Beware of recruiters offering jobs with XXL salaries: it could be a scam

Australia | A warning to all in the brewing community: Within days, two of our readers in Australia received flattering emails from two different US recruiters. Feigning interest, one reader replied and subsequently received the pitch: an exceedingly well-renumerated brewing industry job down under. The snag: he should first engage with an “Executive Mandate Strategist” (against a fee, of course) to do better during the recruitment process. Being friends, they told each other about the emails they had received independently and noticed that there is a pattern.

Having seen the emails sent to our readers, it becomes apparent that the alleged US recruiters had clearly used their respective LinkedIn profiles for the pitch. Both approaches significantly varied in length, which may be due to how detailed (or not) their profiles were. But the stylistic patterns used in both approaches still scream “AI-generated writing”.

What made our readers smell a rat were two points: both recruiters used a gmail root domain and did not supply any other professional details apart from their names and office locations. There was no quick phonecall or videocall as is customary in recruitment. The other clue to a scam was the astronomical remuneration package being offered, which was about 3 to 5 times over the odds for Australia.

One reader tried to connect with the alleged recruiter via LinkedIn to inquire whether the job offer was genuine but there was no response at all. So either the recruiter is tired of messages related to some scam or the recruiter’s entire profile is fake.

The obvious purpose of the scam is to make people fork out thousands of dollars to get some “executive coaching”. However, this type of scam does not make any money unless it is large-scale.

The impunity is quite outrageous and we at BRAUWELT International wonder if anybody would fall for something like this. Always remember: If the offer sounds too good to be true, it probably is.