Why this is the first thing to learn
International recruitment attracts fraud because the candidate is far away, unfamiliar with local norms, and highly motivated. The good news is that fraudulent offers follow a small number of repeated patterns.
1. Payment before process
A demand for a significant upfront fee — especially for a 'reservation', 'slot' or 'guarantee' — before any interview or documented offer is the most common pattern. Legitimate third-party costs do exist: government fees, translation, credential evaluation, medical checks. The difference is that these are payable to the named institution charging them, are itemised, and can be verified independently.
2. A guarantee nobody can give
No recruiter controls a visa decision, and no recruiter can guarantee a job. Both outcomes rest with parties who are not in the room — the employer and a national authority. A guarantee is either a misunderstanding of the process or a deliberate misrepresentation of it.
3. An employer you cannot independently find
Verify the company exists in the destination country's public business register. Check that the role appears on the employer's own careers page. Confirm the recruiter's email domain matches a real organisation. An offer that survives none of these checks is not an offer.
4. Pressure on the clock
Urgency is the standard tool for preventing verification. Real hiring processes tolerate you taking a day to check something; a process that collapses under 24 hours of scrutiny was designed to.
5. Eligibility nobody mentioned
If no one has asked about your qualifications, your language level or your permit category, no one has assessed whether you can legally take the role. A serious recruiter raises eligibility early, because it determines whether the rest is worth doing.
- Ask for the employer's full registered name and address
- Ask which permit category the role falls under
- Ask what happens to any money paid if the application is refused
- Ask for the fee structure in writing, before you commit
