The Hire the Stakes, The Greater the Fall

Another late night, exhaustion and sore eyes setting in after sending what felt like the thousandth job application on your list, when yet another reply hits your inbox with the words, “Unfortunately we…”

You don’t even need to read the rest; you’re familiar enough with how this goes. Woefully, you sit thinking about the work you’ve put into the job search: The degree, the blood, the sweat, the tears—ping. 

An email notification graces your frustrated thoughts. Another rejection? Wait, this mail in your inbox is from… Large Media Company? Asking for you? By name?!

The email reads:

“Dear You, We came across your LunkedOut profile, and were very impressed with your credentials and portfolio. We’d love to invite you to apply for our position here at Large Media Company as Job Title that Definitely Exists! Please see all of our amazing benefits! Just click the link to our application platform and fill out your information. We’ll reach out soon.”

Do you fill it out?

Bait and Switch

An undeniable pattern with cyberscams: The exploitation of current events. So it only makes sense that during times of economic uncertainty and a tricky job market, predatory phishing and other malicious tactics are deployed in response.   

Today’s method of exploitation? Desperation and financial hardship with some too-good-to-be-true offers. There have been recent reports that finding a new job is becoming increasingly more difficult.  And with it taking an average of 180 job applications to land one job offer, it can feel pretty exciting to get an email from a “recruiter” that thinks you’re perfect for the job.

Unfortunately, many of these too-good-to-be-true offers are, at best, bait to get personal information from you and, at worst, the beginning of long and distressing string-along phishing campaigns.

How Do These Hiring Scams Work?

Job applications often require wide swathes of information from the applicant, including phone numbers, addresses, SSNs, references, personal or financial histories, and in some cases even some medical history. All of this personal identifying information (PII) is extremely valuable to bad actors. And with so many people currently in the global job market coupled with the number of applications required to receive a job offer, applicants are more likely to give their information up without thoroughly vetting every job listing.

Bad actors that are looking to capitalize on the current job market are creating websites that impersonate job boards, individual job postings, or large companies. They’re also sending targeted “recruiter” emails to unsuspecting potential job seekers in hopes that they will be interested enough in the job interview to click one of the malicious links inside. When looking at DNSFilter network data from January 2025 - October 2025, we found:

• 12,895 threat-categorized domains containing one or more of 6 hiring keywords: careers, jobs, staffing, talent, recruiting, and hiring
• 8,724 domains containing the word “jobs” that were determined to be malicious
• 88% of these malicious hiring-related domains were newly registered or newly observed domains

When you consider that 92% of the workforce is actively looking for a new job while they are at work, these malicious hiring sites become a concern for companies and individuals alike.

Protect Your Network (and Your Data)

As prevalent as these scam hiring sites and fake recruiter emails are, there are still many actions that individuals and organizations can take to protect their confidential data and prevent network breaches:

1. Be wary of unsolicited job offers, emails that seem too good to be true, and any message that requires an “urgent” response.
   
   
2. Always check the sender of emails from recruiters (and anyone for that matter) to make sure that their name and company match the email address they are sending from.
   
   
3. Hover over links inside of emails before clicking to make sure the domain matches the site you intend to visit. Also be sure to look out for long-winded domain names with weird combinations of words or numbers, domains that have lots of hyphens, or any other site domain that feels “off” to you.
   
   
4. Organizations can block newly registered and observed domains on their network to prevent potentially malicious sites from resolving, even if they are accidentally clicked.

With all of that said, if you said “yes” you’ll fill it out in the first section, we really hope the rest of this article helped to change your answer.

Ready to prevent hiring scams from ruining your day? Try DNSFilter free for 14 days now.