How to know if a job vacancy is legit?

[Dreamysaurus]

I've been looking for a role for a while now and it's a very quiet job market.

However, I saw a job on Indeed. Its basically Project Manager for a company I've never heard of. It says it's local. I live in a very small City and usually employers are quite well known.

Anyway, I applied and they've just replied inviting me to an interview because my cv is "outsanding"

But I can't find a website. They're an unknown company and I can't even find the interviewer on LinkedIn!

I'm worried that it's fake or will turn out to be self employed only. (I really want an onsite role due to feeling lonely!)

How can I find out? Any tips??

Can you search them on Companies House? See when the company was set up and who the director/staff are etc.

It’s okay to ask them about your concerns too. You don’t have to invest time in your application or interview or accept a job unless you’re comfortable you’ve had all your questions answered.

@Starseeed I've just looked on there and there's nothing there either!

Who benefits from advertising a fake job role?

They could want to steal your data, ID, bank details - think about all the things you have to tell a future employer.

What have you given to them so far btw? Because things like address, DOB probably won’t do too much damage, but I wouldn’t be giving them ID or bank details til you’ve sussed them out.

There's absolutely no reason to give dob for a regular role that doesn't require security clearance or age checks as part of the application process.
Same with address. Just put your town or city name.

All they have is my CV as it was via Indeed.

No DOB, no address, no bank.... they won't even have my proper email address as I opened a separate email account for job hunting.

I think I've found him on Companies House! I've asked them to confirm location so fingers crossed.

Fake job ads are quite common in IT. I had one company ring me up and quiz me loads about my CV and told me little about the role and kept changing the subject when I asked and I eventually twigged there was no job and hung up (was young and naive then).

The reason they do it is to get names of companies from your CV and approach those companies trying to find out whether they are recruiting. There are at least 2 companies who do this that I have blacklisted. One of them used to frequently put up programming jobs for a "global media streaming company" but in Salisbury, Andover, Aldershot, [name of any small town in the South East], identical adverts. I think some are a bit cleverer than that one.

I redacted my CV in the end so it didn't say any employer names just things like "mid size engineering company in [county]" and that I would provide further details/real CV after a chat. Then I could weed out the fake ones.

Oh @Nixer this is interesting!!

Job hunting is gruelling:(

One of my first jobs was in a recruitment consultancy, we would post fake jobs so we could make contact with good candidates then use their cv's to try and gain business with different companies.

Not particularly ethical, I didn't last long there.

I've also heard of CANDIDATES posting fake job ads for the kind of job they'd like to do, in order to see what their competitors' CVs look like!

Haha, Bond villan level competitiveness!