Hong Kong students struggle to spot real jobs among bogus ones amid rise in scams

The number of incidents also represented a 60 per cent increase from the 217 cases logged in April.

Lawmaker Johnny Ng Kit-chong warned students to be cautious when looking at job listings that promised high salaries but required no experience.

“Young people should never believe that high salaries can be earned through little to no work. That’s not how Hong Kong works, and I believe people should take extra care about this issue,” he said.

The legislator advised students to check such messages for any company addresses and compare them with those listed on the website of Hong Kong’s Companies Registry.

Ng also told students to be especially wary of “employers” who asked for a deposit before starting a job.

“Most companies will never ask you to pay in order to let you work for them,” he said.

Zulfaqar said the bogus recruiters often used informal greetings such as “hi” or “hey”, before sending a vague job description. “They will later reveal their higher salary if you decide to respond and negotiate with them,” she said.

Some suspected scammers also attempted to push Zulfaqar to share her bank details and other personal information, despite her not saying whether she was interested in accepting any offers.

She recalled that while hunting for part-time jobs in May, she frequently received WhatsApp messages claiming to offer positions such as managing officers and public relations specialists.

“Some recruiters don’t show the salary on the job listing right away though,” the 18-year-old said.

“They will usually chat with you, build rapport with you and then show you their high salary offer, hoping you will agree with them to join their company after they’ve been friendly with you. This is a common strategy that online job scammers use.”

Lee even found herself caught up in an “in-person employment scam” earlier this year after a classmate asked her for a cash loan and subsequently offered her a job.

“This classmate of mine didn’t have his business licence, he just claimed to have a start-up company himself,” she said.

She even visited his office in a car park basement near Mong Kok East, which she described as “huge, yet eerily blank”.

Her classmate kept saying: “Don’t worry, we won’t scam you!”

But after getting a bad feeling about the offer, Lee made her excuses, rushed from the car park basement and never looked back.

She later learned that some social media users had accused the company of running a pyramid scheme.

Lee said that like so many other students, she was just looking for a part-time summer job before the incident.

“I couldn’t believe that scams and frauds can happen so close to us, even on campus grounds,” she said.

“This whole incident taught me to never trust job recruiters fully, even if they are your acquaintances and you know them well in person.”

Nellie Gaiger, a first-year politics student at HKU, also expressed concerns about the increasing number of online job scams.

“They tried to offer me jobs that make a passive income, with no experience and university degree required,” she said.

Gaiger said she was vigilant when looking over job posts, meaning she could usually spot scammers but struggled to know which adverts were credible.

“Seeing how common these fraud cases are discourages me from believing real job advertisements, and deters me from applying to them.”

In February, Hong Kong police upgraded their “Scameter” platform so that the search engine could better help users identify online and offline scams.