199: The Data Job Scams Are Out of Control

There's a huge data job scam going on right now, and no one is talking about it, And honestly, it's starting to get outta control, so that's why I'm gonna talk about it today. If you're applying for data jobs, chances are you will apply to multiple fake scam data jobs no matter how hard you try. And even if you don't actually go out there and apply to fake job scams, the fake job scams are starting to come to you now. These job scams, they're all over the place, and if you're not careful, you'll lose out on thousands of dollars and hours of wasted time. So in this episode, I'll explain one, what these job scams are. Two, what the job scammers are after and how they actually make money with it. And then three, a bunch of red flags that you can try to use to identify these jobs so you don't fall victim to the scams. But first, if you're new here, welcome. My name is Avery Smith. I'm a senior data analyst and data career coach, this is kind of your jam. Make sure you hit the subscribe button, whether you're listening on podcast or watching on YouTube, so that way more content like this ends up in your algorithm. All right, so in this new era, I think hundreds of data jobs are being posted online that are complete scams and posted by scammers. So where are these scams actually taking place? And the honest answer is it's kind of everywhere, but I think the most dangerous one right now is the email. So let's start there and take a look at what a fake scam data job email actually looks like from my own email.

Dear Avery, I hope you're doing well. My name is Mike DeSantis and I'm a talent acquisition specialist in the aerospace industry with GE Aerospace. I came across your profile and wanted to reach out based on your strong background in data science, analytics, and data engineering across both industry and research environments. Your experience working as a data scientist and data engineer along with your prior roles supporting optimization simulations and applied machine learning aligns well with the data-driven work we support at GE Aerospace. So, so far this is all pretty accurate because I have worked as a data analyst, data scientist, and a data engineer. Um, I have dealt with a bunch of machine learning and optimization and simulations, and I have worked in industry and in academic research environments. So this is really accurate so far. Your hands on experience with Python, sql, statistical analysis, modeling, and data visualization combined with exposure to engineering. Focus. Problem solving is particularly relevant to teams supporting operational analytics, advanced engineer programs, and business decision support experience. Working across both academic research and the large enterprise environments is also a strong fit for our collaboration cross-functional teams. I'd welcome the opportunity to connect and share more about our current upcoming data science and analytics opportunities at GA Aerospace and learn more about what you may be interested in exploring. Next best regards, Mike Desant, talent acquisition specialist. So on first glance, this email is, seems very good. They know a lot about me, to be honest. Like they had a very accurate picture of what I've done in the past and my skills. Um, and it's like a really good fit for me because if you're new, I actually studied chemical engineering, so I was. An engineer before I broke into data science and I would really do well in aerospace 'cause I understand engineering and I obviously have a data science background, so this job is actually kind of a really good fit for me. However, if you look closely, you're gonna find out that this is a scam and I'll actually show you how here right now. So the biggest. Giveaway basically in this whole thing. 'cause I actually think the copy of the email is actually pretty good. But the biggest thing is right here, the email domain. Any person working for a huge company like ge, like multi-billion, maybe a hundred billion dollar company, GE is probably a hundred billion dollar. I don't know. They're going to have a GE email. They're not going to have a gmail.com email. They're not gonna have an Outlook email like anyone who's really going to be emailing you and is actually serious, A serious recruiter or HR person or anything like that, they're not gonna be using. Gmail, they're not gonna be using out Outlook, they're not gonna be using Yahoo. They're going to be using a domain that's specific to their company. So this is a dead giveaway right here, that this is actually a scam. Now, if you actually go and look at this person on LinkedIn, and that's always a really good idea, uh, to do, is to try to find this person on LinkedIn, which this person does exist. You'll see him right here, Mike DeSantis. He does indeed work as a global HR executive at ge, but what you'll find out here is really, he's been working at GE since 2008, and now he's an executive director, not even just an executive, an executive director. So the odds that this executive director would be cold emailing me when I've never applied for GE before and I'm not looking for a data job. I'm a data career coach, and I'm very happy doing that. It's like the best job ever. It is pretty low. So once again, a domain here that doesn't make sense. A LinkedIn page where this guy is way too senior to be emailing me. This whole thing is a scam. Now we'll talk about what this person is probably after here in a little bit, but I just wanna show you that I get a lot of these emails as you do too. So for example, you can actually see that Mike emailed me earlier. Let's see, 13 days ago. Nicole is emailing me here. Once again a Gmail account, and this is about some sort of Python SQL machine learning data models role. I worked at MIT. Yes I did. So they're, they're good. They know what they're talking about. Another one right here from a Gmail account, it's the director of Talent acquisition at. The percentage, uh, group, company. Um, let's see if I can find you another one. Susie, right here also wants to hire me once again from a Gmail account. Um, this one's kind of interesting because it's a picture of her and like her dog it looks like. Um, and I don't think it's very professional if you click on her LinkedIn page. Once again, her LinkedIn page exists, but like it's a different photo. Like that's kind of interesting, right? Um, also she's been working at Qualcomm since 2016. Don't you think she would have a Qualcomm email instead of this Gmail? Right. So this is a scam as well. Basically these people are trying to pretend to be someone that they're not and they're trying to get something from you, which is basically money or information about you.

Similarly, I saw this, uh, post on LinkedIn. Said, just got an email from Chris Zang at beacon fire solution careers.com. I assume this is a scammer and not you. Sorry to hear that you're identity keeps getting stolen. Hope they stop soon. And that actually led Chris Zang to make a LinkedIn post, uh, who is the director of Digital Marketing at Beacon Fire and say, Hi LinkedIn Community. I must write this post to help everyone be aware of job scams. Starting from last Friday, I have been receiving LinkedIn InMails from folks, who have received a job offer from me. Apparently, there are some scammers pretending to be me sending fake job offers at Beacon Fire, such as web developer to the community. Once you sign the offer letter, they will ask you for sensitive private information. Please be aware this is a job scam. If you're receiving anything, please double check the email id. My email address is ending with beacon fire inc.com. If the email ID is different from this, please do not proceed. It is a scam. This is exploiting folks who have been impacted by the layoffs during this time. To everyone in the job search, be careful and protect yourself from job scam. Now this one was a little bit more sophisticated because if you remember, this email right here is from beacon fire solution careers.com, which is in a Gmail account. It's not an Outlook account, but it's not like the official domain of Beacon Fire, right? So this is another thing that scammers will do. They'll go buy domains that are similar to what you might think. The actual domain would be, so for example, you might get an email from someone who says they work for Google and their domain is like google jobs.com or google careers.com. Anyone can go out there and buy any domain that they want as long as it's available. And so you can like create for, for example, my company's data, career dumpster.com. I own that domain. A scammer can watch this video and buy data, career jumpstart careers.com and pretend to be me, but that's not my official domain. Now, I will say there is a little bit of a caveat here. There's these things called sub-domains that people use on the front of their domain. So for example, if someone sent you an email from careers dot beacon fire inc.com, that would be okay if the change is at the beginning, it can be okay. Now, another thing that people do is they actually try to make it look like there's the actual domain at the beginning. So it'll be like from. Mike@google.com, dot careers.com or something like that. So you have to be really careful when you're looking at those domains to make sure they actually match what you think they do. And when in doubt, maybe ask a friend, a family member, maybe even sending me a mail to the actual person and be like, Hey, is this you? If it is, let me know. But otherwise, I think, uh, someone's pretending to be you, and I think they'll be thankful for it and you'll be thankful for it as well.

Now to go back to these emails here, how did they know so many things about me? Like for instance, one of them knew that I was a data coach. I taught data engineering basically at MIT. How did they know that? I know SQL and Python and I've done. Optimization and simulation and machine learning. Well, the answer is my LinkedIn profile. All that stuff is on my LinkedIn profile, and they're probably using scraping. They're basically scraping LinkedIn to get information about you, including your email, which is somehow available on LinkedIn. Don't ask me how that works. There's like a setting, I don't know, but. They're basically getting my email and all my information about me via a scraper, and then they probably have some sort of automated processes to mass send these emails to hundreds, if not thousands of people to try to scam them. Now what are they after? We'll talk about that right after we talk about the other place that they're going to be trying to scam you, which is actually on LinkedIn 10. So if you've been subscribed to this YouTube channel or this podcast, or you've been subscribed to my newsletter, wink, wink, that's the best place to be subscribed. You know that I like to talk about, you're going to have to do more than just apply for jobs to actually land a job. There's this whole process called the SPN method, S being skills, P being portfolio, and being your networking and career skills. And part of your networking and career skills is your ability to do things that people aren't willing to do and to network in ways that people aren't really. Willing to network. And one of the things I talk about is the hidden job market, which is basically you go on LinkedIn and you type in hiring data analyst or hiring analyst at the top right here. And you go to the post and you sort by the latest. And then what this is gonna show you is all the posts that say the phrase hiring analyst. And you'll see the most recent ones and you'll be able to see who posted them and you can send them cold messages or pitch them on, Hey, I'm awesome. You should hire me. That's a whole different topic for another day. But if you do that, or if you're just scrolling through LinkedIn, you might see posts that look like this from James Parker. Now hiring at Alliance. Next career move starts here. Join the network, powering the world's digital economy. Sounds pretty great, right? Or you might see a post that looks like this from Victor. We're hiring at Puma Group. Join Puma Group, one of the world's leading sportswear and lifestyle companies. Sounds good. I'm in, right? Like you might be interested in those positions, but, I've done this so many times that I can already tell right off the bat that these are both scams. And let me show you some of the red flags that I'm seeing that. Prove that this is, uh, a scam. First off, once again, too high of a position posting this, the chief people officer, really that's what the Chief People Officer is doing, is posting job postings. Doesn't seem likely when you click on the more button here, you'll also see that there is an outlook.com email. Oh, so the, the CPO is using just. An Outlook domain and not actually an alliance domain. Not very likely. In fact, 0% chance. So this is obviously a scam right here. I've also noticed that they've started to repost some viral posts from someone else. To try to get you to stop and then you read it, and then you're like, oh, I want a job. I'm gonna apply for this. Um, similarly also, a lot of the times these, uh, these LinkedIn profiles, they just look too good. Like, like the, the pictures look like they're just AI pictures of people. So like James Parker, I don't think this person actually exists. He just looks like a guy. Like look at, he's been like, he has 17 experiences, no bullet points. His LinkedIn's just empty. There's literally zero followers. He's connected to no one. You can just tell that this is a fake profile, so this is just a fake profile, and they posted a fake job. On this one. A lot of the times when they use images that look like this, where it has like the brand and it says we're hiring and big, it's like people don't actually do that when people are actually hiring. It looks like this right here. Um, now this is a recruiter, so they're using like a notch Gmail or not Outlook, but it's not like. You probably have heard of SGS consulting, right? These are like what normal job postings kind of look like. We're hiring data engineers at Puma Energy. Like this is probably a real job. Um, and you can kind of check this person's LinkedIn if you wanted to and try to confirm that. But whenever you see a job posting on LinkedIn, you should be confirming who's posting it. Does that person look real? Does they actually work for the company? And are there any sort of red flags? So make sure you're doing that when you're looking on LinkedIn, and you can try to do it on other job boards. It's a little bit harder. We'll talk about some other red flags you can look for later that will identify these fake jobs on the platforms.

Okay. Now that we kind of know where these job scams are, let's talk about what they're actually trying to do. And to do that, I'm going to actually read you a story that someone sent me, about being scammed basically, or almost scammed. And I got a lot of these, some of them are from my students inside of my bootcamp, the Data Analytic Accelerator. some of them are just from LinkedIn followers or i'm gonna just read it and I'll, uh, pop up the text on YouTube if you're watching, but I don't wanna screen share 'cause I don't wanna show this person's name. So, I created a profile on AngelList (AngelList Job Platform) A so-called recruiter named Sean Miller reached out to me via text message and said this, (Texts Easy to Reach You) This is Mr. Leanne Clark. (What is this person's name?) Interview Manager Corporate Recruiter at Coordination Solutions. (Generic business name) We've retrieved your resume from AngelList recruitment service platform and your request from a job placement is under review. We're currently in the process of setting up a team of business analysts working remotely. Please lemme know if you're interested in the position. Thank you. Then there was an interview kind of thing via Google Meet where they had a few questions I had to answer via text. This is a huge red flag. If you are doing an interview, first off, if the interview is like insanely easy to get, almost like too easy, it's probably too good to be true. Uh, and then also if that interview happens only via text, like via chat, like you hop on Microsoft teams and they won't show their face, they won't talk. They're just talking to you via text. That's a scam too. That's another red. Then they had some training assessment every day at 9:00 AM. They told me, they'd mail me a check for signing bonus and equipments. They sent a $4,850 check for me to deposit in the nearest ATM. I instead went to Chase Bank and verified the check with them. Turns out it was a fake check! And the bank authorities told me they will ask you to return half the money back saying they overpaid and they'll be in a loss that money's owed to the bank. So basically they were like, Hey, you got the job. Here's some money for your equipment. Here's some money for a test you have to take. And they might have you, like for instance, cash, a bad check. They might have you say, oh, we meant to send only 2,500 and then you have to return the rest. Uh, it's just kind of unfortunate that that's what they're trying to do. They're basically trying to get you to spend money on something that you don't have to do. Uh, another example that I had from someone else that. That messaged me said that they were applying for a scrum master role and that in order to like be qualified for this role, they, they needed to do this like certificate, and the certificate was $400, but if they passed their certificate, they basically had the job. Or another one is, hey, you have to verify yourself before we like move you on in the interview process. This check. This identification check or Id check cost you a hundred dollars. Any identification check that a business does during a job interview process, they're gonna pay for it. You're not gonna pay for it. So don't ever pay for any of those things. Those are all just scams to try to get you to pay money. The last thing these scammers are trying to do is steal your identity. So they'll try to get important things like your social security, your date of birth. Your address, those types of things. I'm less familiar with what they can do with that, like stolen identity. They can like basically return taxes or try to get a tax refund or something for you. I don't know. They can open up credit cards in your name, those types of things. So that's the other thing they're trying to do is either trying to get money from you or information to eventually get money from you down the road. All right, so we talked about where these job scams are. We talked about what they're trying to do. Let's talk about how you cannot fall victim to these things. So the first thing I wanna show you is I actually built something for you that's going to help you with this. Let me show you.

So I built this tool, it's called Data Fairy, and I basically made it for you guys. It's basically like if you're trying to land a data job, this should be your companion. Um, you can try it out for free. I think there's 50 free uses a month right now, and then the paid plan is only, I think 10 bucks a month and it gets you access to like chat, GPT Premium and all this other stuff. But, uh, there's a bunch of different tools that we built that basically will help you with your job hunt and becoming a data analyst. One of the ones I really like is the job scam analyzer that lets you basically like put in any sort of job post you find on LinkedIn, any sort of message that you get from a recruiter via email, and then run the scam check here, and it'll actually tell you if it's a scam or if it looks okay. And I like that a lot because that's like. A really easy accessible friend, basically that's trained specifically on this. I gave it a bunch of rules and red flags that I'll show you here in a second to do this analysis. So you could, like, for instance, if you wanna know if this is actually a real job or not, you could basically plug that in into our job scam analyzer here. So this is called Data Fairy. Well the link to it in the show notes down below, like I said, the free version I think is very generous. Um, so Data Fairy. The next thing I wanted to quickly show you and feel free to. To screenshot this or, or jot these down. Um, this is a lesson inside of my bootcamp, the Data Analytics accelerator. The lesson title is Job Scams to look out for, and I wanna go through some of these red flags. Number one, signing a contract before you get an offer letter. Like basically signing anything, asking for full address social security or bank information, before or after, an interview. Unless like you've done multiple interviews, poor grammar and spelling, in any of the emails, they ask you for an upfront fee on anything. They ask you to deactivate your LinkedIn. The number they call you from is like a Google phone number. They're extremely pushy. The company like only has one to two employees. They say you need to purchase something for the interview, books, certificates, et cetera. They say You need to buy home office equipment with your own money, and they'll send you a check later and then they'll reimburse you or they say You need to buy it specifically from this website. The special vendor, they don't have their video turned on in an interview and they don't shut their face if they contact you via text or WhatsApp. Some more subtle red flags would be like this is too good to be true. The salary doesn't seem realistic. They're basically offering you a job right away. The recruiter says they can like help you for a fee. Or they can help you and then it ends up being a fee, I guess is probably more accurate. they don't wanna do any video calls. They can't explain very much about the interview or the company until you actually get in the interview. So hopefully these red flags are helpful and these are the type of lessons I try to include in the 400 different lessons I have inside of the Data Analytics Accelerator, which is basically designed to help someone go from zero to landing their first data job. We'll teach you all the skills. We'll help you build a portfolio with a bunch of projects on it and do networking, career skills, LinkedIn resume, all those good things to actually help you land your first data job if you're looking for a little bit more help in landing your data job. Please check us out, data crew jumper.com/daa. Link in the description down below. The next thing I wanna tell you about is premium data jobs, uh, dot com. This is one of the job boards that I, I actually run personally. And all of these jobs are from the hidden job market that we talked about are earlier. So by going hiring data analysts on LinkedIn and finding these jobs that were posted, you know, moments ago that literally has the recruiter's name and. Hopefully email and maybe even phone number, at least their LinkedIn profile that you can click on and apply to. So for example, this is a business analyst job in Florida for Disney experiences. This was posted 21 hours ago. If you go click apply now, you'll actually see that recruiter's name. You'll be able to see the Post you. You'll see that you know, as. Of 24 hours ago, this person did not have enough candidates that they felt like were qualified. So you might be a good candidate and you can actually send this person a cold message. You can comment on their LinkedIn post with your portfolio or with some sort of nice introduction message and hopefully skip the whole a TS process and actually just get an interview. So all of these jobs that we source at premium data jobs are from LinkedIn, from the hidden job market. But like I said earlier, the hidden job market has, I would say, for every one True job probably has. Three scams for every one true job. And I'd say three jobs that just like are overseas, like in India or something like that. And so it sucks to go through and actually find the jobs to yourself. And so that's what me and my team do. We make it easy that you don't have to go through it, you just subscribe here. So the latest 10 jobs are always free. And then if you're interested in actually getting more than 10 jobs and getting some filters, um, we have some different pricing plans that you can take a look at. Now I've given you guys so many different resources. We talked about my newsletter. We talked about, uh, my bootcamp, we talked about premium data jobs.com. We talked about my AI companion data fairy, and all business people and YouTubers and podcasters would be like, you really shouldn't give that many calls to actions in one episode, and I probably shouldn't. But the truth is, I really just wanna help you and I'm hoping that. One of those would be a good solution for you. I'm not trying to force you. I'm really just like, these are resources that I saw my students struggling with. Like I saw my students get scammed out of money, and so I've really tried to build up a bunch of stuff. So if they don't get scammed out of money, and I'm just sharing those resources with you. So please, if you want a job scam checker, go to Data Ferry. If you want to actually just get really good. Nice data jobs that you can apply for and talk to a recruiter. Go to premium data jobs. Uh, if you want more help on your data journey, please go to data crew jumpstart.com/da and check out the bootcamp, whatever ones is the right one for you. Click on the description down below. I hope this video is helpful. I'll see you guys in the next one.