Fraudsters are impersonating recruitment firms in the UK, posting vacancies online and sending WhatsApp messages to lure people into handing over personal information, reports The BBC, citing warnings from businesses. It comes as the number of recruitment scams reported to Action Fraud is rising. Recruitment scams typically involve criminals luring victims with the promise of extra work or income, before conning them out of sensitive personal information. Scammers have been exploiting a number of reputable jobs websites to target their victims.

One firm, 2i Recruit in Surrey, said it had received calls from 25 victims of scammers who had been asked to hand over their personal details. Jenny Jamieson, recruitment director and founder of 2i Recruit in Godalming, said scammers posed as being from her company in October. "We discovered scammers were putting out a job advert in our company name, on employment website Indeed.com. It was very well written, a good salary, so it was very enticing.” She added that many candidates had sent their details.

A spokesperson for Indeed.com said, "We remove tens of millions of job listings each month that do not meet our quality guidelines. We encourage job seekers to report any suspicious job advertisements to us, or if they feel it necessary, to make a report to the police." Other recruitment firms that have been targeted and impersonated by scammers include HR Heads and Nolan Recruitment. 

The Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC), which represents the recruitment industry, said its members would never ask job seekers for payment to find them work.

Lorraine Laryea, chief standards officer at REC, said, "This is illegal. We are aware of scammers taking advantage of some jobseekers' keenness to find work by sending uninvited messages purporting to act as recruiters, over the past 12 months. Be wary of calls, WhatsApp messages, texts and the like that appear to have come out of the blue."

A Home Office spokesperson said there had been an estimated 3.2 million fraud offences in the year ending September 2023 - down 13% from the previous year.