As if being unemployed wasn't hard enough...

Have you guys ever been unemployed and desperate for a job? I kinda have, but I had the great privilege of job-hunting in Sweden in addition to all my other advantages.

For the last half year or so I've followed the trials and tribulations of a young American woman looking for a job in her home state and I'm struck by just how many scams she's either seen or that have directly targeted her. Attempts at identity theft, acquiring info to sell to spammers and the like, and a few that try to trick people into "signing up" for various expensive services.

I realise that some people are scumbags and see nothing wrong with targeting those who're already hard up and struggling, but I can't help but wonder whether or not it would be in society's interest to just take a giant legal mallet to the knees of these scammers and pound them until they go away--rather than leaving it to an uncoordinated network of "is this a scam?"-threads on a hundred sites.

I received hundreds of messages like that when I was looking for a job 5 years back, but they're all pretty obviously fake. Regardless, most of these people are located outside of the US (likely in Eastern Europe), and there's nothing the US or EU governments can do to punish them. From what I've heard, they receive implicit support from their own governments since they tend to "serve the national interest" on the side if you know what I mean.

I haven't received anything like that, but I suspect that's because I'm looking in a very narrow and highly specialized field.

I would imagine that this works just like any 419 scam, which is very hard to enforce any rules against. Obviously it's illegal, but the US has little recourse.

BTW, the only reason (I assume) that Swedes aren't targeted by these is that the US market is much larger and deeper.

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Originally Posted by Aimless

Have you guys ever been unemployed and desperate for a job? I kinda have, but I had the great privilege of job-hunting in Sweden in addition to all my other advantages.

For the last half year or so I've followed the trials and tribulations of a young American woman looking for a job in her home state and I'm struck by just how many scams she's either seen or that have directly targeted her. Attempts at identity theft, acquiring info to sell to spammers and the like, and a few that try to trick people into "signing up" for various expensive services.

I realise that some people are scumbags and see nothing wrong with targeting those who're already hard up and struggling, but I can't help but wonder whether or not it would be in society's interest to just take a giant legal mallet to the knees of these scammers and pound them until they go away--rather than leaving it to an uncoordinated network of "is this a scam?"-threads on a hundred sites.

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These are illegal, and such scams are vigorously prosecuted when possible. The problem is, it's usually not possible. Most of these scams originate in foreign countries, and not ones able and/or willing to prosecute. This means that the only semi-immediate solutions left are doing something like the Great Firewall of China, or involving the military, and I'm sure you'll agree that both of those cures are worse than the disease.

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Originally Posted by Aimless

For the last half year or so I've followed the trials and tribulations of a young American woman looking for a job in her home state and I'm struck by just how many scams she's either seen or that have directly targeted her. Attempts at identity theft, acquiring info to sell to spammers and the like, and a few that try to trick people into "signing up" for various expensive services.

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My advice for unemployed people, based on my experience of being unemployed in the past:

Even if online searches seem tempting, there is nothing as effective as the old delivery-resume-printed-on-paper. Start with yellow pages, look for companies that you wish to work for, buy an ordinary notebook and a pencil to make notes, keep a log per company in the notebook so you know everything you have done regarding that company. Deliver printed resumes. It is very convenient for a boss to have a printed resume at hand. Resend resume every 6 months, since some companies discard old resumes. Also spend some time every day to improve self esteem and self confidence, as looking for a job is like trying to get a girlfriend/boyfriend. Everyone is looking for different things. If a job is for you, it does not matter if you have 3 candidates or 3000. Find inner peace, people notice when people do not have inner peace and it causes a bad impression.

This seems another area where education and general internet experience can play a major role. I think highschools and colleges can do a great service on educated people on the right website and areas to look for jobs. Where you should post your resume online, and where not to. Be aware of typical procedures that legitimate job offers have that distinguish them from scams.

For example let's say you're looking on craigslist for some sort of temporary or longterm work, that's a great place where you might see a scam. People should kind of know this intuitively by understanding how the website works. When dealing with any of these kinds of jobs obviously asking the right questions and having clear answers that make sense returned are crucial to detecting scammers. I think a combination of just thinking logically coupled with what generally to expect (aka like a checklist). Actually thinking back to some courses in college they actually had some tips on how to identify if a website is reputable. Does it have any dead links, what do other sites say about it, etc...

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Originally Posted by Aimless

Have you guys ever been unemployed and desperate for a job? I kinda have, but I had the great privilege of job-hunting in Sweden in addition to all my other advantages.

For the last half year or so I've followed the trials and tribulations of a young American woman looking for a job in her home state and I'm struck by just how many scams she's either seen or that have directly targeted her. Attempts at identity theft, acquiring info to sell to spammers and the like, and a few that try to trick people into "signing up" for various expensive services.

I realise that some people are scumbags and see nothing wrong with targeting those who're already hard up and struggling, but I can't help but wonder whether or not it would be in society's interest to just take a giant legal mallet to the knees of these scammers and pound them until they go away--rather than leaving it to an uncoordinated network of "is this a scam?"-threads on a hundred sites.

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Supporting harsh punishments for crimes? Well sign me up - I support breaking criminals knee caps.

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Originally Posted by Lewkowski

Supporting harsh punishments for crimes? Well sign me up - I support breaking criminals knee caps.

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Ditto - figuratively speaking.

Never even heard of these scams before, but sounds like Nigerian ones. While its not possible to prosecute perhaps I'm wondering where they get info from? Never put your personal details up online.

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Originally Posted by ar81

My advice for unemployed people, based on my experience of being unemployed in the past:

Even if online searches seem tempting, there is nothing as effective as the old delivery-resume-printed-on-paper. Start with yellow pages, look for companies that you wish to work for, buy an ordinary notebook and a pencil to make notes, keep a log per company in the notebook so you know everything you have done regarding that company. Deliver printed resumes. It is very convenient for a boss to have a printed resume at hand. Resend resume every 6 months, since some companies discard old resumes. Also spend some time every day to improve self esteem and self confidence, as looking for a job is like trying to get a girlfriend/boyfriend. Everyone is looking for different things. If a job is for you, it does not matter if you have 3 candidates or 3000. Find inner peace, people notice when people do not have inner peace and it causes a bad impression.

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I have to say here, well said AR81. :eek:

May not be good advice on how to get every job (some companies only hire online etc) - but definitely the best advice for anyone unemployed simply looking to get any job.

Rand, many of these scams originate from places like Monster.com, where people have to put in their details if they want to apply for a job.

If places like Monster.com are publicly listing private details, that's stupid and they should take it down. They should be cracked down on to have better security.

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Originally Posted by RandBlade

If places like Monster.com are publicly listing private details, that's stupid and they should take it down. They should be cracked down on to have better security.

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The only details a scammer needs is that A) you're looking for a job, and B) your email. Presumably they register as potential employers on that site and use the information they get to send out the spam.

After the last ~10 months of being out of work, by far and away the most jobs I had come my way and applied for were through online search companies - more often than not leading to a call from the recruitment agency who'd advertised the position on the search website.

I averaged anywhere from 10 to 25 applications through online job sites per week.

I didn't receive any spam, unsolicited mail, or indeed scams from any third party, for the entire period I was looking for work. Perhaps I was lucky?

My main search sites were indeed a bit more specialised in the finance field; cityjobs.com & efinancialcareers.com mainly, but I was publically registered, with a viewable CV, on a couple of the larger more mainstream sites like totaljobs.com

Linkedin has also become a major way to find find work these days, through the list of contacts you build up in your particular field.

The only niggle I had was from recruitment agents 'fishing' - by calling me up based on a job they'd advertised for which I'd applied, pretending to be interested in my background, in an attempt to see where else I'd interviewed so that they'd know which companies/managers were recruiting and what positions were open. Recruitment is a cut-throat business so they take leads from anywhere they can get them.

Obviously though, when looking for work, you want yourself and your CV to be as exposed and widespread as possible - you don't know which agency or company may stumble across your details and be legitimately interested. Online is the best (easiest?) way to do that. Naturally I suppose, this does leave you and your details open to those who may wish to take advantage ...

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Originally Posted by Loki

The only details a scammer needs is that A) you're looking for a job, and B) your email. Presumably they register as potential employers on that site and use the information they get to send out the spam.

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And B should be possible to stop. It should be possible to set-up sufficient security.

How do you check whether someone has a legitimate company? Go to their listed address and ask if they put up a wanted ad on Monster.com?

Credit card, business registration number (to be checkable with government) etc?

Or even simpler, don't give out email addresses to companies. Allow companies to send emails through Monster, providing real email address to recipient but keeping it masked from sender otherwise.

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Originally Posted by RandBlade

Credit card, business registration number (to be checkable with government) etc?

Or even simpler, don't give out email addresses to companies. Allow companies to send emails through Monster, providing real email address to recipient but keeping it masked from sender otherwise.

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IMO it's pretty standard to provide cell # and email (not to mention address) on a resume. Then again, I've never had any doubt that a company/headhunter I'm applying to is on the level. Hell, a number of jobs have asked for my SSN (which is pretty much an invitation to identity theft if you're not sure they're on the up-and-up).

You're also setting a pretty high bar for being an employer. You don't need a business registration number (or much of anything else) to employ someone, at least in the US. A housekeeper doesn't work for a business; neither does a music instructor (often), but I have friends who have hired both - legitimately - from the internet. Hell, what about a startup that doesn't have all of their paperwork in order yet? I've applied for jobs at such companies. The internet is a fantastic tool to match up service providers with clients/employers, and artificially limiting it on the basis of vague concerns about scammers is probably counterproductive.

Regardless, you often don't provide your email address to peer-to-peer sites (e.g. Craigslist), but there's still plenty of fraud that happens there. As soon as you can contact someone directly from their posting - even if mediated through the website to anonymize the email address - they have an opportunity to work a scam on you. You just need to be alert to the possibility that not all people on the internet are who they appear to be.

Over here a housekeeper who works for you is either an own one-man-business (with a business registration number), or works for a cleaning company. If they're doing things legal, of course.

I have (up to now) only contacted companies directly, or through a university-affiliated organisation, or an employment agency, so that was always pretty safe, and the companies were always definitely real.

It's reasy to fake a business registration number, just take a real company, their number is easy to find. Ours was on our stationary. Give out a different email and phone number, and most people won't even notice you're not the real company.

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Originally Posted by Flixy

Over here a housekeeper who works for you is either an own one-man-business (with a business registration number), or works for a cleaning company. If they're doing things legal, of course.

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You can be paid for work in the US without owning a business or working for one. Obviously you have to report your income, pay the appropriate taxes (higher since normally your employer doesn't deduct Social Security and Medicare), etc. but it's perfectly legal. I've often been paid for bit work I've done for other people; as long as you report the income you're fine from a legal perspective without incorporating. Obviously, there may be some advantages to turning it into a bona fide business (mostly vis-a-vis taxes) but you don't need to, and it's not worth it for small stuff.

Do you think babysitters have a business registration number? What about gardeners? Tutors?

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Originally Posted by wiggin

You can be paid for work in the US without owning a business or working for one. Obviously you have to report your income, pay the appropriate taxes (higher since normally your employer doesn't deduct Social Security and Medicare), etc. but it's perfectly legal. I've often been paid for bit work I've done for other people; as long as you report the income you're fine from a legal perspective without incorporating. Obviously, there may be some advantages to turning it into a bona fide business (mostly vis-a-vis taxes) but you don't need to, and it's not worth it for small stuff.

Do you think babysitters have a business registration number? What about gardeners? Tutors?

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I could be mistaken, but I think technically here you are supposed to do it. I would recommend it anyway because then you can deduct a lot from your taxes, but I think you actually have to. It's, as far as I know, really simple to start a one-man-company though, which is probably also a reason why we have a lot of them (IIRC one of the reasons our unemployment numbers are low is because we have a lot of one man companies, if business is bad they don't have work, but don't count as jobless).

I used to do some tutoring but that wasn't exactly legal, paid in cash and no records.

By the way, you should always charge VAT on your services, and you need a VAT number, which means you need to be a registered company. If you don't charge VAT, you're effectively committing tax fraud. On the bright side, if you are registered, if you are small enough you get to keep all VAT you charged, while you can still deduct it from stuff you bought for your company. So that can be quite lucrative.

Edit: I checked at the chamber of commerce website, you need to be registered as a company if..

- You supply goods or services
- You ask a compensation for this (e.g. you get paid, it's not bolunteer work)
- You regularly take part in the economic traffic (probably mistranslated that, but it basically means that if you occasionally do a small job for someone, you're not an enterprise)
- You have more than one client
- You can do your tasks as you see fit (e.g. you're not working for someone, but for yourself)

Note that if you don't fit these criteria, that just means that whoever you are working for has to pay taxes on your work, so he has to be registered as an enterprise to be able to pay taxes on your wages, since he is your employer. For example, when I hired bands we'd either have to pay them VAT, if they were a registered enterprise, or report the amount we paid to the tax agency (and pay taxes if they received more than €170 per band member). For the latter, we did need to be registered.

Keep in mind that's it's almost no effort at all to register, and costs somewhere between €17-€50/year (depends on where you live and what kind of company you are), and I think it's set to become free starting in 2013.

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Originally Posted by Flixy

I could be mistaken, but I think technically here you are supposed to do it. I would recommend it anyway because then you can deduct a lot from your taxes, but I think you actually have to. It's, as far as I know, really simple to start a one-man-company though, which is probably also a reason why we have a lot of them (IIRC one of the reasons our unemployment numbers are low is because we have a lot of one man companies, if business is bad they don't have work, but don't count as jobless).

I used to do some tutoring but that wasn't exactly legal, paid in cash and no records.

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IANAL but I'm pretty sure this isn't true in the US. You don't have the limited liability and potential tax benefits if you don't incorporate in some way, but you can definitely do it legally.

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Originally Posted by Flixy

By the way, you should always charge VAT on your services, and you need a VAT number, which means you need to be a registered company. If you don't charge VAT, you're effectively committing tax fraud. On the bright side, if you are registered, if you are small enough you get to keep all VAT you charged, while you can still deduct it from stuff you bought for your company. So that can be quite lucrative.

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We don't have VAT. As for other taxes associated with 'self employment', there are explicit ways to report this to the IRS (1099-MISC and the like). I really think it's not an issue in the US. In fact, I think it's a good thing that people can work flexibly (although it's also good that it's easy to start a business).

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Originally Posted by wiggin

We don't have VAT. As for other taxes associated with 'self employment', there are explicit ways to report this to the IRS (1099-MISC and the like). I really think it's not an issue in the US. In fact, I think it's a good thing that people can work flexibly (although it's also good that it's easy to start a business).

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You'd have to charge sales tax or something like that, I presume? Or is there no tax at all when you hire someone (or a company) to do work for you?

I added some stuff to my previous post, by the way.

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Originally Posted by Flixy

You'd have to charge sales tax or something like that, I presume? Or is there no tax at all when you hire someone (or a company) to do work for you?

I added some stuff to my previous post, by the way.

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Sales tax is state-dependent, but generally I believe you don't need to pay sales taxes on these kinds of services (you do often need to pay for many services, from accounting to manicures). Each state has lists of what constitutes a 'taxable service', but some states have no sales tax at all, so it's a moot point.

This obviously doesn't exclude income taxes, which you're still liable for regardless, but you don't need to be a business for that.

The point is that at least in the US there are services which exist which don't require a business (on either end of the transaction) to be legal. These kinds of services, lacking much in the way of capital, often are matched up with clients through the internet. It's not unreasonable to suggest that requiring that people have business identification numbers is probably overkill in some situations.

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Originally Posted by wiggin

Sales tax is state-dependent, but generally I believe you don't need to pay sales taxes on these kinds of services (you do often need to pay for many services, from accounting to manicures). Each state has lists of what constitutes a 'taxable service', but some states have no sales tax at all, so it's a moot point.

This obviously doesn't exclude income taxes, which you're still liable for regardless, but you don't need to be a business for that.

The point is that at least in the US there are services which exist which don't require a business (on either end of the transaction) to be legal. These kinds of services, lacking much in the way of capital, often are matched up with clients through the internet. It's not unreasonable to suggest that requiring that people have business identification numbers is probably overkill in some situations.

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Fair enough :) Basically there is no way for you to know if the guy you hire is working legally or illegally then is there?

Besides being overkill it would be useless, business identification numbers are not secret. I could easily take another company's number, their name, and then insert my own contact information. They can't really check that unless you look up the business and contact them directly to verify..

PS over here even prostitutes are one man businesses :p

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Originally Posted by Flixy

Fair enough :) Basically there is no way for you to know if the guy you hire is working legally or illegally then is there?

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Define 'working illegally'. If they work in a licensed profession, you can ask to see their license. If they are working for you substantially, you are required to report their income to the IRS (I don't recall the threshold), which means you need their Social Security Number or Tax ID Number. If they don't have those, they don't have a Green Card and aren't allowed to work in the US. But that's just a general 'they're allowed to be here' kind of question. Otherwise, how could they be working illegally? (Other than doing an activity which is inherently illegal, like prostitution in most of the US.)

Also, it's generally not the burden of the employer to ensure the employee pays their income taxes. Yes, there are reporting rules and for some jobs you're required to carry out withholding (I think?), but the actual income tax calculations and payments are not your responsibility as an employer - they are the responsibility of the employee. So you could have someone who is perfectly legal to work in the US, but they're cheating on their taxes... this is not your liability, though.

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Originally Posted by wiggin

Define 'working illegally'. If they work in a licensed profession, you can ask to see their license. If they are working for you substantially, you are required to report their income to the IRS (I don't recall the threshold), which means you need their Social Security Number or Tax ID Number. If they don't have those, they don't have a Green Card and aren't allowed to work in the US. But that's just a general 'they're allowed to be here' kind of question. Otherwise, how could they be working illegally? (Other than doing an activity which is inherently illegal, like prostitution in most of the US.)

Also, it's generally not the burden of the employer to ensure the employee pays their income taxes. Yes, there are reporting rules and for some jobs you're required to carry out withholding (I think?), but the actual income tax calculations and payments are not your responsibility as an employer - they are the responsibility of the employee. So you could have someone who is perfectly legal to work in the US, but they're cheating on their taxes... this is not your liability, though.

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Sorry for not being clear, I meant unreported employment, moonlighting. Over here the employer pays most of taxes directly, not the employee (as far as I know, anyway), and in practice it's also usually the employer who prefers unreported work. So I guess our situation is completely different. In practice this means that if you hire someone directly they have to have a registered business, or you have to have one to pay their income tax. I'm not sure if it's your duty to check if they are a registered business though, I think it's usually not, but I worked with this only in the entertainment sector and there it is the duty of the employer, probably due to the massive amounts of fraud that would otherwise be committed by bands :p I think that was an exception though, just for that sector.

Anyway, sorry for derailing this thread.