Is a job offer by email genuine?

If you’re like me, you get lots of job offers by email. Let’s face it, as soon as your email address is on display anywhere, it’s going to get grabbed and used by others. Or even if you send an email to someone who has an infected machine, the address can then be picked up as well.

A new member at one of the VA forums I belong to recently posted an email, asking about a particular group who had emailed her about a job. She wanted to know if anyone had heard of them and whether it was genuine? This is my reply to her.

For me the rule of thumb is – if I receive an email promoting jobs, telling me they’ve viewed my resume or anything similar, I steer clear. And if they start sprouting how much money I could make and the fantastic opportunity I want to run away very fast.

There’s a difference between receiving a request from a single client, enquiring about my services and how much it would cost and receiving an email offering me a ‘job’.

I went to the site just to look at it and immediately got a warning (several in fact) from my antispyware/antivirus program that this was a dangerous site to visit. So I decided to do some research via Google and found a chat forum with people discussing this group. Some had joined and were getting jobs but it seems that xxx is actually an employer type company – you get given the work to do and they pay you fortnightly, it doesn’t sound like you actually connect with the client as Virtual Assistants usually do.

The forum seemed to fade out in 2006 and new posts in 2007 were complaints from people who had paid the joining fee but had heard nothing more – last post was in July this year.

So, I’d tread carefully – do your research (I know that’s why you asked on this list) by doing searches on Google or your favourite search engine and see what else you can find.

My advice to you is the same – do your research and due diligence, ask questions. Those Virtual Assistant organisations and networks that are real have easily obtained contact information so you can make contact with the owners or operators, many of the sites give you direct access to their members for contact (after all the members want clients to contact them) and the VA chat forums are full of information and past experiences from other members. KMT

job offer, genuine email, employment, virtual assistants, work at home