Scam Detection
Is This Job Posting Fake? How to Tell
Some postings aren't jobs at all - they're scams dressed up as opportunity, after your money, your identity, or free labor. Here's how to tell the difference before you send anyone anything.
A bad job posting wastes your time. A ghost job wastes your time with extra steps. A fake posting is something else entirely: it's a scam, and it wants something from you — money, personal data, or labor it never intends to pay for.
That distinction matters because the response is different. A red-flag posting gets deprioritized. A ghost job gets skipped. A fake posting gets reported, and you stop engaging immediately. So the first skill is telling them apart, fast.
The seven tells
1. Contact happens off the company's domain
A recruiter reaching out from a Gmail address, a hiring process run over Telegram or WhatsApp, an "application portal" on a domain that has no other connection to the company. Legitimate companies hire through their own infrastructure. This is the single most reliable tell on this list — it's behind the majority of job-posting scams regardless of industry.
2. The comp is 30-50% above market for the title
Scams need you excited enough to skip due diligence. A data-entry role at $45/hour, a junior designer at $120k remote with no experience required — the overpay is the bait. If the number made you think "this can't be real," trust that instinct and verify before proceeding.
3. The interview happens over chat, never video
A "hiring manager" who will only communicate by text, at odd hours, and deflects every request for a video call. Real hiring processes are inefficient and human — they involve calendars, video links, and people whose faces you can see. A process with no faces has no accountability.
4. You're hired suspiciously fast
Applied Monday, offer letter Wednesday, no real interview in between. Real companies are slow because hiring is expensive and getting it wrong is costly. A same-week offer for a role you barely discussed isn't efficiency — it's pressure to commit before you verify.
5. They ask for money, in any form
A "training fee." Equipment you have to buy from their "approved vendor." A check they send you to deposit, with instructions to forward part of it somewhere. This is the bright line: no legitimate employer ever requires you to pay to start working. Not for equipment, not for background checks, not for training. Any request for money, however framed, ends the conversation.
6. The company has no verifiable footprint
No corporate domain. A LinkedIn page with a logo and twelve followers, none of whom appear to be real employees. A website that's a template with stock photos. Before you send personal data to anyone, the company should be findable through at least two independent sources — its own domain plus LinkedIn employees, press coverage, or a physical address you can verify.
7. The description is generic copy-paste
Vague responsibilities that could describe any job in the field, no named team, no specific technologies or clients, sometimes with formatting artifacts from being copied across scam templates. Real postings are specific because real hiring managers have a specific gap to fill.
The five-step verification routine
When a posting trips one or more tells, run this before you engage further. It takes about ten minutes.
Check the domain
If they emailed you, look at the actual sender domain — not the display name. Search the company's claimed website. Does the domain registration roughly match the company's claimed age and location? A "ten-year-old firm" on a domain registered last month is a problem.
Find real employees
Search the company on LinkedIn. Are there actual people with employment history, connections, and activity — or just a shell page? Then check whether anyone there works in the function that's supposedly hiring. A fifty-person company with zero engineers posting for six engineering roles is worth a pause.
Call the published number
Find the company's phone number independently — from their website's contact page, not from the recruiter's email signature — and call it. Ask whether the role exists and whether the person contacting you works there. This one step kills the majority of impersonation scams.
Search "[company name] + scam"
Obvious, fast, and surprisingly effective. Scam operations reuse company names (real and invented), and victims post warnings. Also search the exact job description text in quotes — scammers copy-paste, and the same text shows up under multiple company names.
Keep everything on official channels
Don't move the conversation to Telegram, WhatsApp, or text because the "recruiter" prefers it. Legitimate hiring happens on the company's systems. Anyone insisting on moving off-channel is telling you exactly why they need to.
If you've already engaged
Don't panic, but act quickly — and in this order:
Stop all communication
Don't explain, don't confront. Just stop.
Don't send money or documents
If they asked for your ID, SSN, or banking details and you haven't sent them, don't. If a check arrived, don't deposit it.
If you shared sensitive data, contain it
SSN shared: freeze your credit with the three bureaus and file a report with the FTC at IdentityTheft.gov. Banking details shared: call your bank. Credentials shared: change them everywhere they're reused.
Report it
FTC (ReportFraud.ftc.gov), the FBI's IC3, and the job board where you found the posting. Reports are how these operations get mapped and shut down.
Warn others
A quick post with the company name and the pattern helps the next person who searches "[company] + scam" in step 4.
The automated check
Scoura's scam detection runs this kind of verification automatically on every posting you paste in — off-domain contact flows, too-good comp, missing company footprint, and the other tells above, flagged with the specific lines that triggered them. It's the ten-minute routine above, done in seconds, before you've sent anyone anything.
FAQ
Fake postings, answered.
Are most online job postings fake?
No. The large majority are legitimate, if sometimes sloppy or unappealing. Fake postings are a real and growing problem, but they're still the minority — which is exactly why the tells matter. You don't need to treat every posting as a scam; you need to recognize the ones that are.
What's the difference between a fake posting and a ghost job?
A ghost job is a real company's posting for a role it doesn't intend to fill — annoying, but not fraudulent. A fake posting is fraud from the start: there is no job, and the poster wants your money or data. Different problems, different responses — see "How to Spot a Ghost Job" for the other one.
Can a fake posting appear on a reputable job board?
Yes. Scammers post on major boards regularly — moderation is reactive, and a new scam posting can collect victims for days before it's removed. The board's brand is not verification. Run the checks regardless of where you found it.
I got a check in the mail from a "company" that hired me. Is it real?
No. This is the classic fake-check scam: they send an overpayment, ask you to deposit it and forward the difference, and the check bounces days later leaving you liable for the full amount. A real employer never pays you before you've done work, and never via this mechanism.
Keep Reading