Navigating the new job market landscape: Recruitment fraud, ghost jobs and fake offers 

The hunt for a job has never been worse. Stressed-out job seekers, who are largely evaluated by automated systems, engage in chatbot interviews and, even then, often get no feedback on their applications, and are now running into fake job ads and scams.

LinkedIn reports that 70% of adults globally encounter scams each year, with 13% exposed to them daily. About 90% of employment scams involve attempts to steer conversations away from the platform, so the first contact is often when job seekers are most vulnerable.

The job platform also detected and removed over 80 million fake accounts at registration between July and December 2024, up from 70.1 million in the preceding six-month period.

Meanwhile, companies also use ghost job listings to build candidate pools, signal growth, or meet internal HR requirements. While MENA-specific data on ghost jobs remains limited, global labor market research suggests the practice is widespread.

So how can job seekers protect themselves as more recruitment moves online?

THE RISE IN SCAMS

Marketing specialist Nathalie Aziz says she has come across many fake job offers, especially on LinkedIn, both in private messages and public posts.

“For the most part, they become fairly easy to spot, as many promise unrealistic salaries and benefits, while omitting key information from the job posting and responding vaguely when you ask for more details,” she says.

There’s a marked increase in recruitment scams reported by both clients and candidates over the past two years, says Nathalie Cooper, recruiter, LinkedIn specialist, and managing director of LinkkSearch.

“Having recently been targeted by a sophisticated recruitment scam myself, despite not being a jobseeker, I know first-hand just how convincing these attacks have become,” she says.

AI has made it much cheaper to create convincing scams, adds Cooper. With so much personal information on job boards, social media, and company websites, scammers can now make their messages feel very personal.

“Remote and global hiring have also made it harder to distinguish legitimate recruitment from fraudulent activity, and traditional trust signals are no longer enough on their own,” she says.

Economic uncertainty and longer job searches can make candidates more vulnerable. “Ghosting, lengthy recruitment processes, and increasingly automated hiring have blurred expectations of what a genuine recruitment process should look like.”

“Combined with limited accountability and a relatively low risk of prosecution, recruitment fraud has become an attractive criminal business model,” says Zeta Yarwood, CEO and founder of Zeta Yarwood Coaching.

Yarwood adds that the GCC is a prime target for fraud. “It has a large, international workforce and a constant flow of people seeking relocation, visas, and higher salaries. A scammer can reach candidates across several countries without ever being based in any of them. Where there is strong demand, there will always be people prepared to exploit it.”

GHOST JOBS

Aziz thinks ghost jobs are even more discouraging than scams because they waste job seekers’ time.

“When companies or official HR recruiters advertise roles that require a lengthy application process, sometimes including a portfolio, a cover letter, and detailed application questions, it can be incredibly frustrating not to hear back at all, especially after hearing from people in the industry that these were ghost jobs posted mainly for research purposes,” she says.

“While I understand these postings may be intended for research and don’t necessarily involve anything illegal, they still feel unethical from the perspective of someone actively looking for work.”

Cooper says that candidates often assume every ghost job is deceptive. But the reality is more nuanced. “Some reflect poor recruitment processes, others serve legitimate business purposes, while a minority cross ethical boundaries,” she says.

Regardless of the reason, Cooper says, the impact on candidates can be similar. “Candidates invest time and emotion applying for roles that are unlikely to lead to an interview, eroding trust in the recruitment process.”

Similarly, Ola Elkelany, People & Culture Expert, HR Consultant, says not every vacancy that remains online should be considered a ghost job. She explains that some roles remain advertised because hiring has been paused due to budget constraints, restructuring or changing business priorities. 

“That’s very different from deliberately keeping a position advertised when there is no real hiring plan behind it,” she says.

ElKelany also notes that companies may leave vacancies online for a variety of reasons, including building talent pools for future hiring, assessing the available talent in the market or, in some cases, creating the impression that the business is expanding.

However, she argues that transparency should remain the priority. “If a role is paused, say it is paused. If the hiring timeline changes, communicate that,” she says. “Candidates are investing their time and energy into these processes, and they deserve to know where they stand. At the end of the day, a candidate’s time is valuable too.”

Yarwood says ghost jobs are also common in the GCC because the region relies heavily on international hiring and is affected by shifts in business confidence.

When there is political or economic uncertainty, such as the ongoing conflict in Iran, some employers slow down or pause hiring to see what happens. Job ads can remain online even after hiring ends, and some companies keep advertising to build a candidate list for when they start hiring again.

“Unfortunately, posting ghost jobs, or leaving filled or canceled vacancies online, may be unethical, but in most jurisdictions, it is not illegal.”

SPOTTING THE WARNING SIGNS

Cooper says job seekers should be more aware online and take extra steps to check if job offers are real.

“For example, if you’re a candidate, be wary of anyone asking for upfront recruitment or placement fees, which are illegal in the UAE. Verify opportunities through the employer’s official website or by contacting the recruiter independently, rather than relying solely on the information you’ve been sent.”

She also advises candidates never to log in to accounts via links in unsolicited messages, to cross-check information from multiple sources before sharing personal details, and to use trusted professional networks to verify opportunities independently.

“A few minutes of due diligence can prevent a costly mistake.”

ElKelany encourages candidates to actively engage with recruiters rather than accepting every opportunity at face value. She says job seekers should ask about the hiring manager, the reason for the vacancy, the recruitment timeline and other aspects of the hiring process. “A genuine recruiter shouldn’t have an issue with a candidate wanting to understand the process,” she says.

She adds that candidates should not feel pressured into moving forward without sufficient information. “If something doesn’t feel right, pause and verify it,” she says.

Yarwood says the biggest red flag is if someone asks for money in exchange for an interview, a job, or a visa.

“In the GCC, employers are responsible for recruitment and visa costs. Candidates should never be paying interview fees, visa fees, training fees, or administration charges as a condition of employment,” she says.

She adds that being approached through WhatsApp or Telegram, receiving a job offer without an interview, or being pressured into making a quick decision are also major warning signs.

Beyond these red flags, Yarwood advises job seekers to look for inconsistencies. “Does the recruiter use an official company email address or a fake or personal one? Can you find the vacancy on the company’s own careers page? Will the recruiter allow you to verify their identity through official company channels rather than the contact details they have provided?”

She says scammers take advantage of people’s uncertainty and urgency. When someone feels pressure to find a job, they are less likely to check if an offer or recruiter is real. For anyone looking for work in the GCC, she suggests doing your own research before agreeing to interviews or job offers.

COMBATING FAKE OFFERS

We may never eliminate recruitment fraud completely, but we can make it much harder for scammers. “The focus should shift from expecting candidates to spot every scam to making legitimate opportunities easy to verify,” says Cooper.

She adds it’s important to make job ads more transparent and better protect candidate data. Recruitment platforms should highlight verified employers and recruiters, making it easy for candidates to see who is real. “They should also use technology to identify potential fraud, provide a simple way for candidates to report suspicious jobs or recruiters, and remove fraudulent listings more quickly.”

Cooper says employers should quickly close job ads that are no longer active, clearly name the agencies and recruiters they work with, and make it clear that they never charge candidates any recruitment fees.

“Recruitment platforms need stronger identity verification for recruiters, faster removal of fraudulent accounts, and better use of AI to detect suspicious behavior before job adverts go live,” says Yarwood.

“Consistent enforcement also sends a clear message that recruitment fraud is not a low-risk crime,” she adds.

The recruitment industry often tells people to “be more careful”, but candidates are now expected to tell the difference between real recruiters and very convincing fakes,  and that this is getting harder every year as technology makes scams easier to pull off.

“The response shouldn’t simply be telling candidates to be more vigilant. It should be making deception much harder in the first place,” adds Yarwood.

ElKelany believes the recruitment industry’s priority should be rebuilding trust with candidates. “Recruitment is already an emotionally sensitive process,” she says, noting that job seekers often share personal information, career ambitions and other sensitive details throughout the hiring process.

She argues that employers have a responsibility to be transparent about hiring. “The least we can do as an industry is make sure that when someone applies for a job, there is a real opportunity behind that application or, at the very least, transparency about where the process stands.”