How to Spot a Scam Recruiter
It’s a pretty good bet that if a recruiter contacted you through email or on the phone and you didn’t apply with the company contacting you your resume is posted somewhere like Monster.com
Within 2 days of posting a resume there I have been contacted by a recruiter almost every day. While writing this I was just contacted by yet another dime a dozen insurance recruiter.
Today I got a new recruiter contact through email the contact came from a place called McSourcer. This is what the note said:
Your resume was referred to me recently. If you’re currently in the job market and would be interested in hearing about our opportunities please register with us online below:
http://mcsourcer.com/register.html
We work on searches across all of the U.S. and some in Canada. Look forward to hearing from you.
Best Regards,
Mike McCarthy
Phone: 312.277.1986
McSourcer Recruiting and Staffing
40 E. Chicago Ave. Suite 131
Chicago, IL 60611
http://mcsourcer.myplaxo.comRemove your email from my contacts by clicking the link below and I promise to never contact you again:
A few things were off about this one:
Who referred you to me?
Where did you find my resume?
If you have a job for me, why are you requiring me to enter my information into your database?
What will you do with it?
What jobs do you actually have that I could be a good candidate for?
Website
When you visit the McSourcer website it is a slightly above average blog template. You can look at job openings through a different yet affiliated site which is jobopengsin.com
It looks like this:
You can see you need to again submit your information probably so they can sell it to insurance sales recruiters.
Phone call
Seeing as how this seemed to be a real contact with a phone number I called the number, since I was suspicious it was some sort of scam I blocked my outgoing caller ID (you can read about how to do that here). It curiously connected immediately to a voice mail box with a very polished yet generic voice mail message. Sensing that something wasn’t right about this I looked to Google for more information.
Google Search
The trip I took on Google said that many people have been contacted by McSourcer and yet anyone that tried to get on the phone with a real person was directed immediately to voice mail.
Removed from list
Not a fan of this company or more likely person I took the steps to remove myself from the list. I received the below confirmation message that I was removed from the list.
Your unsubscribe request has been fully processed
Your email address ([email protected]) has been removed from the ‘mcsourcer-candidates’ mailing list.
The Better Business Bureau (BBB) scores McSourcer as an F. Granted the BBB is not the best resource for reviews it does give a benchmark into effort put into a businesses operations.
Summary
It seems as if Mcsourcer is just a bare bones operation that is potentially just a computer trolling for new Monster Resume’s and sending out automated messages to people listed on Monster. It appears that the rational for doing this would be to get people signed up to the candidate pool for job searches. Often companies have referral programs that will pay money for click on top job openings.
So while this may not be completely malicious in its actions, it is not entirely forthcoming in actually matching you with any job offer, or getting a real person to help match you with a job opening either. Personally I like to stay out of as many databases as possible, especially ones that are looking to harvest my information for money.
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