Protecting yourself from recruitment scams

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Pipal Tree Services doesn’t charge candidates any money.

There has recently been a significant rise in job scams, often featuring fraudsters impersonating recruitment companies or consultants.

At Pipal Tree Services, we are making every possible effort to spread awareness of the tactics employed by fraudsters, and to protect individuals and organisations from scams using our company name.

Warning signs when being contacted

Below is a list of warning signs that could indicate you have been contacted by a scammer posing as a recruitment consultant:

  • A purported Pipal Tree Services consultant/employee requesting you to:
    • Provide personal financial details.
    • Pay a fee in order to be put forward as a candidate for a role.
    • Pay money on behalf of another individual.
    • Pay for an online work from home job
  • Online contact on from a purported recruitment consultant with:
    • A lack of activity, information, or contact details on their profile.
    • A suspicious profile picture.
  • Poor spelling and/or grammar
  • Communications of any sort guaranteeing employment or income.
  • Communication channels are limited to social media and messaging platforms such as Facebook, Whatsapp, Telegram etc.
  • Any email communication which is not sent from our official email domains which is @pipaltreeservices.com. If the person shares an email address which has outlook, gmail, hotmail, etc other than @pipaltreeservices.com
  • Most importantly if the job is too good to be true.

Warning sites for webpages

There has also been a rise in cases of fraudsters cloning the sites of legitimate recruitment consultancies in an attempt to steal money and/or the personal details of job seekers and hiring managers.

To check the legitimacy of a site, we could encourage you to verify the SSL certificate. In most browsers, this can be done by clicking the padlock on the far left of the URL. If it doesn’t have one, this could be a sign of a scam website.

Instant messaging scams

Scammers are also using publicly available information to impersonate our consultants and forge job offers via instant messaging platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, or Telegram.

If you receive a suspicious message from the platform, we recommend that you block and report these contacts using the reporting options available on the platform.

More information

If you suspect you have been targeted or you are a victim of a recruitment scam, lodge a report immediately at your nearest police station describing the incident with all the relevant evidence.