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Gun.io
July 16, 2021 · 2 min read

A safety guide for job seekers

Job seeking can be a scary thing. You are putting yourself out there and submitting detailed information about your personal work history and skill set. It can be even scarier when you consider that you don’t know who is reading the information you are divulging. We have put together a brief safety guide for job seekers (not just ones we serve, but all types) to stay safe.

1. If you apply to a job post and you are asked for personally identifying information such as your address or date of birth before a video interview and having a formal offer extended, do not respond and contact your local authorities immediately.

2. When communicating with potential employers, be suspicious of companies using free email addresses that are not connected to their company’s domain name. For example, if you are applying to a position at Apple, but you are receiving an email from [email protected].

3. Create a separate, free email address for job seeking purposes. For example, if your personal email is [email protected] – not only does it appear unprofessional to potential legitimate employers, you minimize your risk of your email being used to log into other services to which you pay. Extra credit: buy a domain and set up your own email addresses. It’s certainly extra credit when we’re hiring, and our client companies feel the same way!

4. Only use platforms that vet their employers to confirm that they are in fact legitimate businesses and represent themselves truthfully such as Gun.io. At Gun.io, every employer that is allowed to post opportunities that solicit candidates have been thoroughly vetted against four criteria: a compelling mission; having sufficient financial wherewithal to pay market rates; a positive culture; and has integrity.

A note about us: while we occasionally use other job sites such as LinkedIn and Indeed to fulfill internal roles, there have been jobs from entities impersonating our company on both of those sites, as well as others. Please do not share your personal information with any of them.

A genuine Gun.io job post will never ask for you to directly email a non-gun.io email domain, will be impeccably written, and will include some measure of humor; the fraudulent job posts on these sites do not meet these criteria. Moreover, they are hiring for receptionists, when we are a fully remote team. Clearly, they haven’t done their research!

We hope our safety guide for job seekers keeps you on your toes and ready for your next gig!