Career advice

A recruiter writes to you on WhatsApp. The job is real, the company name is one you can find online, the salary is good. Then comes the sentence: "To secure the position, transfer 350 euros for document processing." Everything after that sentence is a scam, even if the job itself exists.

The rule almost nobody tells applicants

In most European countries a private employment agency may not charge a jobseeker a placement fee. The employer pays for recruitment, because the employer is the one buying the service. This principle comes from ILO Convention 181 and is written into national law in Germany, the Netherlands, France, Poland and elsewhere. The details differ, and a few narrow exceptions exist for specific sectors, but the everyday version holds: if you are being asked to pay to be hired, something is wrong.

Scammers know that people arriving from outside the EU often do not know this. That is the whole business model. The fee is small enough to feel plausible and large enough to be worth stealing, and it is always urgent.

Costs that are real

Moving for work does cost money, and an honest employer will tell you which part is yours:

• Visa and residence permit fees paid to a consulate or an immigration office, with a receipt in your name.
• Certified translations and apostilles for diplomas and certificates.
• Recognition of qualifications, which matters for nurses, electricians, welders and drivers.
• Travel, unless the contract says the employer covers it.

You pay these to institutions, not to a person. Every one of them produces a document. If a "fee" cannot be paid at an official counter or on a government website, it is not a fee.

Five things worth checking before you send anything

Look up the company in the national business register. Germany has the Handelsregister, the Netherlands the KVK, Estonia the e-Business Register, and most of them are free to search. A company that hires forty people has a registration number.

Check whether the email address matches the company domain. Recruiters at real firms rarely use a personal Gmail account to send contracts.

Ask for the employer's name and address in writing before you discuss anything else. An agency that will not name the employer is either hiding a bad client or does not have one.

Search the phone number and the company name together with the word "scam". Two minutes, and it works more often than you would expect.

Say out loud what you were asked to pay for. "I am being asked to send money to a private account for a job I have not signed a contract for." If it sounds absurd when you say it, it is.

If you already paid

Stop paying immediately. A second payment is always requested and never the last. Keep every message, receipt and transfer confirmation, then report the case to the police in your own country and to the labour inspectorate of the country where the job supposedly was. Recovery is rare, but reports are how these networks get shut down, and the inspectorate can act against a company that is genuinely involved.

A good offer survives questions. Nobody who actually wants you to start work in three weeks will withdraw the offer because you asked who the employer is.