Woman shares warning about online job applications
Update: 3.20.24
Indeed sent KFOR a statement after the story first aired and published.
“Indeed puts job seekers at the heart of everything we do. We have a dedicated search quality team who goes to extraordinary lengths deploying a variety of techniques to assess the suitability and validity of job listings. Indeed removes tens of millions of job listings each month that do not meet our quality guidelines. In addition, Indeed will not do business with an employer if their job listings do not pass our stringent quality guidelines. We encourage job seekers to report any suspicious job advertisements to us, or if they feel it necessary, to make a report to the police. We encourage all job seekers to review our Guidelines for a Safe Job Search.”
Original Story
OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) — One Oklahoma woman is sharing a warning with others before they go online to apply for a new job. She applied for a job on one of the most popular job-seeking websites, but the response from the alleged company turned out to be fake.
“Don’t fall for it. Just don’t fall for it,” said Donna Shoemaker, warning others about the job scam.
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Donna Shoemaker retired from Tinker Air Force Base last year, but decided she wanted a job, so she applied for an IT job with ECCO Select on Indeed.com.
She got a response from someone saying the company was interested and they wanted to move forward with a test of IT questions.
“He saw my resume, but he didn’t ask for any references…no references…that caught my eye,” said Shoemaker.
That wasn’t the only red flag she saw.
The man’s email address wasn’t connected to a company. Instead, it was a Gmail address.
“So I’m like, how how far should I go with this guy? So he goes, ‘well, thank you. You got the job. Sign this letter of intent’ or whatever. I did sign that, but I was onto him,” said Shoemaker.
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That’s when she got a response in her inbox that said the company would send her a check to buy the equipment needed for the job. Days later, a check arrived to her door.
“I took that little UPS package back up to the store and said, this needs to go back to the sender. I don’t want anything to do with a fraudulent check,” said Shoemaker.
On a quick internet search for the email address the person was using, we found Shoemaker wasn’t alone. Other people had received emails from that address.
So we tried emailing the alleged the man Shoemaker was talking to, but it didn’t go through.
An actual employee with ECCO Select told News 4 they’ve seen this happen before and hope it stops.
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“We have talked to the job boards that we use, the hosting providers that are teeing up the false domains for the individual. We talked to Google, of course, and kind of chase them out as it occurs,” said Shawn Etheridge, SVP, Corporate Development & Strategy for ECCO Select.
“Watch out, people. They’re out there,” said Shoemaker.
After the interview with ECCO Select, the company said they will reach out to Shoemaker.
They’re also reminding job seekers that emails from a company will be branded and clear that it’s from the specific business.
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