And they could be using your profile
In June, a former tech executive who was looking for work got an email from someone presenting as a senior talent leader at engineering consultancy Aurecon. Nobody at Aurecon had sent it.
The sender had cloned the LinkedIn profile of a genuine Aurecon employee, ABC News reported this week.
Aurecon told the ABC it was aware fraudsters sometimes misused its name, and stressed that it always holds formal interviews before making an offer and never asks candidates to pay anything up front.
That cloned profile is the important issue for employers - to a jobseeker, a real employee's name and work history make an approach look legitimate.
Figures the ACCC gave the ABC show it received 138 scam reports linked to LinkedIn in July and August 2026, with reported losses of up to $254,449. Across all channels, job and employment scam reports to Scamwatch more than doubled in 2025, according to the National Anti-Scam Centre, although the centre noted its own crackdown may have pushed reporting up.
Read next: Job and employment scams doubled in 2025
The quiet cost for honest employers
Scam coverage tends to focus on the people who lose money. Employers with genuine vacancies are paying for it too.
LinkedIn's Job Search Safety Pulse, a Censuswide survey of 500 working Australian professionals conducted in May, found 65 per cent had decided not to apply for a role they were interested in because they weren't confident it was legitimate. For 37 per cent, it had happened more than once.
That means some of the candidates you want may be scrolling past your real ads because they can't tell them apart from the fakes.
The same survey found 61 per cent had seen a job they suspected was a scam and 16 per cent said they had fallen for one, rising to 25 per cent among Gen Z. LinkedIn's own platform data showed nine in 10 reported scam attempts tried to shift the conversation to personal messaging apps, and more than half of those attempts came in the very first message.
LinkedIn career expert Brendan Wong said modern job scams are "deliberately engineered to look authentic and pressure you to act quickly".
Read next: Fraud hits employer-jobseeker trust in hiring, report finds
Your people are the props
Tech recruiter Trevor Churchley told the ABC he was personally aware of several real profiles that had been taken over or cloned, then used to approach people who had publicly flagged they were out of work.
Talent acquisition staff make useful targets for cloning, since their names lend weight to a recruitment message. Churchley also said people who add the "open to work" banner to their profiles draw attention from scammers posing as recruiters. That's worth knowing for any employer running a redundancy round, because departing staff are likely to switch the banner on.
The CVs candidates send out are another weak point. Ryan Ko, director of the University of Queensland's Cyber Research Centre, told the ABC a CV can reveal employment history, locations, certifications and even government security clearances, all of which make phishing and identity fraud more convincing. "The more they know about a victim, the easier it is to manipulate them," he said.
What worked in healthcare
Health employers have already shown what a coordinated response can achieve. Between September 2024 and March 2025, the National Anti-Scam Centre ran a job scam fusion cell, a taskforce bringing together government, law enforcement, academics and the private sector. One problem it identified was scammers impersonating healthcare providers in fake job ads to harvest personal details and money from applicants.
The centre gave tailored advice to more than 40 health organisations, from major state and territory hospitals to small services. By March 2025, Scamwatch reports involving impersonation of healthcare organisations had been almost eliminated.
ACCC deputy chair Catriona Lowe said at the time that scammers were "increasingly preying on people seeking relief from cost-of-living pressures". The taskforce also produced guides to help businesses avoid being impersonated, as HRD reported when the crackdown wrapped up.
Read next: Most employees report encountering scams during job hunting
Where HR can start
The steps below draw on advice from regulators, platforms and recruitment specialists. Most need staff time rather than budget.
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Make your careers page the source of truth. Kickresume CEO Peter Duris has urged employers to make sure every role listed on third-party sites can also be found, and applied for, on the company's own website. He also told them to "check to see if your company's name is being used fraudulently".
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Publish what you'll never do. A short public statement saying you never charge candidates fees, never recruit solely through WhatsApp or Telegram, and only email from your corporate domain gives candidates something to check against. Recruiter Hays, for example, runs a scam alert page telling candidates its consultants email from official Hays addresses.
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Get verified. LinkedIn offers verification badges for company pages, job posts and individual profiles, plus a verified recruiter label for LinkedIn Recruiter users. Candidates can click a badge to see what LinkedIn has confirmed about a profile, page or post.
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Go looking for yourself. Assign someone to check regularly for fake ads and cloned profiles using your brand, report them to the platform and to Scamwatch, and ask recruiters to flag any candidate who mentions contact from someone they don't recognise.
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Add a scam warning to exit packs. A one-page note in redundancy or outplacement material, explaining how your organisation and reputable recruiters actually operate, costs little to produce and reaches people when they're most likely to be targeted.
A statement you can adapt
The wording below is an example to start from, not legal advice. Check it against your own hiring process before it goes on your careers page.
How we recruit
All our current vacancies are listed at [careers page address]. If a role isn't there, treat it with caution.
Our recruiters will only email you from an @[company domain] address.
We will always interview you, by video or in person, before making an offer.
We will never ask you to pay a fee, buy equipment, or pay for CV writing or training.
We won't ask for your bank details, tax file number or identity documents until you have accepted a written offer.
Not sure a message is from us? Contact [team] at [email or phone]. You can also report suspected scams to Scamwatch.
Read next: Recruitment scams: common types, how to spot them, and their impact on business
LinkedIn says it blocks the vast majority of scams before members see them. For the ones that get through, candidates need to know what a genuine approach from your organisation looks like, and the employer is best placed to tell them.
