Avoiding Job Scams in Handshake

Handshake Trust Scores

The Office of Career Management for Fisher takes precautions to prevent fake employers from posting scams camouflaged as real internships and jobs. Before an employer is allowed to post a job in Handshake to Ohio State students, the employer must be approved by a staff member. Step one in the approval process is checking the employer’s Trust Score (0-100%) in Handshake. If the Trust Score is not above 80% a Fisher staff member checks the following:

• Does the company website address lead to a legitimate website for the employer?
• Check glassdoor.com reviews
• Is the physical address a real address for a business? Not an apartment or storage unit
• Review why the employer was flagged by other schools

If the employer fails to pass anyone of these checks the employer is declined and cannot post jobs at Ohio State.

Flagging an Employer

If an employer passed our checks but is recruiting inappropriately, Career Management Staff and students at Ohio State can flag the employer to warn others and take away their access to post jobs at Ohio State. An employer can be flagged for the following reasons:

• Insufficient or mismatching profile information: This is for companies that have a nonworking website, or the address doesn't match what is listed on their site, the email domain for the user is different from the corporate/expected domain, etc.
• Poor hiring practices: This includes a bad interviewing experience from a student, poor communication between the company and applicant, recruiter was a no-show to a registered event or fair, etc.
• Low grade opportunities: This includes jobs that are strictly commission based, door to door sales or cold calling, multilevel marketing, internships that have program fees, etc.
• The employer is spamming students: examples include repeated job postings or messages
• This is a fraudulent or fake employer: This is for employers that have demonstrated fraudulent behavior/activity.
• Other: Everything else that doesn't fit in one of the other categories - think, nonworking website, mismatching location information on the profile/website, unpaid fair/event, etc.

Student Reviews in Handshake

Finally, reviews written by students about their internships and internship employers are one more way students can avoid poor internship programs and employers running scams. Students can write reviews and read views on the Employers page.