Well here’s a new wrinkle on an old scam.
Amazon is still hiring like crazy. But back when Amazon was hiring like crazy and everybody still wanted to work for the company, fake Amazon recruiters would reach out to people who were hoping to get a warehouse job. You worked hard, but they paid well. The scam was, after an initial screening call, you had to send some form of payment to get to the next stage of the interview.
Fast forward a few years – if you are a software developer in the US, it’s a sure bet you’ve been hit up by an Amazon recruiter at least once a month for the past year.
It seems the fake Amazon recruiters have gotten wind of this, and are now pulling the same ploy on software developers. Software developers generally have deep pockets. Though generally software developers aren’t ones to pony up any cash to land an interview, so I’m not sure how the full process works yet.
Since the beginning of June I’ve been hit up by no less than two fake Amazon recruiters, as in, recruiters professing to work for Amazon, with websites and emails from domains that could pass muster at first glance, e.g. amazon-recruiting dot domain.
Ordinarily I won’t give Amazon technical recruiters the time of day, or any recruiter reaching out to represent Amazon — I try to be kind to everyone I meet online, but Amazon recruiters I generally treat like something I found on the bottom of my shoe that I’d rather not deal with, it’s time to buy a new pair of shoes at that point — but there was something that tickled my in-built warning system on these emails; domain name being off, the promises of riches and glory with actual numbers attached. My dealings with Amazon recruiters to date run in to a brick wall the moment I ask about money.†
For these particular outreaches I decided to play along and took the screening call. The calls were brief, mere minutes. Both recruiters were excited for me to talk with them at the office in-person, I would need to pay for my own travel (red flag) and they would reimburse me (another red flag). That I should book the travel to a specific corporate account number (huge red flag). The other recruiter wanted me to book through their corporate travel agency (huge fucking red flag) — and I am going to assume I’d be ask for a credit card number to “hold” the reservation at that point, though I didn’t follow through on that one.
Obviously I didn’t book any travel, and I’m not sure if the booking of travel to a corporate account number is how the scam works, but if it is, that’s a sure way to extract a few thousand bucks from reasonably well off software developers with each hit.
† The first question out of my mouth when dealing with any recruiter is “What’s the compensation range?” and I’ve found that shuts down a good 80% or so all conversations — and it still amazes me that recruiters will either try to play a mental game with that, or get bent out of shape because “all you’re interested in is the money.”