I announced last week during this event, which is this week’s podcast, that the summer newsletter will be open to the public, not just paid subscribers. I want everyone to stay up to date on all things job scams.

Mindy Stern invited me to share job scam tips with her “Accelerator Career Group mostly made up of job seekers, some of whom are actually her clients. Each month she invites any job seeker to come and listen to a speaker. She invited me to discuss “Clarify. Verify. Don’t just apply.”

I believe this group’s questions overall are what most people want to ask at this moment. Having been in multiple discussions on and offline and off-line, most have yet to grasp what I’ve shared here on “The Job Scam Report.” People are generally vigilant for a moment, but the landscape changes often.

Spotting and avoiding fake jobs, recruiters, career service professionals, and companies is essential to conducting a safe and strategic job search.

AI is still new. Everyone has access to it. People will be somewhat vigilant, but won’t notice changes in deviant behavior or deceitful presentations by bad actors.

Here are the questions I answered during the session. Listen for my answers. I’ll be answering many of them more deeply throughout the summer.

Here are the questions participants asked:

* “Are job scams actually getting worse, or are we just hearing more about them?”

* “What is the most convincing job scam that you’ve seen lately that even smart professionals could fall for?”

* “What are the first red flags that job seekers should be aware of before they ever hit apply?”

* “I’m in tech, so I see a lot of recruiting companies that may or may not be real, and I’ve recently started seeing AI recruiters. So how do I know an AI recruiter is from a legitimate company or from one of these fake companies that just popped up overnight?”

* “Can you speak to [stolen profiles] a little bit?”

* “If we find that we have been scammed, what is our next step? What do you recommend us doing?”

* “Are you referring to the green banner or the one visible [Subscribe to LinkedIn]?”

* “Should I or should I not [use the Open to Work banner]?”

* “Is the LinkedIn verification check mark helpful? Is it harmful? What do you recommend?”

* “Mark, do you have something that you would like to share with our group here that you wanna leave them with so that they walk away with some actionable next step?”

* “How can we confirm if the jobs presented are legit roles?”

If you want to watch the entire presentation, go to YouTube.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit markanthonydyson.substack.com/subscribe