Total Recruitment Scam

Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:

scam/skam/ ▶n inf a dishonest scheme; a fraud.

Parents always tell their children to look before they leap, respect elders and not put anything in their mouth that isn't wrapped. My mom was not an exception and I wish I listened to her more often.

Last week I got an e-mail from a certain Mr Jordan, who presented himself as a recruiter for Total, one of the oil majors. He congratulated me on being pre-selected as one of the candidates for the job and invited me to London for the face-to-face interviews on July 4th, mere two weeks from then. I did apply for one of their positions advertised on LinkedIn a few days before and I was surprised at their reaction speed, as I know that big companies may take weeks to do pre-selection only. However, it was a project position and big projects do have a tendency to be ramped up quickly + obviously, I got interested. The alarming factor was that T&C (terms and conditions) were attached, but who listens to the voice of reason at the moments of great excitement? In his message Mr Jordan also advised me of the interview date and venue and gave the travel agent's contact details to arrange the trip. I emailed the travel agent asking what exactly they needed and got the following reply (pay special attention to #5):

Attn: Sergey Gorbatov

This is to acknowledge the receipt of your mail and we congratulate you on your new appointment with Total Oil and gas Company. As you are aware, we have been mandated by Total Oil and Gas to assist you in procuring your traveling documents to London, United Kingdom.
You are required to meet our requirement by sending the below listed document to us immediately so as to proceed with the travel arrangement and visa application.

1. A scanned Copy of your identification and International Passport.

2. The Nearest Airport to you.

3. Your Contact Address.

4. A Scanned Copy of a recent UK visa

5. You are to make a refundable deposit of £1,157.55 GBP, as this covers for the cost of your flight, accommodation and transportation while in UK. Note that this is important as we will need to file your flight itinerary along with the visa application. (my emphasis)

6. Invitation Letter from Total Oil and Gas

Payments for such services are accepted via various payments but due to the service nature and the time frame, we advise you to remit it via either Money Gram or Western Union transfers, depending on the one that is convenient for you. Below is the accountant information is as thus follow;

Receiver Name: Margaret Cole,
Address: Unit 3, 61, Princelet St, London, E1 5LP

Upon payment, do send a scanned copy of the deposit slip along with other document requested to me via this email address and send a copy to our client (Total Oil and Gas) for confirmation as that will be used for refund process.

We assure you that every part of the travel documentation process will be fast as long as you provide us with the relevant documents that we are requesting for.

I hope to hear from you soon so as to proceed with your traveling arrangement.

Sincerely,
Mr. Martin Walker
Chief Consultant (Air Express Travels and Tours)

At this point I knew it was a scam. I was so cross with myself for being naive and unable to recognize the obvious signs from the very beginning even though I (better than anyone else being an HR) should have known!!!

Please, be careful with schemes like this. Surely, they can be devised in a myriad of ways, but here are some pointers that shout "run!":

• all major companies will only accept job applications via their official recruitment portals, which are security encrypted (start with https at the very least);
• if at any given time you are asked for any money to subsidize your travel to the venue of the interview, double-check. Not all companies have large recruitment budgets and smaller firms may offer you to share the expenses or come to their premises at your own cost, but I have never come across such practices dealing with large multinationals;
• you will not be invited for a face-to-face without having had a cheaper (phone or Skype) type of interview first;
• check the e-mail addresses and websites:

1. The email address was carreers@totaloiluk.com (check the spelling of careers, could I have looked straight away?!?!), and, surely, the official domain of Total is total.com.
2. Air Express has a nice-looking webpage (http://www.airexpressuk.com/welcome.html) but most of the links do not work and someone spent some time to make it look credible.

I hope you will share this with your friends, as the best way to deal with fraud is to be aware and apply reasoning even in situations where it's most difficult to do so.