Fake job postings on LinkedIn: how to spot them

A Chicago-area job seeker named Jay Jones has spent the last two years hunting fraudulent job listings on LinkedIn. He says he has helped get nearly 60,000 fake listings removed and flagged around 7,000 profiles he believes were involved in job scams.

And the disturbing part is how legitimate some of them look.

Some scammers create entire batches of recruiter profiles using copied photos and similar information. Others take over dormant, verified LinkedIn accounts and attach them to real companies. There have even been fraudulent listings appearing through legitimate company pages!

When you can't assume the posting is real

For years, the conventional advice has been: find good jobs, tailor your resume, apply consistently, and wait for the recruiter to call.

But what happens when you can't even assume the job posting is real?

This matters even more in a difficult job market because desperation changes people's behavior.

Someone who has been looking for six months is going to be much more willing to respond to a recruiter who says, "I have the perfect role for you." According to the TechSpot report, 27% of unemployed Americans had been searching for work for more than six months in August, close to the highest level in more than a decade outside the pandemic.

And scammers are enhancing user experience too.

AI is obviously being used to tailor messages to a person's résumé and career history. A fake recruiter can now make the message sound like they actually studied your background before reaching out.

Your LinkedIn profile contains enough information to construct a very convincing story about the kind of role you might want next. Your title, companies, technology stack, industry, location and career history are all sitting there.

I no longer need to know you to sound like I do.

How to avoid job scams

Here are things you can do to avoid all of this:

Check the company's actual careers page. Verify that the recruiter actually works there. Look at the email domain. Be careful when someone suddenly asks for money, sensitive documents, or personal information. LinkedIn itself says verification does not guarantee that a profile or job posting is legitimate.

Why rely on anonymous applications at all?

My bigger question to you is, why even apply?

The job market is already noisy and now you have to account for people manufacturing noise deliberately.

The more your entire job search depends on anonymous job applications, the more of the process you are leaving to a system you don't control.

Direct conversations with hiring managers, introductions through your network, targeted outreach and relationships with legitimate recruiters give you another layer of verification while increasing your success rate simultaneously.

We do exactly that, AND we also verify all job postings before applying on your behalf.