Yesterday, I received a tweet that knocked me back for a while from @crisjobcoach. It was a link to a website called ‘Career Excuse’ and the service they offered was fake references, work history, etc. to “help” someone basically cheat employers (the site was actually called Career Cheat at one stage).

At first I was shocked, then I thought about it for a while, maybe it’s some huge elaborate joke. Satire gone awry. Well, only one way to find out … so I gave them a call. I left a message and about an hour later received a return call.

I soon discovered it’s not a fake or dubious satire, as the owner apologised for taking time to get back to me as he was busy taking the priority of employers calls who were calling to check references (I doubt this). For sixty odd dollars they would collect my social security number (insert warning bells here) and the details I wanted to fake and  provide me with fake names and real phone numbers to give out to employers so that when they called the number this group would answer and pretend to be an HR department to confirm your work history, etc. Need an international reference? That’s fine, I was told, they could set up on a faked company website a regional office in Australia for me. The owner has put some effort into this leaving at least one message on job search discussion boards posing as a job seeker and asking if he should take advantage of the service.

I’m not completely surprised. <soapbox>It doesn’t surprise me that someone is willing to lie, I’ve had to combat this sort of panic in job seekers in the past but what did surprise me is that someone would charge for it and, whether consciously or not, provide such a damaging practice to the more disadvantaged who this is far more likely to attract. Imagine the trouble one of your job seekers would be in if not only did they use this ’service’ and get caught. Not only would they likely be fired but what reference is that employer going to give any future employers. Even credible references from that point become tainted.</soapbox>

What shall we do? Sure, I want to shut the thing down if I could but it seems unlikely that I can do that. What I can do, however, is to make sure I do a great job assisting my job seekers with good answers to difficult questions, addressing barriers effectively, designing an achievable career path and developing a real network. In doing this their fears should be reduced, a joint and achievable plan clearly laid out and, through strengths identification and encouragement, there is no need for them to resort to such tactics. This is not wishful thinking or impractical. It’s just what we do.

P.S. I do have the full name, contact details and typical username of the owner if someone knows of an authority that could deal with this.

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