Fake Adverts on Jobserve

[Babbage]

A very well known and long serving agency posted an ad on Wednesday which I replied to, the agent rang within 5 minutes and we had a long pally chat about the state of the market.

He said my CV was by far the best he'd seen and I was a sure fire candidate who he would definitely put forward... could I just give a reference from bloggs mega corp to go with the application? Of course I explained that I only give references at interview stage at which point he seemed to lose interest.

FFS mate you can see I've been around a while, you must try harder.

BTW have you finished that conference call you've been on for the the last 3 days because you were supposed to ring me back. winker.

On a brighter note I had an agent ring to tell me I hadn't been selected for interview, I couldn't believe it, I thanked him for taking the time to inform me. Well done Morson International.

i had one just like that on Friday, sent in CV, spoke to him, he said I was a good match and he is putting me forward.
Then I got an e-mail with 4, yes 4 word docs as attachments, One of those was the usual we need references to proceed.

[PAH]

Isn't there a website providing a history of 'jobs' by agency so we can easily see when a vacancy is just a copy/paste or re-advertisement?

If not, it may be a plan B for someone with more time and energy than I have. Just give me free life-long access for the idea.


I imagine with screen-scraping of the main job sites, and a nice cross-referenced database it would be quite easy to highlight fake, may-be-fake, and maybe-non-fake 'jobs'. Maybe the ability for members to add feedback once they've contacted the agencies would add a useful extra dimension to it.

[SuperZ]

I saw an advert up on jobserve with a agent I have worked with in the past. So I sent an email direct to him (rather than via jobserve) and didn't hear a thing. He's well aware I come well recommended but I didn't even hear a 'thanks for the CV or anything. ONe assumes the advert was fake.

I'm not surprised as on and off he keeps advertising the exact same position elsewhere in the country, obviously for CV harvesting purposes.

Liar liar pants on fire.

I'm in a contract anyway but understand yer frustrations

[gingerjedi]

A very well known and long serving agency posted an ad on Wednesday which I replied to, the agent rang within 5 minutes and we had a long pally chat about the state of the market.

He said my CV was by far the best he'd seen and I was a sure fire candidate who he would definitely put forward... could I just give a reference from bloggs mega corp to go with the application? Of course I explained that I only give references at interview stage at which point he seemed to lose interest.

FFS mate you can see I've been around a while, you must try harder.

BTW have you finished that conference call you've been on for the the last 3 days because you were supposed to ring me back. winker.

On a brighter note I had an agent ring to tell me I hadn't been selected for interview, I couldn't believe it, I thanked him for taking the time to inform me. Well done Morson International.

[threaded]

Yes, there are many fake jobs on Jobserve. Not many real jobs get advertised there, and those that are real are generally quite niche. This is not to say the agents don't have a genuine job, it's just that the advert isn't quite for that one as they don't want their competitors, the other agencies, to know they have one, and then get undercut.

You often see an advert appear, and then lots of other agencies do a 'me too' placing adverts that are essentially a copy, they have their reasons. So the trick is to find the one that was placed first, as it is more likely to be a real one (but for some reason that ordering is not quite guaranteed either).

You get to learn to spot the fake adds: generally they read like a cut-out from someone's CV, which they often are.

Then there are some adverts which are considered amusing to read as there exists at least one contractor on this very site, who takes great pleasure in creating fake CVs, sending them to certain agents, and then seeing sections appear on Jobserve as fake jobs. And then watching all the 'me too' copies appearing...

A trick to spotting real ones, perversely, is misspellings of technical stuff, although this isn't a fast rule either. Things like 'Cobra' instead of 'CORBA' One must realise that even with several decades in this industry I've yet to meet an agent who doesn't have problems opening PDF files, for example.

[dspsyssts]

I'm guessing because anyone can set themselves up as an agency they just do this to instantly create a database of emplyees so they can then say to a company we have x number of ops ready to start today etc??

There was one advertised today (Friday) apparently BBC wanted a helpdesk bod to start on Monday and they were offering £250 a day, I mean really a basic helpdesk call logger on £60K?....it was removed later in the day due to "massive volume of applicants"...lol!