A message from a recruiter on LinkedIn is usually good news. Most of them are real people with a real role to fill. A small share are not, and the fake ones have learned to look a lot like the genuine article, so the useful skill is reading the profile behind the message before you reply with anything that matters.
This piece is about that reading. For scams in general, the warning signs and the safe habits, our guide on avoiding job scams already covers the ground. Here the focus is narrower: the profile, the company Page, and the moment a chat starts to drift.
What a genuine recruiter profile usually looks like
A real recruiter tends to leave a trail. Their profile shows a work history that makes sense: a role at an agency or an in-house talent team, often a previous job before that, sometimes a move from sales or HR into recruiting. The dates line up. The current employer on the profile matches the company named in the message, or the message explains the link clearly.
Then look at who they know. A recruiter at a mid-sized logistics firm will usually be connected to people who also list that firm as their employer, and to candidates and hiring managers in that sector. Their activity over time matters too. Real recruiters post job openings, share colleagues' posts, comment on industry news, and have done so for a while.
Some profiles also carry a verification mark. LinkedIn offers free, optional identity and workplace verification, and it appears on some profiles. It is a helpful clue that a real person sits behind the account and that a workplace claim has been checked in some way. It is not a guarantee, and plenty of genuine recruiters have never bothered with it. Our piece on whether the verification badge is worth it covers the badge itself.
A profile also shows some account information to other members, which is worth a glance when the rest feels thin.
The thin profile and the stock-photo smile
Fake recruiter profiles fail in predictable places. The photo is too polished, the kind of bright studio headshot you might find on a stock image site, or it shows a face that looks slightly off in a way you cannot quite name. A reverse image search on the photo takes a minute and sometimes settles the question at once.
The profile itself is often new or hollow. There is a headline full of hiring language ("Hiring now! Remote roles, great pay!") and very little underneath. The work history is a single line, or it lists a famous employer with no detail at all. Connections are few, or they are many but random: people scattered across countries and industries with no visible link to the recruiting job.
Watch the activity too. A fake account often has no posts, or a burst of generic reposts all from the same few days. Real careers are messy. Fabricated ones are tidy and recent.
None of these clues proves anything alone, since a new recruiter can have a sparse profile in their first month. But when the photo, the history, the connections and the activity all point the same way, take it seriously.
Why the company Page check is not enough
The obvious next step is the company Page. If it has a logo, a description and a list of employees, the matter feels closed.
It is not. A company Page is easy to create, and scammers know that candidates check it. Some build a polished Page for a company that does not exist, or one that imitates a real brand with a slightly different name. They then attach a handful of fake "employees" to it, each profile vouching for the others. From the outside it looks like a small, functioning business.
So treat the Page as one clue, not a verdict. Ask whether the people listed as staff have their own believable histories. Ask whether the company has a footprint outside LinkedIn: a proper website, a real address, coverage in local press, reviews from former staff. And if the recruiter claims to work for a well-known brand, compare the Page they link to with the one you find by searching for that brand yourself.
The moment the conversation leaves LinkedIn
This is where many fake approaches show themselves. After a friendly first message, the "recruiter" asks you to move the chat to a messaging app. The reasons sound practical: it is faster, or the hiring manager prefers it. Once you move, you lose the protection and the record that LinkedIn messages give you.
What follows is often an "interview" conducted entirely by text. You answer typed questions, sometimes for an hour, and no person ever appears on video or picks up a phone. Then, quickly, comes an offer. Genuine employers rarely hire anyone they have never spoken to.
The requests that come next are the real point of the exercise:
- copies of your ID or passport "for onboarding" before any contract exists
- your bank details so they can "set up payroll"
- payment for training, a starter kit, or equipment that will "be reimbursed"
- an instruction to install software, a remote-access tool or a "work app" from a link they send
Any one of these, before you have signed a real contract with a real employer, is enough reason to stop. Some genuine recruiters do work on behalf of a company other than the one on their own profile, and the next article in this series explains how outsourced recruiting works. But a real one will never ask you to pay or to hand over your bank login.
Checking an approach without tipping off the sender
If something feels off but you are not sure, check it through a route the sender does not control. Go to the employer's own careers page by typing the company's address yourself or searching for it, not by using a link in the message. See whether the role is listed. If it is missing, that is not proof of a scam, but note it.
You can also call the company's main switchboard and ask whether the person works there. HR teams would much rather answer that question than see their brand used for fraud. An email to the general HR address works too.
If the approach turns out to be genuine, nothing is lost. A good recruiter will not mind a short delay while you check, and our guide on how to reply to a recruiter on LinkedIn covers the next steps.
If it is fake, report the profile. Members can report fake profiles, messages, posts, jobs and company Pages from inside LinkedIn, and doing so helps protect the next person on that recruiter's list. Then block the account.
If you already sent your CV
It happens. A CV is a dense bundle of personal data: name, phone, email, often your city and your full work history. If you sent one to a fake recruiter, a few steps are worth taking now.
- Expect phishing. Messages that use details from your CV to sound credible ("Following up on your application with...") are a common next move. Be slow to click links or open attachments that arrive in the weeks after.
- Change reused passwords, especially for your email account. If you have used the same password anywhere, change it there first, and turn on two-step verification wherever it is offered.
- If you shared ID or bank details, contact your bank and, where your country offers it, the authority that handles identity fraud.
- Report the profile and keep screenshots of the conversation.
For the future, consider keeping two versions of your CV: a full one for employers you have verified, and a lighter one without your home address or date of birth for early conversations. If you build your CV from your LinkedIn profile with a tool like Postulit, it is easy to export a trimmed copy for that first contact.
The short version: read the profile, distrust the Page on its own, stay on LinkedIn until you have spoken to a real person, and never pay or install anything to get a job.
Next time a recruiter message lands, spend two minutes on the profile before you answer. Check the work history, the connections and the activity, and confirm the role through the employer's own site. That habit costs almost nothing and stops most fake approaches before they get anything useful from you.