I responded the other day to a job that was either on yahoo. Hotjobs.com or CareerBuilder. It was for a Non-Profit Coordinator. I had to fill out an external application on jobspositionpro.com, and one or two red flags came up as I was filling out the application. First, they asked me for information about my wireless provider. Second, they asked me if I was interested in pursuing any additional educational opportunities. (I said no.) I submitted the application, and saw a message saying that I could hear from them in 24-48 hours to verify receipt of my application. Then, I started to get confused because the job listing had said that the position was with Employment Select, not "jobspositionpro"... But, figuring there was a staffing firm involved somewhere, I dismissed any thought of weirdness.
About two days later, I got a phone call from 213-325-3204. I spoke with Autumn, who told me that she needed to "verify my information" from my application for the Non-Profit Coordinator position at "a confidential client company". I figured it was just a standard screening process and went ahead with it. I gave her my phone number, and with that, she was able to pull up my "account" (address, and all of the information included on the application). I made a slight correction to my address for her, but then the red flags started popping up once again when she asked about cell phone carriers, text messaging, and educational opportunities. I emphatically said "no" for each one.
When the call was over, I hung up and checked my email. I found a message from VeriResume, asking me to click on a link to register and to verify my personal information. Wait, didn't I just "verify" my personal information over the phone? Hmm. I clicked on the link to bring up the webpage, and I saw all of my personal information that I'd submitted on the application.
Http://www.veriresume.com/JobSeekers/Register. Cfm (see this link for the page I saw, minus my personal info).
Nothing terrible; just my name and address and phone number. But before I clicked "verify" or "submit" or whatever, I decided to take a look at veriresume.com's "Press Room" section of the Web site. It was very poorly constructed, and its News links lead to articles pre. Weird, I thought, as most companies would want to display the latest news about their company. Upon further reading, I discovered that the articles they linked to had NOTHING to do with veriresume.com at all — they just dealt with the general subject of resume fraud.
Http://www.veriresume.com/Press. Cfm (see this link for their Press Room page)
It was at this point that I Googled VeriResume and found a handful of unfavorable reports on the company. There's even a lawsuit in progress between a blogger and VeriResume — the blogger called VeriResume a scam and a phishing service! I find it curious that there's even a lawsuit about this, as most companies expect a little bit of bad press and would typically handle it without litigation. Especially in the case of an unknown blogger! Red flags all over the place.
I'd rather be safe then sorry, truthfully, so I didn't do anything else on the website. It was at that point that I realized it must be some sort of a scam. Because they'd asked me for my cell phone carrier, and I had to answer questions about text messaging, I realized that they seemed more like an underhanded marketing firm than a job employment or resume verification agency. So, I called "Autumn" back at the same phone number and told her to delete me from the system. I asked if I could get an email verification of me being deleted from their system, and she said that no, I couldn't; she'd already hit delete. I also replying to [email protected] to ask that I be completely purged from the system.
Tomorrow, I'll call again. They ask you for your phone number first, so I'll provide mine and see if I still come up in the system... If I do, I will come back and put an addendum onto this report!
Bottom line: Don't trust this company. I feel as if they're preying on unsuspecting job seekers who don't need their time wasted by fraud.
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