Bait and Switch?
Author
Discussion

CoupeKid

Original Poster:

895 posts

82 months

Tuesday 5th August
quotequote all
I've never had this before in all my years as a wage slave so I thought I'd post here to see if anyone else has had this experience.

Last Wednesday I received an email from an American woman, lets call her Wendy, saying she was impressed by my profile and she had a job I might be interested in. Could I send her my resume and she'd send over the job description? I checked her out on LinkedIn and she seems to be a genuine person. Her job title and location seem legit and its a big recruitment consultancy that she works for. My CV is on various job boards so I expect she could find it if she wanted but I sent it over to her and she sent back the job description.

Now, call me a cynical, glass half full sort, but the job description could have been written for me, as if someone had put my LinkedIn profile through an AI and asked it to write my perfect job. It even asked for an involvement in Toastmasters and its based in my local town. Sounded too good to be true...

The job was at a subsidiary of the big company she worked for so I looked them up and they don't have an office in my local town so I queried this and was told that it was an internal job and the website doesn't list all the locations, especially for internal jobs.

I tweaked my CV and sent it back to her asking to be put forward. This is where it gets even more weird.

Her reply was (more or less):
Hi, thanks for your interest

Debbie,

Your CV doesn't get good visibility in our ATS. I can put you in touch with a colleague who could help you if you like.

Kristin

Then a few minutes later

Hello,

Thanks for your interest. Your experience is a good fit for some roles we have coming up. I'd like to keep you on file and reach out when the jobs become available.

In the meantime there are some errors on your resume and I can put you in touch with a colleague who can help you if you like.

Wendy


Why all the subterfuge around an internal job in my local town? A simple, please register your CV with us would have been fine. I can't help think this is an elaborate exercise in charging for CV reviews.

Quattr04.

650 posts

8 months

Tuesday 5th August
quotequote all
It’s increasingly common along with ghost jobs

They email you saying they have a job which would be a great fit, but basically just want your details for their database, which they can either sell on to other companies or use to harvest your data

The other one is ghost jobs, where you’ll see the same job advert over and over in different locations which again is used either to get data or for market research on salary’s, often it will be a job paying higher than market rate to attract people in.


Freakuk

4,043 posts

168 months

Tuesday 5th August
quotequote all
I've had this countless times through my contracting career and over time you get an instinct on whether there is a job or not by asking several questions.

As has been said, they're just trying to build up a database of candidates and as and when they may have a role they'll give you a call.

OscarIndia

1,181 posts

189 months

Tuesday 5th August
quotequote all
It looks very much to me like this is trying to sell you a CV writing service.
Twice they have mentioned error or visibilty in the CV and offered to get a colleague to look at it.

CoupeKid

Original Poster:

895 posts

82 months

Wednesday 27th August
quotequote all
Are American recruiters absolutely desperate at the moment or something?

I've had an email from another company asking for my resume.

The woman isn't on LinkedIn, that I can see. First reg flag.

The company does seem to exist but the website is word salad and they are based in Texas. Second red flag.

The sender's email address was a bit convoluted and included the company name but was a Gmail address. Third red flag.

Greenmantle

1,733 posts

125 months

Wednesday 27th August
quotequote all
CoupeKid said:
Are American recruiters absolutely desperate at the moment or something?

I've had an email from another company asking for my resume.

The woman isn't on LinkedIn, that I can see. First reg flag.

The company does seem to exist but the website is word salad and they are based in Texas. Second red flag.

The sender's email address was a bit convoluted and included the company name but was a Gmail address. Third red flag.
nope

your email address is now on a list being passed around - just have to live with scam emails these days.