- Graphic artist Julius von Brunk said he learned about job scams when he worked on a cybersecurity team at a bank.
- Desperate to find work, he said he encountered two scams while job-hunting and initially ignored red flags.
- The scams included someone impersonating a bank recruiter and a fake post on LinkedIn.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Julius von Brunk, a 41-year-old graphic designer in New York City who encountered two recruitment scams during a recent job search. His identity and background have been verified. This story has been edited for length and clarity.
I've spent most of my career in graphic design, and from 2023 to 2025, I worked in the cybersecurity department of a large bank. My job was to design newsletters, presentations, and other content about cybersecurity.
Last summer, I began looking for a new job, and I encountered two scams along the way.The first happened early on. I had just left the bank and noticed that some former colleagues from my team had gotten jobs at another bank. I wanted to work there, too. I thought we could get the band back together. But I applied several times and got rejected, including for a position that sounded identical to the one I had previously held.
Out of desperation, I went on LinkedIn and searched for recruiters at the bank. I found somebody whose profile said they were a hiring manager there. The person's account was set to private, so I couldn't tell much about them, but their bio said that if you're looking for a job at the bank, email them at a Gmail address. I thought it was weird that they didn't list a company address.
I emailed this person, and I got a reply within minutes asking me to send over my résumé. I did that and included a brief spiel about who I am, where I'm from, and what I'm looking for. They ignored everything. They wrote back asking me where I'm from and what kind of job I'm looking for. That seemed fishy.
Their grammar was bad, too, which I also thought was weird. Why would an HR person type an email as if they're texting?
Eventually, the person got back to me and came across as angry. They said my résumé was unacceptable. I replied and asked what was wrong with it. They said that to get my résumé up to the bank's standards, I'd need to go to a certain website and pay around $100 for a professional review. I'd then be given a special referral link.
I sensed something was up, but I looked at the website anyway, and it was obviously a scam. I felt kind of embarrassed because I had been emailing with this person for about an hour.
I then dug deeper on LinkedIn and found the actual person that the scammer was trying to impersonate. I messaged her to let her know. I didn't hear back, but maybe 20 minutes later, the fake account disappeared.
The second scam
I discovered the second scam a few months ago, when I found a job listing on LinkedIn for a graphic-design position at Meta. It had the Meta logo, but it wasn't from Meta's LinkedIn page. It was from one called "MetaCareers," and it had zero followers. It was as if they put up the page that same day. It was also full of emojis and seemed to be AI-generated.
I clicked a link in the listing to apply, which took me away from LinkedIn to another site. I then checked a domain registry and found out the site had been purchased the day before from a company that wasn't Meta.
To confirm my suspicion that the job ad wasn't legit, I went back to the new site and followed the instructions to click another link to apply for the job. It took me to a phishing page to try to get my Facebook login. I immediately flagged the original LinkedIn listing to LinkedIn, and within minutes, it was shut down.
After that, I continued searching for graphic design jobs. I applied to hundreds. I would check LinkedIn like a hawk. I would just refresh it every 10 minutes or so and apply to every job within my pay rate.
A brutal job market
Eventually, I got a response from a financial-services firm, which led to a phone screening with a recruiter. The next day, the recruiter called back and asked me if I recognized a person's name, and I did. By sheer coincidence, that person was my former supervisor from a job I had earlier in my career, and she was the hiring manager for the position I was seeking.
I later found out that my former supervisor told the recruiter I was the right person for the role, in part because it required a creative thinker. She knew that I build Lego creations and paint portraits of pop-culture characters in my spare time.
I got the job in April and started earlier this month.
When you're desperate for work, it's easy not to notice these scams at first. You might blindly click on something because all you're doing is searching for jobs from the moment you wake up.
I wrote a lot about my job search on LinkedIn, Reddit, and Facebook, not to get sympathy, but because people may not understand how bad the job market is. There are a lot of scammers. I have 16 years of experience in graphic design, I've worked for big banks, and I couldn't get a job anywhere for months.
Aspokesperson for LinkedIn told Business Insider via email:
"Our teams and technology work behind the scenes to spot and stop most scams before they even reach our members. If members do come across anything suspicious, we encourage them to report it so we can quickly take action like we did in both of these scenarios."
The post I designed cybersecurity content for a bank. I still almost got roped into two scams when job hunting. appeared first on Business Insider
