How to Identify and Avoid Online Job Scams

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Your ability to spot fake online job offers can save you the hassles of losing money and effort.[/caption]

Finding a legitimate and good paying online job can bring you great rewards. You can make use of your skills and talents and earn money without leaving the comfort of your home but this does not come without obstacles. One of the challenges of finding online jobs is weeding through scams to find real and paying job offers. It is easy to Google for a job you like but it is difficult to identify fake jobs particularly if you are inexperienced. There are telltale signs of online jobs scams, however, that you should watch out for so you can avoid getting ripped off of your time, effort and money. Watch out for these red flags so you can avoid online job scams:

Easy or No Qualification Requirements
Scammers would have to be easy on their qualification requirements so more people will bite on their bait. This is why online job scams typically have very easy or no qualification requirements at all. These are job offers that say they accept workers without any experience and relevant educational background. Companies and real employers want to hire the best people to optimize productivity so they often have criteria and screening processes in place. You should therefore be careful with job postings that say anyone can apply and get hired immediately particularly if the job offered requires expertise such as teaching and transcribing.

Tasks are Too Easy
Would companies really pay you $50 just for signing up on their website or allow you to earn $5000 per month answering surveys? Remember, if the job is too good to be true, it probably is. The $50 promised to you may appear in your account but you may never be able to withdraw or encash it. It may also be possible to earn a thousand dollars per month answering surveys but this will likely entail you to work 24 hours a day which is not as easy job at all.

Anonymous Employers/ Clients
Be cautious of job offerers that do not disclose anything about themselves or their company. Scammers who are not determined to pay you won’t give you details about themselves so steer free of employers that give you the task right away without telling you something about themselves first. Not knowing who you are dealing with makes it more difficult to come after employers or clients that fail to pay you.

Use of Vague Email Addresses
Be wary of employers who use fancy rather than professional email addresses. Most legitimate employers would use email addresses that look like name@companyname.com and not something like this: heygirl143@yahoo.com. If the person who hires you uses a Gmail address, check out if the email is linked to a Google+ account.

Link to the Job is a Referral Link
There are networking schemes online where people earn money when they get people to visit or sign up on a particular website so be cautious of job links that are actually affiliate or referral links.

The Company Website Contains Plenty of Typos and Wrong Information
Evaluate the website of the hiring company and see if it looks professional and credible enough. Something is wrong if a website hiring writers have plenty of typos and grammatical mistakes.  It also helps to check out the information posted on the website. Do the links to review and rating sites work? Does the company use a real physical address? If in doubt, visit the Better Business Bureau website or simply Google for reviews about the website or company.

The Employer Asks You to Pay for Something before You can Get Started
No legitimate company would ask money from its potential employees. Period.

Do you have other ways of identifying and avoiding scams when looking for online jobs? Please share them below.