If you haven’t experienced this yet, I’m sure you will. When you have a job reach out to you wanting to set up an interview that seems too good to be true. Then when you learn more details about the job you realize it is nothing like you were told. I don’t mean little differences or realizing you might not be a right fit for the job, I mean you were lied to on what the job was so they could get someone to fill the spot. In this situation at the least you will have wasted time with an interview, at the very worst you could start working for these companies and waste a lot of time and energy at a job that won’t help you. So, what I wanted to write about were some of my experiences in spotting these jobs, and how you can save some time and avoid them.
Most of these jobs that you want to avoid come from companies you haven’t heard of before. You get a call from a recruiter saying they found your resume online and think that you would be a perfect fit for a position they have. If you are in the process of looking for a new job this would sound appealing. After all your hard work, you have someone reaching out to you for a job. You should be excited, but also a little hesitant. Recruiters from reputable companies do reach out to people, but if you haven’t heard of the company then you must remember you don’t know if they are reputable. You also want to keep in mind that if they have taken the time to reach out to you then you have some power in the conversation. You can take this opportunity to ask a lot of questions so you can learn if the job they are offering is something you are interested in.
First thing I would recommend is that if you are able to get to a computer while you are on the phone with them do so. You can ask them questions while doing research on them. If you are not able to get to a computer just ask questions and ask a lot. The first red flag you will run into is if they don’t know about the job you are applying for. Now it is not a deal breaker because it is possible that the person calling you is just a representative. I have worked in call centers before where your job is to be the middle man between the client and the expert. Still they should be able to answer some basic questions on the job, and if they can’t then dive a little deeper. Ask questions about the company like how long they have been in business or what is the company known for. Even if they don’t know about your position they should know more about the company they work for.
After you have asked all your questions and they ask when to setup the interview pick a day you are free. With all your questions asked your mind should either be put at ease or you may still have your guard up. Either way if the job sounds like something you are interested in you don’t want to miss out on the opportunity. This gives you the time to do more research and take to the internet. First thing you should do is look at the company website. For your next red flag, if the very first thing you see on the website is talking about how great the company is to work for and giving information on why you should work for them that is suspicious. All companies have a section on the website for careers or jobs that tell you that information, but if this is not in the career section and instead is on the home page for the company you should dive deeper. Now if they recently won an award and that is the first thing you see that is different, because that is updating people on what they have achieved. Most companies will normally have information on what they do on the home page, not what you can do for them.
Once you have fully examined the company website head to review websites and their social media pages to see what other people are saying about them. You want to look at a mixture of good and bad reviews because there are going to be outliers on both sides. The larger the sample size or the more reviews you read will result in more accurate information. While you are reading these reviews, you want to look for both consistent information, or contradictions. If everyone is saying the same thing then you can conclude that the information is accurate. If people are making opposite claims then some of the reviews may be fake and will require more research. Most important, you want to put yourself in the shoes of someone writing a review and determine if what you are reading is something you would write. Someone is more likely to write a review over a bad experience instead of a good experience so keep that in mind. If you see overly positive reviews that seem too good to be true, or if you see one that is bad mouthing the company at every turn, you want to take both with a grain of salt. When you put yourself in the reviewer’s shoes you can decide how this information makes you feel about the company.
When looking at a company’s social media pages you want to keep in mind that these pages are used to reach out to their client base. It is not meant to be used the same way as the official website and should not be reviewed the same way. I would look over these websites looking for specific information. Since the main topic is to determine if the company contacting you is reputable use these for fact checking the information they give you. If they say they have recently won an award see if they have posted any pictures or made any posts discussing the award. Are they sharing information that is valuable to their client base? Do they have links to view these accounts from their official website and if so are they active on it? If you are going through these websites you just have more questions popping up and not enough being answered I would recommend calling your recruiter back for clarification.
The last red flag I want to touch on is if a company says they have won awards for their business practices, do research on the award. I have had a lot of companies reach out to me talking about awards they had won that didn’t exist. Sometimes they will even have an illustration of the award, but not show who awarded it to them. It is an easy thing to check, and it is one of the biggest red flags that you can find. If they are lying about awards then they are lying about their business practices. I would rather work for a startup company still making a name for itself with no awards then a company that pretends to be something that it is not.
I have gone over a lot of information on things to be wary of when looking for a job. The reason I wanted to make this post is because I had never gotten information like this as I was starting as a young professional. There are companies out there that prey on recent college graduates because a lot of the time they don’t have as much work experience. This was a big problem for me when I graduated where I found some of these companies on my school’s career help website and had to bring the issue to the school to be addressed. One of the companies I found was a company that my career counselor fell prey too when he originally graduated.
I want to leave you with these final words on the subject. I believe that taking risks and exploring your options is essential when starting off as a young professional because you don’t know what opportunities will happen for you. This post was meant to help reduce the risk by helping you find information you need to make sure you don’t waste time at job that isn’t right for you.