Brie Weiler Reynolds is the content and social media manager at FlexJobs, the award-winning site for telecommuting and flexible job listings, and a former career advisor. At FlexJobs, Brie offers job seekers career and work-life balance advice through the FlexJobs Blog and social media, including Pinterest.
If ever there were a go-to place for, well, everything, Craigslist might just be it. Founded in 1995 as an email list of events happening in the San Francisco area, Craigslist has grown to be one of the most well-known websites for free classified listings and community forums. From housing to garage sales to personal ads to, of course, jobs, craigslist has it all — including scams.
Because Craiglist was never set up as a job search website, its job listings have both pros and cons. On one hand, small businesses and startups love Craigslist because it's a free, easy way to list their open jobs. On the other hand, scammers love Craigslist because there's no oversight except for community moderation, so as long as no users flag their scam job listings, they can prey on unsuspecting job seekers.
Is it possible to find legitimate jobs on Craigslist? Yes. But you've got to know how to spot the red flags in order to sort the good from the bad. The following are five red flags to watch out for.
1. No Company Name: It's really common on Craigslist to find jobs that don't include the company name, because Craigslist doesn't require a company to include their name. In fact, they make it very easy for companies to post anonymously, so many do. This prevents job-seekers from doing research on the company they're applying to, and limits your ability to find out whether the company is one that you'd want to work for and whether it's a scam.
2. No Unique Email: Many job postings request that you respond to one of Craigslist's automatically generated anonymous emails (for example, "c4fvg-3372107@job.craigslist.org"), which unfortunately means that you have zero idea who you are actually sending your resume to. Even if there is a company name in the posting, many scammers will use an anonymous Craigslist email, so that you think you're applying to the company they mentioned even though you're not.
It is ideal to see an email tied to the companies domain name, such as jsmith@company.com, so you can research the company's domain name to make sure it's legitimate. To see what you're dealing with, do a Google search for the company name and go to their real website to see if the same job is listed.
3. Jobs with "No Skills Required": Because the form to post a job on Craigslist is so simple and "free form," with no set fields requiring job information, many employers keep things really brief. That could be just unfortunate, or it could be because the "employer" is not really an employer at all, and that they're primary goal is to get contact information from as many people as possible for scam purposes.
4. Check Cashing and Wire Transfers: Some of the most common job scams on Craigslist are "mystery shopping" jobs in which companies ask to send job seekers large checks ($2,000 for example) which can be deposited into their bank accounts. It seems easy enough — the job seeker gets to keep a percentage of the check as long as they wire the remaining funds back to the company through Western Union.
But the checks are always counterfeit, and once the bank discovers the error, the job seeker is out $2,000 and the scam company walks away with the wired funds from the job seeker's bank account.
5. Asking for Personal Information: Some job scams are simply phishing for personal information, either to steal job seekers' identities or gain access to their banking and credit card information. If you're searching for jobs on Craigslist, never give out personal information like bank account numbers, social security numbers or even your home address. Provide only your email address and phone number as contact information on your resume.
When job searching on Craiglist or any job search site that doesn't pre-screen its listings to eliminate scams, the golden rule is to trust your instincts. If a job just doesn't seem right, whether it has one red flag or 10, don't apply to it.
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Every week we post a list of social media and web job opportunities. While we publish a huge range of job listings, we've selected some of the top social media job opportunities from the past two weeks to get you started. Happy hunting!
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