Hi fellow data professional!

It finally happened. I fell for a job scam.

Luckily I realized my naivety after responding to the initial email.

But let’s back up.

We’ll examine

• Why this particular attempt was so “real”
• What made me skeptical
• How to prevent this from happening to you

Established professionals in any field have the privileged problem of receiving unsolicited recruiter inquiries.

If it’s from a random firm I typically move it to junk; if it’s a big name company, I give a look before inevitably moving it to junk. It’s very rare I follow up, mostly because I’m happy with where I currently work.

On a Friday afternoon I received an email from a recruiter claiming to represent Nvidia. The subject line was a high salary and title that matched what I’d be eligible for in the next 1-3 years.

I don’t like third party recruiters but Nvidia is big, so I read the email from Mike of Adecco, a multinational recruiting firm.

“Mike” included a link to his corporate site and LinkedIn profile, which correctly matched the title he included in his email signature.

I questioned my eligibility for the role given its scope. The salary was on the higher end but seemed plausible after looking at data from levels.fyi. Nonetheless, I replied to learn more.

The second email triggered my skepticism. The response was overly enthusiastic, asking for commitments like notice period and travel requirements. There wasn’t much mention of my skills aside from a request to send my resume for “internal benchmarking.”

I found out it was a scam because the previously professional email signature was replaced by one with a contact email with the domain “@email.com.”

I took another look at the address they sent the email from “recruiter11@gmail.com.” This was the second red flag as an org of that size would undoubtedly have its own domain.

Some Reddit research suggested the end goal of the scam was to trigger a fake round of interviews in which the candidate would purchase a laptop from the recruiting firm to participate in Zoom interviews.

Visiting Adecco’s website was a bit funny.

The banner, before scrolling to learn about their firm, explicitly mentions their awareness of scams and instructs candidates to only respond to emails with an “@adeccona” domain.

This email “worked” on me because it pulled three levers of a mid-career professional

• Led with a big name
• Offered advancement
• Provided a “big tech” salary band

The scary thing is I’m not the ideal target. Scammers will have the highest success rate with someone in your position, new to the field and eager to explore any seemingly “legit” opportunity.

Navigating the data engineering job market is hard enough without dodging bad actors. You shouldn't have to guess whether an opportunity, or your code, is production-ready.

On June 16th I'm opening up my comprehensive vault of data engineering content with the goal of accelerating your career journey and providing a concrete pipeline to your first data engineering role.

​Click here to be among the first to get early access.​

**(Clicking this link automatically adds you to the early-access tag list so you get the release materials first; no purchase obligation necessary)**

Thanks for ingesting,

-Zach Quinn

​Medium | LinkedIn | Ebooks