Stop! Wait A Minute

I got a call from a friend early one morning. He resides in another state and asked me to urgently help verify the location and authenticity of a company that had invited him to a recruitment test. Urgently, because he was about booking for an early morning flight to Lagos to attend the said aptitude test.

    "MG Resource invites You for a job Test/Briefing by 9:00am On Wed,13/1/16 @161 Ikorodu Rd, Opposite Ecobank, Onipanu B/Stop,Lagos. 070-1319-5062 REF NO:HR2684PR"

He forwarded me the above message and a Google search revealed that the company is one of the many MLM (Multi-Level Marketing) firms luring unsuspecting job-seekers to their business locations in the guise of a recruitment exercise. They invite you for a test/interview, but in the end it is nothing more than a ploy to make you sign up on their MLM scheme. So a call and a Google search saved my friend more than thirty thousand Naira (N30, 000) in flight tickets and a waste of man-hours.


I heard recently how a job-seeker caused so much trouble at one of the offices of these MLM firms. He came all the way from Kaduna to Lagos and was given a seminar about a product/money-making scheme instead of a job interview. The guy raised so much dust till they gave him his transport fare. (I can imagine the action moves he displayed)


Recruitment fraud has become so prevalent that I think 7 out of every 10 job-seeker have encountered such schemes and at least 2 out of every 7 have fallen victim to their sinister ploys. Their mode of operation is diverse and dynamic, but relies solely on the desperation, ignorance and gullibility of job-seekers.

So Stop! Wait a minute, before you respond to that recruitment invite.

I leave you with an excerpt from The Job Seekers’ Creed about Combating Recruitment fraud.

Do not apply to just any job via email made available on the internet:

Fraudulent people abound on the Internet. Their goal is to collect personal information from unsuspecting individuals. Such data are then used to send fraudulent recruitment text messages and emails. Also be conscious of job recruitment invites via bogus email addresses. Fraudsters use cloned email addresses to engineer fake recruitment programs e.g cbn@yahoo.com, nnpc@hotmail.com, etisalatngr@gmail.com. Genuine companies should own domains names and send recruitment invites from email addresses like; jobs@nnpc.gov.ng , careers@etisalat.com.ng , career@mtnonline.com etc

Google is an ally:

Before applying for jobs or responding to job invites, do some research about the company and position. Search for the company’s website; evaluate it for professionalism and consistency with the company’s stated mission/purpose. Identify contact information for the company on their website and any other pertinent information. Do a random search on the company’s name and see what other results come up. If nothing reasonable comes up, post questions on job forum. Your decision to proceed or not should be based on your findings and comments/replies from forums. Also when you receive a suspicious recruitment invite, copy and paste the entire text message or email on a search engine, chances are that someone has said something about it online.

Do not hoard information:

Share recruitment information with people who can advise you. So many job seekers fall victims to fraud because they withhold such “mouth-watering‟ information from their friends and people around for the fear of such information being “hijacked‟. I have saved about six friends from such recruitment scams, because they shared the information with me. Learn from the experiences of others. An African proverb says “he who asks for direction never loses his way”.

Stay safe and success in your job search!

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