Recognising Common Job Scams

According to the official tips from the Interactive Employment Service of the Labour Department (劳工处), job seekers should guard against various kinds of job scams.

  • If you find that the work involves multi-level commission (i.e. pyramid selling), the goods sold are more expensive than those on the general market, or you are required to pay a large membership fee and are persuaded to recruit members (including relatives, friends and classmates) as downline staff to earn profits rather than focusing on product sales, you should decline the job.
  • Some fraudsters use recruitment as a pretext to obtain important personal data from job seekers, such as identity card, bank account and credit card details.
  • Some fraudsters also use recruitment as a pretext to charge job seekers unreasonable fees under various pretexts and guises, such as registration fees, data processing fees, administrative fees and work document fees.

How to Verify Job Advertisements and Interviews

  • When job hunting, if you are told that you do not meet the entry requirements for the vacancy and need to pay for a training class or other course to improve your skills before you can be hired, you should stay alert — this is likely to be a fake recruitment scheme intended to defraud you of money.
  • During the online job-seeking process, if you need to provide personal data, consider whether the employer’s request is reasonable and whether there is a risk of excessive collection of personal data.
  • Do not readily trust job advertisements that claim “no experience or academic qualifications required” yet offer “high salary and good benefits”; instead, check whether the salary and required qualifications for the vacancy are realistic and in line with market levels.
  • When attending an interview, keep your personal safety in mind, avoid going alone to an unusually remote location for the interview, and pay attention to whether the interview process is excessively perfunctory.

Office scene of a job seeker at an interview

Dealing with Unreasonable Demands

  • Legitimate companies generally do not ask employees to bear any costs.
  • Fraudsters may deceive job seekers out of money or personal data during the interview, and then steal bank deposits or use the obtained information to carry out unlawful activities. Alternatively, they may claim to be recruiting for online part-time work, promising job seekers that they can earn a service fee or commission by purchasing online game top-up cards on behalf of others. Once the job seeker provides the top-up card serial numbers and passwords, the fraudster sells the credit and loses contact, causing the job seeker to suffer financial loss.
  • If an employer makes unreasonable demands, you should refuse outright, and all the more so should not carry out illegal work for the employer.