How to spot a fake job posting

No legitimate employer in India charges a candidate money. Not a registration fee, not a "security deposit", not a laptop deposit, not training charges, not GST on an offer letter, not visa processing for an overseas role. The moment anyone asks you to pay to get or keep a job, the conversation is over — that is the scam, whatever explanation comes with it.

Scammers know this rule is well known, so the fee is usually framed as refundable ("returned with your first salary") or as a third-party cost ("the courier charges for your joining kit"). It is not refundable. There is no kit.

• WhatsApp and Telegram messagesfrom an unknown number offering part-time work — often "like YouTube videos and earn ₹150 per task". The first small payouts are real; they are bait. The "prepaid tasks" that follow take your money.
• Impersonation of big brands. Offer letters carrying the logo of TCS, Infosys, Accenture or a well-known bank, sent from a Gmail or lookalike domain. The companies being impersonated publish warnings about these constantly — the letter being professional-looking proves nothing.
• Fake "consultancies" for overseas jobs— Dubai, Singapore, Canada — collecting lakhs as visa or placement fees, then delivering forged documents or nothing. Some of these operations have trafficked applicants into scam compounds in Southeast Asia; the Ministry of External Affairs has issued repeated advisories. Verify any overseas recruiter against the list of licensed agents on the government's eMigrate portal before paying anyone anything.
• Fake interview calls after you upload your resume to job portals. Scammers scrape portals for numbers, then call posing as HR from a company you actually applied to.

• You are asked to pay anything, at any stage, for any reason.
• You got an offer without a real interview, or the whole “interview” happened in a WhatsApp or Telegram chat.
• The salary is far above market rate for the role — ₹50,000 a month for part-time data entry is not a job, it is bait.
• The recruiter's email is on Gmail, Yahoo or Outlook instead of a company domain — or a lookalike domain like tcs-careers.in instead of tcs.com.
• There is artificial urgency: pay within two hours, only three slots left, the offer expires tonight.
• You are asked for an OTP, your full Aadhaar and PAN scans, or bank details before any interview has happened.
• The offer letter has spelling errors, a missing or unverifiable CIN, or an address that does not match the company’s registered office.

• Find the company's career page yourself.Type the company name into Google — never use the link in the message. If the vacancy is real, it should exist on the official careers page or the company's ATS (Greenhouse, Lever, Workday and similar).
• Check the sender's domain letter by letter.The part after the @ must exactly match the company's real website.
• Call the official HR number— from the company's website, not from the offer letter — and ask them to confirm the offer reference.
• Look up the company on the MCA portal (mca.gov.in → Check Company Name/CIN). A real Indian company has a CIN, a registered address and named directors.
• Search "company name + scam". Most active scam campaigns have already been reported by other candidates.

Scammers usually move money out of the receiving account within 30–60 minutes. Speed matters more than anything else:

• Call 1930 — the national cybercrime helpline, 24×7. They can ask banks to freeze the money while it is still in transit.
• File a complaint at cybercrime.gov.in, the official reporting portal. Keep the acknowledgement number.
• Do not delete anything. Screenshot the chats, save the offer letter PDF, the UPI/bank payment confirmations, and the phone numbers. These are the evidence your complaint and FIR are built on.
• Tell your bank and dispute the transaction, then file an FIR at your local police station or cyber cell — the FIR is what lets the bank act formally on recovery.

We built this platform around the same rule this guide starts with: applying is free, always. Every listing links only to the employer's official career page or ATS, we re-check those links automatically, and we never collect applications or documents ourselves. If a listing here ever looks suspicious to you, report it and we will review it.