Job scams exist across every job board and hiring platform, and scammers often impersonate real, well-known companies. Sprout screens listings, but no screening catches everything, so it's worth knowing the warning signs. Here's what to look for and what to do. 🛡️
🚩 Common warning signs
Treat a role with caution if you see any of these:
An offer with no real interview. A few written questions over chat, then an immediate job offer, is one of the most common patterns.
Chat-only "interviews." Legitimate employers will usually take a call or video meeting. Being kept entirely in text on Teams, Telegram, WhatsApp, or Signal is a warning sign.
Awkward or inconsistent writing in messages that claim to come from a large company.
Any request for money. Buying your own equipment, paying for training, background checks, or software. Real employers do not ask you to pay to start work, even with a promise of reimbursement.
A check sent before you've started. Almost always a fake-check scam. The check clears, you send part of it onward, then it bounces and the bank takes the full amount back from you.
Requests for bank details, your SSN, or photos of your ID before any formal offer and onboarding paperwork.
Email domains that don't match the company. A slight misspelling, or a free address like gmail.com, for a company that has its own domain.
🔍 How to verify a role yourself
Open the original listing. In the app, tap the job card and select View Original Job Listing to see the employer's own posting.
Check the company's own careers page. If the role isn't listed there, ask the recruiter why.
Look at the company's social accounts. Companies being impersonated often post warnings about it, so it's worth a quick look before you go further.
Look up the recruiter on LinkedIn and check they actually work there.
Contact the company directly through a phone number or address you found yourself, not one from the messages.
⛔ If something feels off
Stop replying and don't send money, however it's framed
Don't deposit or cash any check they've sent
Don't share your SSN, bank details, or ID photos
Take screenshots of the messages before you block them
💡 Trust the instinct. If something feels wrong, it's worth pausing on, and there's no cost to checking.
📣 Reporting it
Tell us. Reply here with the job title, the company, and screenshots. We'll review the listing and check whether other users saw it.
Tell the company being impersonated. They'll usually want to know, and they may already be tracking it.
Report it to the authorities. In the US, that's reportfraud.ftc.gov and ic3.gov. Elsewhere, your national consumer protection or fraud reporting body.
🆘 If you already shared something
Act quickly, and don't wait to be sure:
Bank or card details: contact your bank straight away
A check you deposited: tell your bank it may be fraudulent before you spend any of it
SSN or ID: consider a fraud alert or credit freeze with the credit bureaus
A password you reuse: change it everywhere you've used it
This happens to careful people, and acting fast matters far more than working out how it happened. 💚