Diana Alt [00:00:04]:
Hey, Diana Auld here. And this is Work Should Feel Good, the podcast where your career growth meets your real life. Each week I share stories, strategies, and mindset shifts to help you build a work life that works for you on your terms. And people are getting scammed on the Internet again. Hey, I'm Diana and I'm your friendly neighborhood. No. Yes, Career growth strategist. I wanted to go live today to talk about one of the most common scams that I have been seeing happening among job seekers.

Diana Alt [00:00:43]:
It's not the job seekers that are scamming. It is actually fake recruiters on the Internet. We're going to get into it. The reason I decided to talk about this, and I feel pretty salty about it, is that I've had a couple of clients, including one really recently that got scammed by this right after a layoff. It's becoming very common and some of these scams are as sophisticated as the most sophisticated phishing scams that you will hear about happening via email, which sometimes even cybersecurity professionals fall through. So here's. Here's what it is. Basically, somebody who looks like they're a recruiter based on their LinkedIn profile, will reach out to somebody who is a job seeker.

Diana Alt [00:01:27]:
Usually they figure it out. Either it's usually the open to work banner that's the biggest tip off, because people can query on that. But for some reason, the scam recruiter will decide, hey, I'm going to target this person because they're a job seeker. This doesn't happen because people are dumb. It happens because the scam is well designed and the recruiter in question will have a profile that looks like a real recruiter, especially at the surface level. And then we'll ask for your resume, look at it, and then come back to you and say some version of your experience. Sounds really, really wonderful, but unfortunately, your resume is scoring very low on the ATS and we can't submit you for the role because of it. You need to go and get your resume updated.

Diana Alt [00:02:18]:
And this is always accompanied by them sending you the name of a person or sending you to a link to Fiverr or something like that for the person that's going to, quote, unquote, fix your resume. Usually when this happens, the person ends up being told that for somewhere between like 150 and $350, they can get their resume fixed to be ATS compliant and that kind of rigmarole. So it sounds like, wow, this is something that I would want. And that price point is chosen by these scammers for a reason. It's chosen because it sounds like an amount of money that isn't insignificant, but it is not the kind that the of price point. Especially for the clients that I have had experience this, who typically make $150,000 and up, it doesn't feel like so much that they can't do it even after a layoff. It feels like, well, if $200 is going to get me a job faster, I can pay it. If $350 is going to get me a job faster than I can pay it.

Diana Alt [00:03:30]:
So once a person goes and pays for this service, whether it's through Fiverr or through some kind of private invoicing, a couple of things can happen. One thing that happens is that sometimes they just never hear back. Basically, somebody has taken their $200 and never provides them with an updated resume, even though they had their resume to start with and all it needed was optimizing for ats. I've also heard of people getting the resume back, but it's terrible. It's actually worse than what they started with. So a couple different ways that this can show up. And then it's pretty common, especially after the people ghost. If the person that is the fake recruiter has just ghosted and the person isn't getting their updated optimized resume back, the recruiter will block them on LinkedIn, so there's no recourse to go and find the person.

Diana Alt [00:04:28]:
Typically, it's not uncommon for there not to even be any direct emails back and forth between either this resume provider or the recruiter that kind of kicked the whole thing off because if they keep it on the platform and then block you, then it's a lot harder for you to chase them down because nobody thinks about writing down all the information and the link to the, you know, person in advance because they don't expect to be scanned. The reason that this is so concerning is that it's absolutely predatory. And I mean, this just absolutely pisses me off, especially as a resume professional. It's completely predatory, but it's framed as urgent. Like people are hearing, well, you would get the interview for this, but your resume isn't good. And you have to take care of this right away or you're going to lose out. When the job market is really weird, and especially for some of the people that I work with that are in tech, particularly product management, which has been hit very hard in the last 18 to 24 months, it's just even the most educated, smart people will get trapped in that because they're afraid of scarcity and because these fear tax tactics are being laid upon them. So as far as how the resume is structured, I mentioned, you know, it's usually initiates on LinkedIn.

Diana Alt [00:05:52]:
It usually points people to fiverr or upwork or something like that, although not always. Sometimes the recruiter and the resume writer are obviously the same person. So the recruiter will say, hey, your resume isn't any good. I can fix it for you. I have a side business. And then they will point you to their own stuff. And sometimes the recruiter partners with a resume writer and sometimes it's just all fake. I mean, a lot of times it's just all fake and there's no real people involved in it, so it's hard to untangle it.

Diana Alt [00:06:26]:
The presence of a recruiter in this does not equal that anything going on is legitimate. In fact, usually the recruiter is either fake or completely unethical. And they are using the fact that they are a recruiter to build trust. So why the heck does this work on smart, experienced, educated professionals? Couple reasons. Number one, job search vulnerability is real. The people that I've heard of this happening from the most are ones that are recently laid off or ones that are long term laid off. It's like I see more people having this happen at one month out and at 12 months out than I do from like two or three months out. I'm sure that's probably just anecdote, which is not necessarily real data, but the people are basically jumping in and taking advantage of people at their most vulnerable.

Diana Alt [00:07:20]:
And there's so much ATS anxiety because basically most people don't know how in the hell that works. Like, I can do content about what is really going on with ats. That's not the topic for today. But basically people are scared that their resume is getting screened out because of keywords, because it doesn't comply with the ats and no human is ever going to look at it. And it's just bullshit. On, in a lot of ways, the authority bias of their recruiter, they must know, plays a gigantic role in this as well. People the works, not because there's a resume writer attached, but because there is a recruiter attached. Again, I said earlier that $200 or, you know, 150 to $350 price point, which is what I've usually seen.

Diana Alt [00:08:10]:
It feels affordable, it feels low risk. And the most important thing is that it feels like you are buying certainty. And if there's anything that you need to know about job search, there's no such thing as certainty. In fact, releasing the idea that you're going to find certainty is actually one of the things that can make your job search the most productive moving forward. So these people, they're not selling resumes. They're definitely not selling good resumes. They are trying to sell relief. They're scamming you by selling relief.

Diana Alt [00:08:46]:
So when you think about what's the reality check? How do I figure out, like, why would I know that these things are actually a problem? So the first reality check for you is that these things are going mostly through fiverr or similar platforms and there's very little information available on the person that is going to be writing the resume. Another thing that seems to be the minority of cases is that it's actually the recruiter that's saying, I have a side business writing resumes. So sometimes it'll look like a direct connection. And I, I think that my, my, my opinion, which I haven't dug tons and tons into research of this because I haven't found as many examples, but it seems to me like the people doing that path of I have the side business writing the resume, I will fix this for you. Actually might not actively be trying to scam people. They might just not realize that that is not the way to go, it's not an ethical way to do business. But most of them seem to go through a platform like fiverr Upwork other platforms, which does not by itself mean that it's a scam, but that accompanied by a thin profile on the Fiverr platform or wherever where you can't figure out any information that's substantive about the person writing the resumes, you can't find examples of resumes this person has written, etc. Is really the red flag.

Diana Alt [00:10:17]:
The real deal is that experienced great resume writers that can actually do something to influence your job search positively are not selling $200 services, period. Very, very rarely. The only time that you would see that is if somebody is really new starting out and they are trying to build a portfolio. I also know a few people who do this at a low price point on purpose to help serve people. So they are doing quality resumes. But when those that's the case, you know the person like usually they're posting content about either resume writing or about recruiting or both. On LinkedIn you can tell that they're a real person. But the other thing is that real resumes writers do real intake no matter what price point they're at.

Diana Alt [00:11:10]:
You want a resume writer that does real intake because you're not trying to mass task to job descriptions. We can do that with chat GPT. There's all kinds of problems with doing that, but you can just copy paste all the tasks and do a commoditized crappy 200 resume that doesn't tell anything about you. That's actually a problem. And that's why people are not getting interviews. People that are writing the resumes, that are getting attention are working with people that are doing real intakes. So that could be in the form of a call, that could be some forms, or it could be a combination. In my coaching practice, I do write resumes.

Diana Alt [00:11:46]:
Most of the resumes I write are part of a longer term like comprehensive job search program. But even when I sell one individually, I'm doing a minimum of a 90 minute intake call with the person whose resume I am writing. I'm looking at prior resumes, even if some of them are old as the hills. And and we are crafting a narrative. So we're not just trying to say here's the tasks you did. We're trying to understand where's this person going? How does their background support that and what are the most important things to highlight. You can't do that by just sending your old resume to somebody through Fiverr without talking to them. Ethical resume work involves understanding you, not rushing you.

Diana Alt [00:12:28]:
Okay, occasionally you might work with a legitimate third party recruiter that says we are working on a hot opportunity and we need your resume update fast. But that is about timing of the job. That is not about pressuring you to try to separate you from your money. So what are some other red flags in this process? Oh, there are so many. When you are getting a resume critique before you're having a real role conversation that can be very concerning. Now there are some resumes out there that are straight up terrible. They have bad grammar, they don't follow any best practices, they're not very readable. You can't even tell what kind of job the people are targeting.

Diana Alt [00:13:10]:
I will give that kind of resume bad feedback if I see it in my inbox. Because I don't necessarily need to have a real conversation in order to tell someone. I can't tell what you're even going for or this is unreadable mess. But if a person posing as a recruiter is messaging you asking for a resume and then the first thing that they say to you is that their resume sucks, instead of saying what are you trying to go for? You have a problem when you get vague fear based feedback that's also a concern. So if someone is saying I can't submit you because you don't score high enough on an ATS for many reasons, that is BS and that is a red flag. If there is pressure or urgency tied to a paid service, that's also a concern. I work really hard to not be high pressure in my coaching practice. If I want to hit a revenue goal, I might have a sale, I might do a promotion.

Diana Alt [00:14:08]:
Hey, 10% off if you book your resume by the end of the month. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about people that are trying to tell you that basically they won't submit you for anything if you don't do this resume fix or that you're going to lose out, you're not going to be able to get a job when they're kind of preying on that fear that you're not going to be able to provide yourself. The Another red flag is I mentioned thin fiverr or upwork or whatever profiles. Another one is thin LinkedIn profiles. So if you see a person claiming to be a recruiter or they link you to a resume writer as part of this whole scam and they don't have very many connections, they haven't been on the pro the platform for very long, that is a red flag. Something that is a really good tip that comes from people. This came from somebody that said, I did this when I was dating on dating apps.

Diana Alt [00:15:03]:
And it works for LinkedIn too. Take an image. If you have a profile picture of the person that is claiming to be either a recruiter or resume writer and you go do reverse image search with Google, a lot of times it'll come back that it's a stock photo or it's not a real person or it's definitely not a person that matches the name of who they're claiming to be on LinkedIn. So that's another thing that can be a red flag for you. I think that a legitimate, a legitimate recruiter who doesn't have a headshot, like that's just not a thing. Recruiting is a very personal business and so a recruiter is just not going to be actively working LinkedIn without having a headshot of themselves. So the odds are pretty good you're going to be able to make this work. If fear is the lever in the process.

Diana Alt [00:15:50]:
You just need to stop. You just need to stop. So what do you do if you get taken in by this scam? This is kind of the email that I had from my client in like early December, a couple of Weeks after she had been laid off from her product manager job. The first thing you do is just, just pause and don't engage. Don't engage further immediately. Whether you're at the very beginning of this and you just got the first message from a dodgy looking recruiter, or you're all the way through and you paid Fiverr and you're waiting on your updated resume, just pause and take a breath. If you then want to do the basic checks that we talked about. So review the LinkedIn profiles, try to independently verify any roles or companies that they talked about.

Diana Alt [00:16:33]:
Whether that is, it's probably not going to be that you have a legitimate roller company for the job that they say that they're contacting you about, but you can look at the recruiting company and see, does this look real? Is there actually an LLC behind this, is there a website behind this, etc. So you can try to independently verify that outside the ecosystem that they're trapping you in to try to get the, get you to agree to this by this. Resume optimizations, you can also ask neutral clarifying questions, which often causes scammers to, to disappear. And when I say neutral clarifying questions, like almost anything other than when do you need this resume back? Or how do I pay to get this fixed? Is kind of falls in that bucket the minute you say something like, what is the company that we are applying for? Hey, what is your intake process? How do I know that the person you're sending me to is a good resume writer? They're likely going to disappear as soon as they figure out you're trying to do a little bit of due diligence. And then of course you can report them on LinkedIn as a scammer. If you have paid money through, especially through a platform, you probably could do this through PayPal if that was directly through there. But I know that my client had paid for a resume optimization rewrite thing via Fiverr and they complained and they got their money back. So.

Diana Alt [00:17:55]:
And it didn't even take that long, so they took all the information and said, this is what happens. I was advised by somebody in the industry that this actually might be a scam. You know, whatever that information was, she was able to submit it and she got her money back. Catching it later is still catching it. So if you get all the way to the end, you've paid that money, they gave you back a resume that's kind of meh. Because it's never going to be a great resume that you get back from the scam. You still can file a protest. You know, if you say, hey, Fiverr, they said they were going to give me a much better resume and they didn't, it's at least worth a shot.

Diana Alt [00:18:29]:
There's a chance that Fiverr could say, well, we're not going to give you your money back because you did get a resume from them. Okay, fine, you at least tried. So couple things to keep in mind about ethical professionals. So these are things you can look at more broadly if you zoom out from this scam, because I'm sure that people are going to invent a bunch of other scams now that the world is catching wise to this one. Few things to note. Number one, ethical recruiters do not try to monetize their candidates. They especially don't do it outside the role that they're filling. So I do know people who are recruiters and they are resume writers, but I have never talked to a legitimate one of those that didn't say some form of I keep a wall between what I'm doing at my work and what I'm doing for my, you know, my resume business.

Diana Alt [00:19:19]:
They are not trying to cross pollinate very rarely. And if they are, they're going to tell you about it. They're going to disclose it to you. You will probably have had a phone call or a zoom or something that makes you feel reassured that this is a real person. The other thing is, ethical resume writers do not promise ATS magic. When I get together with my fellow career coaches and resume writers to talk about things in the industry, one of the top things that we're complaining about is the shysters that are going around saying, I can sell you an ATS compliant resume template or I am guaranteeing that I will make your resume pass the ats. None of those things can ever happen. We can make it get closer.

Diana Alt [00:19:59]:
We can make your resume parse better. We can make it look look better. But it's a lot of work to do it. And we're mostly writing for the human and not for the ats. Ethical resume writers also don't rush. Occasionally you'll run across an ethical resume writer that happens to have a hole in their schedule right when you need to get a resume written and you can get it turned around pretty fast. But they're not going to try to rush you into giving you money right away so that they can write a resume overnight and get it back to you. That's just not a way that ethical resume writers really work.

Diana Alt [00:20:32]:
Ethical writer resume writers do perform intake, so they will do some kind of coaching call. Some kind of Google form where you submit your prior resume and a link to your LinkedIn and some information about what your target job is and all that kind of stuff. There's a lot of different ways to do that, but if you are not being asked what you're trying to target, what information you already have, you've got a problem. They also price according to scope and expertise. That shows up a couple of ways. It shows up related to the resume writer's expertise and their process, and it shows up according to the candidates. So I know quite a few people that do resume writing for basically all levels of career, from freshly graduated students all the way up to the C suite, and they recognize that there's substantial differences between what is needed to capture the attention the best and to give the highest possible chance of being called in for an interview for each of those levels, and they charge accordingly. So a resume for somebody coming out of school that if there's going to be anybody where their resume only costs a few hundred dollars, it's that category.

Diana Alt [00:21:46]:
But people that are really successfully helping VPs, SVPs, and C Suite get connected to opportunity are almost never charging over a few hundred dollars. The best executive resume writers I know charge three to $4,000. And their packages typically include resume. They may include like, hey, I'll tweak it for a few different roles, like maybe up to two or three versions. And it often includes like an executive bio that might be given to a board of directors. Like, it's very robust. What has to happen at that level? I kind of sit in the middle and I do a pretty high touch process with people where my intake is all via zoom, kind of in a coaching call format. I give information to people ahead of time to help them prepare for the zoom.

Diana Alt [00:22:32]:
Like, I'm very much trying to set up for success so I can turn around quickly. That is not a $200 service. So when you want to zoom out for anything in the hiring process, a good rule of thumb is to remember that if someone is profiting from your anxiety, if they are pressuring you to sign up quickly so they can profit from your anxiety, you need to step back and ask some questions. So that's basically the scam. That's what's going on. It's pretty sophisticated. If you've, if you've been prey to this, I'm so sorry that that happened to you, but I know people that are, like I said, like, they're cyber security professionals that train people in how to avoid like phishing scams through their Gmail or their Yahoo and they have fallen for this particular trick. So don't feel bad about it if it happens.

Diana Alt [00:23:27]:
Just try to encourage your discernment. Take a step back, Take a deep breath and I'm not even necessarily talking about taking two weeks to decide whether to do anything. You might just need to step away for 30 minutes. Think about what you've learned in this episode or from There's a lot of recruiters and career coaches that are trying to warn people about the scam right now. Just take a step back, ask if it seems reasonable, and then move forward. I'm telling you this because I want you to land Work that Feels Good. Your job search should not feel terrible. It's already going to be stressful because there's no such thing as a job search that doesn't have some stress in it.

Diana Alt [00:24:08]:
But you do not need the added stress of a scam in the mix. If you've seen this or experienced it, you're not alone. And if you feel like you have a question on something that you're seeing, you know, is this a scam? It feels kind of like what you're talking about, but not really. Hit me in the you know, write in the comments here, hit me in the DMs on LinkedIn or something like that, and I'll be happy to tell you my take. All right, that's it for today. Have a great day everyone. Not quite sure what to put on your resume or what to leave off? Grab my free Resume Don'ts guide so you can stop guessing and start standing out. Head on over to dianateaches.com to get yours today.

Diana Alt [00:24:52]:
And that's it for this episode of Work Should Feel Good. If something made you laugh, think, cry, or just want to yell yes at your phone, send it to a friend. Hit follow, hit subscribe. Do all the things and even better, better leave a review if you've got a sec. I'm not going to tell you to give it five stars. You get to decide if I earned them. Work should feel good. Let's make that your reality.