How to Protect Your Identity When Applying for a Job
By Suvarna Sheth, Hcareers.com
How can job seekers rest-assure that the jobs they apply for on job boards are legitimate, and the personal information they provide is secure and confidential? Read on to see how your bases are covered when you sign up and apply for jobs on Hcareers.com.
The Washington Post recently reported on a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) crackdown of companies that promised to help people find jobs but instead turned out to be fraudulent.
One of the companies caught in the FTC bust, dubbed Operation Empty Promises, was National Sales Group, which advertised fraudulent jobs on CareerBuilder.com. The company was charging applicants a fee for background checks, according to the Post article.
Security and Confidentiality
So how can job seekers truly be certain that the jobs they are applying for and the sites they are registered with are safe and secure?
So how can job seekers truly be certain that the jobs they are applying for and the sites they are registered with are safe and secure?
“Job seeker security and confidentiality are extremely important at Hcareers,” says Bryan Sauder, director of product management – hospitality at Hcareers. “Looking for a job online has become one of the top ways to find employment in North America,” he says, “we make sure that the information a jobseeker puts into our site is in their control.”
Sauder says job seekers opt into Hcareers’ e-newsletter subscriptions and are never e-mailed without their permission. “We also offer full confidentiality on our site so that they control what an employer can and can’t see,” he adds, “we do everything we can to ensure our jobs seekers trust Hcareers and how we display their information to our clients.”
So what are some ways in which Hcareers protects job seeker information? First off, Sauder points out that Hcareers doesn’t require a lot of personal information to register; the phone number is not a required field and job seekers aren’t asked for an address or birth date.
As stated on the site’s private policy, Hcareers does not use or disclose, to outside parties, any personal information that job seekers provide, such as their name, e-mail address, phone number, and employment information, except when required by law, including the Personal Information Protection Act (British Columbia) and other applicable privacy laws. Hcareers does not sell, rent or exchange lists of job seekers or employers with other companies.
The Confidential Resume
Hcareers gives job seekers the option of putting their resume in its database. Resumes and profiles in the database can also be made confidential so that their information cannot be viewed by employers, which means that job seekers use it only apply to specific jobs online. Alternatively, job seekers can allow their resume to be searchable by all employers and recruiters who pay for access to Hcareers’ resume database.
Accessing the resume database requires an employer to call Hcareers and buy the product through a sales representative. “This ensures the employer is legitimate and they’re not simply looking to mine our database,” Sauder notes.
In addition, users have the option of setting their browser to reject cookies -- small files placed on their computer's hard drive that remember user names and passwords, etc.
But how can job seekers be confident that their personal profile is secure when they sign up to be a part of Hcareers?
According to Sauder, a job seeker’s personal profile is only accessible by employers through the resume database. The information is not public and is stored in an encrypted database only accessible through staff at Hcareers.
Furthermore, Hcareers does not use job seeker data for any other information other than the resume database and surveys. And surveys are only sent to jobseekers that have opted into receiving e-newsletters. “We do not allow access to our database by any third parties and have never and will never sell job seeker information to third parties,” Sauder remarked.
Protect Yourself and Take Control
As far as protecting yourself online as a job seeker, Sauder recommends only submitting as much information as you’re comfortable with.
“Keep your resume confidential,” he says, “if the site is more profile based like LinkedIn.com or Monster.com, make sure you are only displaying the information you want everyone to see.”
In many cases, he says that information is accessible by the public and can be used without your knowledge. Specifically, date of birth should be kept confidential or not displayed at all.
In addition, Sauder says Hcareers ensures that jobseekers are not submitting their information to fraudulent jobs by having internal staff check each posting that goes live on the site.
“When a first time client purchases a position online and posts ajob, a notification is sent to a sales representative,” he explains. “They check the job posting and follow up with the client to ensure that the posting is legitimate.”
Hcareers continues to do everything it can to protect its job-seekers’ information as well as keep fraudulent postings off the site. Sauder says Hcareers is currently working on a number of projects to make sure its content is even better, and continues to update its security software as needed.
About the Author
Suvarna Sheth researches and writes about job search strategy, career management, hiring trends and workplace issues for Hcareers.com.
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