Today I received an email from a job searcher asking me about an email he’d received from an oil company that was indicating that they were interested to interview him and he wasn’t sure what to do. It was a bit difficult to make out exactly what the person was asking for because English wasn’t his first language but it seemed to me that he was trying to tell me that he was a bit worried about what he’d received.

I wanted to be sure I knew what he was asking so I figured the first thing I’d do is Google search the company that he referred to and that he’d suggested was interested to interview him. After typing the exact company name he quoted into Google and clicking the search button, the first thing I noticed was that quickly scanning the results section didn’t reveal any website incorporating the company name ie. the company’s name didn’t show up in the natural search results section even though I had typed the company name word for word.

This indicates to me immediately that they either don’t have a website – which is odd for any decent sized company and even a small company these days! – so I was already skeptical as to what I’d found.

I checked the first search result for the company name which produced a result seemingly indicating that the company had a job listing searching for new staff members so I clicked the link and it took me to a job search website that stated that the page didn’t exist anymore. That’s kind of odd as typically pages would get removed from the index if they no longer exist but stuff like this happens so I figured I’d go to the next search result and check that one out.

I then looked at the second search result and noticed that someone had submitted a question to Yahoo! Answers where they mentioned that they’d also received an email from this same company offering a job interview and they were asking if it was a scam. Someone had responded that indeed it was a well-known scam in the UK and that they should ignore the email.

So, the first two Google results for the company name don’t produce a link to the company’s website – which I couldn’t find anywhere on the first results page – but instead produce a job search listing that doesn’t exist followed by a question and answer from Yahoo! users stating that the company doesn’t exist and that the email was a scam.

That’s good enough for me!

Unfortunately, the job searcher who emailed me wasn’t able to tell me exactly about the situation – he didn’t mention if he’d applied to the job on his own or if he received an email out of the blue from this “company” suggesting that they wanted to interview him for a job he hadn’t actually applied for – but I’m guessing it’s the latter. Companies typically don’t email you offering you an interview when you haven’t previously applied to them! That’s just too good to be true or perhaps wishful thinking on the part of the job searcher.

The fact that the job searcher lives in India and the “company” was claiming to be in another country (the UK) should have been another hint!

Moral of the story: As we’ve spoken about scams abound so you need to watch out and ensure that you don’t fall for any of them. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

And if you’re getting unsolicited emails from people wanting to interview you for a job you haven’t applied for, that’s tends to scream scam.