Safe Job Hunting

Job Search Resources from Resume Butler, can provide you with critical information to make your job search a success. This section will teach you the techniques of safe job hunting and how to protect you idenity online.

Protecting Your Identity Online

Unfortunately when job hunting on the internet today you need to take a few precautions. According to the FBI identity theft is the number one internet crime. The information contained in resumes provides a very good starting point for identity thieves.

Also employers have been known to search resume posting boards looking for current employees. With that said the internet is a great place to search for a job you just need to take a few common sense precautions.

Minimize your contact information; this makes it harder to steal your identity and harder for your employer to discover your job search.

Start by removing the normal contact information from your resume:

• Your Name
• Your address
• Your Phone Number
• Business E-mail address (Not a good idea anyways)
• Your Personal E-mail address

We stongly recommend to always use an alternative email address such as Hotmail.com or Yahoo.com in a job search.

Modify your employment history, especially your current job. Use a generic term for your current employers company name. For example; Microsoft can be changed to "a major multinational software manufacture".

Also, If you have a unique job title be sure to change it to a generic one.

To protect yourself from becoming a victim of fraud, we suggest the following:

• Do not give your social security number to any prospective employer even if they suggest that it is for a "routine background check."
• Do not give your credit card numbers, bank account number to and prospective employer or engage in any transaction in which you are requested to transfer or exchange currency or funds to or for a prospective employer.
• Be cautious providing any personal information over the phone or online to prospective employers other than the information you have already provided in your resume.
• Be cautious when dealing with individuals/companies from outside your own country. Unfortunately, a disproportionate number of the fraudulent job postings have been traced to companies and individuals located in Eastern Europe.

Be very cautious if the email address from a prospective employer does not correspond with the company name. For example a company called Acme should have an domain name similar to Acme.com and the email should be sent to that domain. This would look something like this:

Openpostions@acme.com or jsmith@abccompany.com

Be very wary if the hiring manger wants to use a personal rather then a business email address.

When responding to individuals who purport to represent a prospective employer, research the company to ensure that they are legitimate. See Resume Butler's Know your future employer for information about researching companies.

While the above precautions are designed to help you avoid a fraudulent situation, they are by no means exhaustive, and you should exercise caution in dealing with unfamiliar parties.

A few other pieces of advice:

Do not use your employers assets to Job Search. Rightly or wrongly employers have won numerous court cases involving the use of their equipment by employees. This includes computers, telephones, internet connections and so on even outside of normal working hours. Using your companies equipment could cost you your job. Don't make your job search an emergency one.

Reporting Internet Fraud

There are authorities in addition, to your local police, to whom you may report possible fraud on the Internet, such as the Internet Fraud Complaint Center, a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National White Collar Crime Center whose mission is to address fraud committed over the Internet. You can file a complaint with the Internet Fraud Compliant Center online by accessing its website.

For more information about Resume Butler Job Search Resources contact

Anne Zahn
Director of Resources
Resume Miners
azahn@resumeminers.com

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