Beware Of Job Promises In Trade Of Money
Shine.com had recently launched its fraud awareness campaign to aware job-seekers getting duped by scamsters under job promises. Neha Kaul, Marketing Head of Shine.com talks about the campaign, its effectiveness and job prospects for senior- level hiring.
How did you come to know about the fraudsters charging money for jobs in the name of Shine.com?
We got to know about these fraudsters through our compliance team who received multiple complaints through e-mails from consumers. The team processes such complaints seriously and investigates internally to detect scamsters. They also very work closely with the cops to track down people who dupe job seekers.
Do these complaints affect the popularity of the portal?
The volume of such complaints is not so high to affect the popularity of the portal. There is a small segment of people who get trapped into such scams. Job fraud incidents are often witnessed in non-metro/small cities. As Shine is more focused and has a wider reach in metro cities, our portal's popularity remains unaffected by it.
Although a small segment of our consumers get affected by job-frauds, we take this issue very seriously and try our utmost to keep a check on such people. For us, it is not just about maintaining the portal’s reputation but providing a seamless experience to our consumers.
What measures have been taken to counter this issue?
We issue public notice advertisements in newspapers to create awareness about job fraud from time to time. Apart from this, we keep sending mailers to our entire database where we try to explain to users in a simple way that if someone is promising you a job for money, even if they are taking Shine’s name, it’s a scam.
We recently did a video campaign where we informed our consumers about the things that they should check to avoid falling prey to job frauds. Apart from that, we have also tied-up with radio stations as part of our fraud awareness drive. We are reaching out to our consumers through different media to spread awareness around job frauds.
Have you carried out any assessments if these measures are really working or not?
We started the full - fledged campaign on fraud awareness recently so it will be little early for us to assess if it is really working or not. We are already investing in some tools to monitor the number of fraud complaints etc. Going forward, we will be able to monitor our measures more effectively on social media as well as on the web.
How do you reach out to people with limited internet access? Is it a hindrance to your fraud awareness campaign?
We follow a multi touch strategy and that is why we are using different media to reach our audience. Also, a lot of people consume content on mobile even in rural areas. If they have created profile on Shine, uploaded their CVs and are doing transactions online then they definitely have access to Facebook and look at messages on their timeline. If you look at the size of job scam industry it is quite huge and it is very sad that people actually fall for these false promises, which is why we decided to talk about it proactively to the consumers.
What about the job prospects for people above 40?
It is going to be more competitive at a senior level as the recruitment industry is now moving towards more skilled based hiring. The value of experience is going down and the value of skill sets is going up, so you are not just competing with people at your level but even people who may have lesser experience. Earlier, big degrees from reputed institutions were the key to land a decent job but I don’t think that is going to be the case in the future.
Yes, it is going to be challenging but at the same time I also see it as an opportunity to learn and to keep advancing oneself. If you are over 40 and want to be promoted today, it is important to keep your radar tuned to spot the new skill sets which are in demand. You need to move out of your comfort zone and upskill as per the demands in the market.
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