The next career opportunity to fill your inbox may be too good to be true.
It may come in the form of a text message or an email from someone who says they're a job recruiter. Before you reply, consider who the message may really be coming from.
With an increase in the country's unemployment rate -- 4.2 percent in March 2025 compared to 3.8 percent in March 2024 -- the job market is getting more and more competitive.
And scammers are looking to take advantage, according to Francisco J. Tobón, a Career Expert at LinkedIn.
"What we're seeing is two people applying for every open job application at the moment, which is twice as much than what we saw three years ago," Tobón told NBC 5 Responds.
According to the FBI's Internet Crime Division, 810 people in Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin reported becoming the victim of an employment scam in 2023. A total of $2,422,540 was reported lost.
Last summer, the FBI issued a warning about an uptick in work-from-home scams. It says you should be cautious of unsolicited job offer messages, avoid clicking on links, downloading files or opening attachments. It also warns against sending financial or personal identifiable information to people making unsolicited job offers.
Tobón's advice is to pause and evaluate and move slowly through the hiring process. He explained, LinkedIn is always searching for and removing fake accounts from its platform. During the second-half of 2024, he said, Linkedin "removed over 86 million fake accounts from the platform, 94% of those which we detected proactively and removed it before a member even saw it."
Vetting Job Postings
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LinkedIn says it posts "verified badges" next to job postings it has vetted for authenticity.
The company says you can take other proactive steps to protect yourself during the job search process. This includes refraining from sharing your bank account or personal information.
According to Tobón, "Normally you'll go through two to three different rounds of interviews before you even start talking about finances and personal information."
If you think you are the victim of a job scam, you can report it to the FBI's internet crime division.
