiles.

3. Suspicious Company name
The names of companies used by scammer are in most cases adapted versions of popular companies. Make sure you cross-check company names on top Ghana company directories or Ghana business directories including africabusinessfile,ghanaYello,businessGhana websites among others.  Note that no credible company will hide behind the scenes to hire people. Also unless you have indicated you are open for jobs on notable job boards in Ghana, you are better of ignoring nonfamiliar offers. You may want to flag them as spam at least to save you from further stress from unemployment.  If it is a recruitment company, follow up to make sure they are licensed to operate.

4. Mass Emailing list
Another way to spot scammers is that they send offers via bulk email. No company does that. Recruitment is normally done on a case by case basis so offers are sent to individuals other than bulk email with all invited persons copied in email. Also, bear in mind some hide behind genuine company names by using it as senders name but which you click on the name it shows a different email. So there is a need to be mindful of that too.

5. Reluctant to give company information
Normally companies will rather call you after sending you an email to confirm receipt of their invitation or offer to you. However, it is always the other way round for these fraudsters or scammers who rather call you normally from mobile numbers an appear to be overly professional and a bit hesitant to answer questions on who they are and where their company is located. You can help others by blacklisting such callers on Truecaller to help people spot those scammers.

6. Interview date falls on a weekend
Hardly will recruiters or employers get interviews fixed on weekends. Sometimes out of recycling emails they forget days change every other year such that a weekday this year might be a weekend next year. Spotting this error should give you the strongest conviction the person you are dealing with is not genuine.

7. Asking for mobile money transfer
It is surprising how some people fall for this trick. Scammers request for mobile money transfers as administrative charges before you can be interviewed! As dumb as it may sound people out of desperation get scammed out of trying their luck on any job offer. They intentionally set the admin fees small to make it ‘worth risking’ since they make a fortune after all if many job seekers fall for it.

8. Outrageous salaries and benefits
Most job boards these days provide average salaries for most jobs. Thus job seekers are advised to use them as a guide to spot offers too good to be true.

9. Random flyers and posters at public places
For your own safety, jobseekers should avoid random flyers posters of immediate job vacancies but rather use popular job boards in Ghana for their job search.

Frustration should not make jobseekers fall victims of such scammers so BEWARE FAKE JOBS in ghana.

In my opinion, job seekers should be very realistic in terms of their expectations as far as the will to overcome the unemployment wave in Ghana and Africa as a whole. For it is always better late than sorry. Good luck to you jobsearch in Ghana.
Share your experience with job scammers in the comment section below.