With so much corporate recruiting being conducted online these days, over 7000 US workers have been duped by a scam in which headhunters who actually hunt heads are impersonating the people hired by companies to help fill jobs.
“They remove their feathered hats and other implements when they’re on Zoom,” says Geneva Platman, COO of the US Association of Business Placement Agencies. “They they talk about how they want to help you achieve the next step in your career.”
So it’s easy to be fooled, she says – and the truth is that all they want is your head.
“As their natural habitats shrink and limit their ability to hunt heads,” says Platman,” it’s only natural that they’d adapt new methods.” Science has not been able to discern what they do with the heads once they get them, she says, though she assumes it’s nothing positive.
“I hadn’t even been looking for a job when I got a call from a woman named Marcy,” says Steve Fillstrup, a Cleveland bank extractor. “During our interview she asked me things like what size hat I wore and whether I ever got migraines.” Sensing something wasn’t right, Fillstrup never scheduled an in-person meeting, despite repeated calls from Marcy.
“He was one of the lucky ones,” says Platman. “Over the past seven months we’ve documented at least 300 instances where men and women, anxious for new possibilities, set out for meetings and haven’t been heard from since.”
