Online Job Search Security

It's coming towards the end of 2014 and already thoughts turn towards the Christmas and New Year holidays. For some it's also the time for a new role and serious job hunting gets underway. Not many of us are Premier League managers who will probably be well compensated for losing their job but even they need a CV to help them source their next challenge. 

Job seeking is difficult at the best of times and is a very competitive business. Just ask any job seeker how many jobs they have applied for without even getting a sniff of an interview. The importance of a current, powerful and selling CV, full of your achievements and contributions to previous employers success, cannot be underestimated. But be careful with your CV and its contents. 

It's a necessary evil that you need to spread your CV as widely as possible and get it into the in-boxes of recruiters and executives. You can control where it is seen to an extent because you have placed it there; namely, with trusted recruiters or on recruitment websites that ask your permission for it to be there and also ask you what information you want to be available for viewing by external persons. 

Very often the website will ask you if you want your CV to be searchable. That means that people (sometimes) pay the website to search for jobhunters. The vast majority of these will be perfectly legitimate individuals but some will not be. 

The message then is threefold:- 

1. Minimise the amount of personal information you have on the CV. Consider just having your name, mobile number and your email address. When somebody accesses your information and makes contact you can then check their authenticity before you give any more information away - such as home address, current salary, date of birth, etc. 

In fact minimise your information on all platforms (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) but give enough detail that people can find you and get to you

2. Always ask them to send you an email before you get into any discussions of any description. This way you can search for them on Linked In or Google and do some due diligence on their authenticity before you exchange any further information. 

I know this because only today, exactly this happened to me. I sensed something wrong with the approach via Linked In from somebody who was not a connection. There were spelling mistakes in the online profile and then doing a search for the recruitment business could not find it!!! 

3. Never give out Bank Account details and NEVER, NEVER pay for this until you are absolutely sure the website and/or recruiter is genuine. 

Your online presence is a necessity in today's digitised world so manage it as securely as possible. Stay safe and stay secure. And find that job soon - working with people you trust and have built a relationship with always works in the end.

If you need help or support in your job search contact me at www.abespokecv.co.uk or email sales@abespokecv.co.uk. I promise all contact is in strict confidence and I never send or share your contact details with any other individual or business. 

IAIN WILLIAMSON (C) 7.12.14