Only Fools and Horses might be the best name for a sitcom ever.

It comes from Vaudeville Theatre and no doubt is Delboy’s mantra in avoiding work.

Funny then that he’s always working for free long past the moon has risen.

It was, alongside Fawlty Towers, my Dad’s favourite comedy, I think in part because he saw a lot of himself in both David Jason and John Cleese.

Dad wasn’t the physical comedian either of them is, and this remains the greatest moment in sitcom history.

I wonder if those recruitment scammers, the ones who prey on jobseekers at their most vulnerable, see any of themselves in Delboy.

But while he is a loveable rogue, they are most certainly scum.

Most of these scams are pretty obvious, although when in dire straits hope can be a canny deceiver.

Those WhatsApp messages from Darren at Hays, from a Malaysian number.

LinkedIn DMs with offers that are too good to be true.

Interview processes where you never actually meet anyone.

A request for payment to cover office suppliers and hardware, to be refunded on the start date.

Needing your passport before anything else happens.

When you hear about these scenarios, yes it seems like they should be pretty obvious to pick up on.

And yet, when I read about them I can’t help but think they aren’t a million miles away from many normal recruitment processes.

The most sophisticated one I came across, was a complete cloning of Socially Powerful’s website and documentation, including forged paperwork appearing to be from the Founder.

Which led to job seekers being scammed out of £450k.

I connected with founder, James, on LinkedIn after he’d posted about it.

He seemed devastated that this had happened, and I’m sure there was a reputational cost for this business, despite them having nothing to do with the scam.

At scale, hundreds of millions of pounds have been scammed.

While individually there are many cases people losing £3k to £10k

AI and automation will only make it easier for scammers.

What about when they start using those funky personalisation tools, and AI chatbots, so they can harvest at scale without any human intervention?

We may even get to the point where they can deepfake interviews with the CEO’s visage, so it all seems very true.

You need only look at the Martin Lewis scams for a sign of what’s to come.

(For those of you that don’t know Martin is a well-known British businessman who has several high-profile endeavours designed to save people money, especially those on the breadline. LinkedIn ran several deepfake ads using his face, to scam readers with an amazing deal. Of course, it wasn’t LinkedIn directly, only on their feeds, but in an interview Martin said they were singularly unhelpful in getting it removed (allegedly).]

It’s a bad situation, and will only get worse.

Surely it must be a requirement for everyone in our industry, as recruiters and employers, to intervene however we can.

I’ll be adding a section to my website highlighting things to be aware of, but I think every legitimate touchpoint in recruitment must help candidates both feel safe and separate truth from lies.

Awareness is certainly one thing, but I also believe the basic good practices that make recruitment easier will also help:

Taking conversations offline as early as possible, to reduce the influence of automation.

While surely there’s an opportunity for systemised recruitment, such as ATS, to help candidates see the legitimacy of any real vacancy.

Surely it must be a case too for at least one interview, or at least one step, takes place on-site at a registered office before any candidate is required to share passports or bank details.

For any company invested in its culture, showing a candidate where they are going to work should be a good thing.

What do you think? What can we do to take power away from scammers?

I’m all ear for any suggestions that can help make life more secure for job seekers.

Thanks for reading.

Regards,

Greg