Electronic Job Posting
Posting your resume on an Internet employment search site is an everyday part of online job-hunting.
In the opinion of Dr. Jerry, out of the five ways to seek employment this process lands at the bottom on the list because of the dangers of identity theft.
That is not to say that Dr. Jerry opposes posting of your data to electronic boards – just that you need to be wary of the risks and be ready to handle all the calls about medical insurance – for spahammers (misspelled intentionally) farm lists just like real estate sales people farm a neighborhood.
The information you give about yourself can be used by crooks as well as potential employers.
The purpose of this article, is for Dr. Jerry to identify the risks and explains how to make online resume posting safer.
These days, with exceptionally high unemployment (and high underemployment), most people consider online job-hunting a very big part of the search process.
And to give themselves the best chance of success, many job seekers post their resume on one or more of the scores of Internet job search sites.
This makes sense if you believe that the wider you cast the net, the more likely you are to land a good catch, but promoting yourself online does pose a risk of identity theft, spahamming (misspelled intentionally) and other scams.
Get yourself a spam verifier software program (many are free and one of the best is http://www.scambusters.org/ and don’t be fooled by tricky new jobs or work at home scams. Especially those relating to “Financial Representative” opportunities – where you get a commission on funds collected (laundered).
You can take steps to reduce that risk, while still keeping your chances high of being “discovered” by a potential new employer.
In this article Dr. Jerry focuses specifically on resume security. A good starting point for guidance regarding resume security is the US Office of Personnel Management, which looks after recruitment for the Federal Government.
You can post your resume there for free, but even here the site warns users to be “mindful about the type of information you include on your resume,” advising against detailing personal information like your National Identification and driver’s license numbers, financial account information, passwords and birth dates.
But you also get a number of extra security options, which likely you also will see increasingly on other, non-Government job search sites.
Resume privacy options
The most “open” option for online job hunting is the public resume, which allows all potential employers to see all the details you posted including contact information. And it’s the one Dr. Jerry does not recommend.
By contrast, a well-developed professional resume included a great deal of your personal details, like contact information, your current employer and the type of opportunity you seek. Contact with you comes directly, via either a telephone call scheduling a face-to-face or telephonic interview and not an email requesting more information from the online job-hunting site.
Other job search sites may also allow additional privacy options.
One feature many online job-hunting sites have in common is a claim that your resume cannot be seen by other job seekers, only by employers.
The validity of that claim, however, rests on how effective a particular search site is at confirming the authenticity of those who say they’re employers, so you shouldn’t let that influence how much information you give away.
One non-profit firm, for example, suggests that law firms and private detectives use online job-hunting sites to track down people they wish to subpoena.
No matter where you post, your resume will attract a number of online job scams.
These might include bogus jobs, where the scammer wants your details for identity theft or to charge a fee for a supposed security check.
Other search sites will also contact you trying to get you to post with them, or you’ll hear from dubious agents offering to find you a job for a finder’s fee.
At this stage, you should certainly never respond by disclosing any confidential information until you have thoroughly checked out a supposed employer.
Be especially wary of anything that involves a money request. Legitimate employers simply don’t do this.
Likewise, be aware that any details you’ve made publicly available about yourself are now in the public domain for after you’ve posted your resume openly, you have almost no control over how it will be used.
4 tips for resume posting on online job-hunting sites
Here are 5 important tips to reduce the risk that your online resume will be of any value to crooks:
1. Check out any online job-hunting site you’re thinking of using; do a search to establish their reputation.
2. Study the site’s privacy policy to see how they will use your information, how they safeguard it and what happens when you delete it and if you can’t delete it, don’t post it. Likewise, if there’s no privacy policy, ditch it.
3. Establish how they vet potential employers. See what happens if you try to register as an employer yourself.
4. Use a “spare” or temporary email address for initial contact; that way you won’t fall prey to spahammers. Understand that most legitimate employers conduct interviews over the telephone or in a face-to-face meeting and if the only contact you can make with a potential employer is via email, then suspect fraud.
Although you naturally want to do everything you can to impress a potential employer, the bottom line is this: If you can make your resume impressive, you probably won’t have hampered your chances of getting an interview but you will have protected your identity.
One additional point to be wary about:
Phony résumé writing services:
Many individuals now use professional résumé writers to get a resume prepared. All of the good ones have the following qualities:
- They’ve been in business a long time; and
- A person can be reached by a telephone number; and
- The professional that writes the resume is the same person that conducts the interview to gather necessary data to enhance your résumé; and
- Those firms that are genuine, offer a pledge of total security and use a well known payment processing firm (such as PayPal) to collect credit card data.
However, since no one, can guarantee 100% security you should be aware that when your personal data is anywhere in the “cloud” — that is, on someone else’s server — it’s potentially vulnerable, even if the risk is miniscule.
Second, identity thieves could use a phony resume writing service to collect your personal details (though Dr. Jerry has no evidence of any doing this at the moment).
So, just be careful. Again, check out any service by doing a “Google” search on their name, and read their privacy policy carefully.
In these days of economic turbulence, it is natural to want to do as much as you can do to find the best job.
By using commonsense caution, you’ll be making the most of your online job-hunting, without compromising your security or leaving yourself open to identity theft.

