The Dark Side of the Job Market

Once upon a time…

There was a job market where people applied for a job, spoke to a recruiter, received feedback, and everything was above board.

And sometimes, that’s exactly how it works today.

But spend enough time applying for jobs, and you start to see that things have changed. The recruitment industry is riddled with myths, bad practices, scams, and even outright criminal behaviour.

And right now, thousands of professionals across the UK are being misled, manipulated, and in some cases, defrauded.

Action Fraud receives several thousand reports of recruitment scams every single year. In the US alone, recruitment fraud costs job seekers over $60 million a year. In the UK, 19% of 18 to 24-year-olds have already received a fraudulent job offer.

And that’s just what gets reported.

In this newsletter, I’ll shine a light on some things to look out for.

The scale of the problem

Research tells a striking story. When professionals were asked about their biggest gripes with the recruitment process:

→ 32% cited fake jobs as their primary frustration

→ 34% received calls about roles completely unsuitable for their background

→ 16% discovered their CV had been blasted out to employers without their consent

These are interesting, but not the half of it. Here are some additional murky practices to be aware of.

Vacancy crashing

This one catches even experienced professionals out.

A recruiter hears about a role through their network, but they are not mandated to fill it, i.e., they are not on the employer’s preferred supplier list. They haven't spoken to the employer, but they want in, so they advertise it as if they have the instruction.

You go to the trouble of tailoring your CV and applying, then silence.

What actually happened? The recruiter was using your profile as a sales tool, hoping a strong enough candidate would open the door to a conversation with the hiring company. You were the bait, not the beneficiary.

To protect yourself, ask direct questions. Who is the employer? How long has the role been live? Why is there a vacancy? Are you recruiting on a retained, exclusive, or contingency basis? A recruiter with genuine instruction will answer with confidence. One who is fishing won’t.

The fake role designed to sell services

This is a trifle more sinister.

A position appears on a job board and looks compelling. You apply and receive a response, but not the one you were hoping for. The recruiter tells you your CV isn't hitting the mark. You can't be put forward until it's improved. Oh, but they then refer you to a specific CV writing company.

Now, if this is genuine, no problem – we have relationships with recruiters. But to falsely advertise a job with the sole purpose of flogging CV services – not cricket!

We’ve seen many cases where the role exists solely to generate CV writing leads. The rejection is scripted, and the technical flaws they identify in your CV may be entirely fabricated.

One common claim is that formatting is affecting your ATS score because of colour usage. But why would an ATS be sensitive to colour? Another red flag is “It’s not C-suite enough”, but when challenged, they can’t describe why or how it could be altered to be more C-suite.

Inflated remuneration

This one lives in the grey zone between deception and optimism, but the financial consequences can be significant.

You're offered a role with a base salary and a performance-related bonus package that sounds exceptional. However, the total compensation figure quoted is aspirational, not typical.

How many people historically hit their target? That single question will tell you more than any offer letter.

Before committing to a role on the basis of earnings potential, benchmark it. Use Glassdoor. Ask to speak to people in similar roles. Ask why the previous person left. The answers you receive, or fail to receive, will be instructive.

CV blasting

You work hard on your CV. You share it with a recruiter in confidence. And then, without your knowledge, it ends up in inboxes across the industry.

This is one of the most common complaints we hear from job seekers. Your CV contains your personal data, your career history, and information that should be treated confidentially, so protect it.

Instruct every recruiter in writing that your CV must not be shared without your explicit consent. If you are being headhunted, be particularly careful. Unsolicited contact can sometimes be a precursor to this behaviour. Use your LinkedIn profile as a shield – if a headhunter contacts you, point them at your LinkedIn profile until there’s a clear interest and match.

Obviously, this requires your LinkedIn profile to be sufficiently detailed and impactful.

Ghosting

Not every ghost is a scammer. Recruiters are stretched, and communication falls through the cracks.

But when ghosting happens after an interview, after shortlisting, after you have invested hours preparing and performing, it is not acceptable.

The professional expectation is clear: if you have been interviewed, you deserve feedback. If a recruiter cannot provide that, ask for it directly. If they disappear, treat it as data about how they operate, and remove them from your trusted contacts.

But… don’t expect feedback from every rejection. When there are 400+ people applying for every job, it would be somewhat unmanageable (and commercially daft) to contact each and every applicant with individual feedback.

Irresponsible hiring

This boils down to simply doing the right thing by people. It’s not fraud, but it does cause real financial harm.

Some organisations recruit for roles they know are at risk. Restructuring is on the horizon, or a budget decision is pending. But the hiring process rolls forward because pausing it creates internal friction.

You accept the role. Three months later, you're made redundant.

This is not illegal, but it is irresponsible. Before accepting any offer, do your due diligence. Is the business financially stable? Is the function you're joining growing or contracting? What is the strategic priority of the team? These are legitimate questions, and any responsible employer will welcome them.

The ATS score that means absolutely nothing

You’ll see these everywhere now. Upload your CV and get a score out of 100. Apparently a reflection of how well your CV will perform.

It sounds credible. It often isn’t.

There’s nothing wrong with a genuine report or benchmark against best practice, but most of these ATS scanners are not ATS, and are not benchmarking your CV against a real job. They’re not measuring you against an actual brief, an actual hiring manager, or an actual shortlist.

They’re comparing your CV against a generic set of rules. Or worse, against nothing meaningful at all. We know these scores are sometimes made up to give folks a lower score.

You’re being scored against fresh air.

That’s why you’ll see the same nonsense come up again and again. Comments about formatting. Claims that colours confuse systems. Blanket statements that don’t stand up to even basic logic.

One of them apparently tells every candidate their CV is “visually uneven”.

Every single one.

Proper matching only makes sense in context. A CV either aligns with a specific role or it doesn’t. You can’t take a document in isolation, run it through a generic engine, and declare it “72 out of 100”.

It’s like marking an exam without knowing the questions.

Data harvesting

Some scams are more direct.

Fake roles set up to gather personal information, emails asking for financial details under the cover of checks or onboarding, or even calls that appear to come from well-known agencies.

The safest approach is to stay in control of the interaction.

If someone contacts you, don’t give anything sensitive there and then. Take their details and look them up. Call back through a number you trust.

And if money comes into the conversation as a requirement for securing a job, that’s your signal to walk away. It’s illegal in the UK and many other countries to charge someone to find them work.

The high ticket promise

There are good career services out there. There are also businesses charging large sums with the suggestion that they can open doors others can’t.

They can’t charge you to place you into a job, so the offer is framed differently.

Sometimes people get value. Sometimes they don’t. And often they are left with a large bill and very little to show for it.

There was a well-publicised case where a job seeker paid a significant upfront fee to a company that later appeared to have ceased trading, only to continue operating under a different name. Same brand, same email address, but different legal setup.

There are multiple cases of phoenix operations in this sector, so be very careful.

If you are committing that level of money, you need to look beyond the marketing. Check who you are actually contracting with. Speak to people who have used them. Understand what happens if things don’t go to plan. At the very least, do some Google Review research.

Interviews that are not really interviews

Most interviews are genuine, but some aren’t.

We’ve seen situations where candidates are asked to complete a case study, produce a strategy report, or walk through how they would approach a live challenge.

Was there a real role? Maybe, or perhaps the value for the business was in the conversation itself. They received ideas, insight, competitor knowledge, etc. All gathered without any obligation to hire.

This doesn’t happen that often, but if you are asked to write a 5,000-word thesis at the start of a recruitment process, I’d be extremely wary.

How to navigate this mess

The best protection against recruitment scams is not cynicism. It is calibrated scepticism combined with intelligent questioning.

Ask more than you answer. Probe the depth of a recruiter's knowledge. Research every company before committing your time, your data, or your enthusiasm.

The majority of recruiters are professional, ethical, and genuinely committed to finding the right fit. But in a market that rewards speed over scrutiny, the sharks are circling.

Have your wits about you.