Have you ever been approached in a overt, public manner by someone claiming to have a great opportunity for you?
It’s time bound, so you should act now or potentially lose out on a great opportunity.
They’ve made it easy to connect with them, so please (pretty please) can you send across your details?
I have and on any number of occasions, both online and in the real world.
Perhaps due in part to my background experience, training and a degree of hard earned scepticism I declined to engage with the LinkedIn comment I received yesterday.
I did, however, engage my critical thinking and engaged as follows:
◾ I screen grabbed the comment before it could be deleted by the user
◾ I analysed the other respective parties LinkedIn profiles
◾ I did some desktop research into the company they referenced
NB: as you can see below I’ve chosen to redact the other parties names, company name etc.
Some things which stood out to me that I considered during my discovery process:
◾ The person claims they previously worked at a company in an executive HR role (so not active then)
◾ The company in question does exist, has a global span with over 70,000 employees and is a technology company based in the USA with ties to enginerering and aerospace
◾ The e-mail for the alleged hiring manager they have provided ends in @gmail
Let’s just say I have some questions…
Q1. Would a former executive – one whom I have neither met nor heard of previously – genuinely act as an intermediary on behalf of any multinational company in this manner?
Q2: Would such a company not have their own HR team or teams, or outsource to a trusted and verifiable 3rd party?
Q3: Why such an indiscreet, public approach?
Q4: Two weeks and a handful of days to successfully recruit a director into any company of this size and nature seems remarkably… hasty. Rushed, as a matter of fact. Why this sense of urgency?
Q5. A check of the apparently genuine company website indicates their corporate e-mail suffixes end in their @domain name.com… not an @gmail.com one. Why the disparity?
Without clear answers to all of these questions I deemed this unsolicited approach to be as suspicious as all hell.
I asked myself the following questions?
A) Is this part of a broader phishing campaign to glean data from various LinkedIn end users?
B) Is this a spearfishing attempt targeting me in particular to some nefarious end, such as identity fraud?
C) Could this have been genuine, albeit clumsy, attempt at outreach?
Honestly I don’t know, but I chose not to take any chances.
I’m glad I screen grabbed the comment before doing anything else, as the comment has since been deleted by the other person… covering their tracks perhaps?
Read into that as you see fit.
It’s a fact of modern life in the digital / information age that practically every online touchpoint you create or interact with opens up another potential avenue to become a threat vector. LinkedIn is no exception, but it’s hardly the platform’s fault.
These threats are carried over from the real word because ‘bad actors’ have always been a thing.
Regrettably they always will, but remember the old adage:
“Forewarned is forearmed”
Stay safe out there…