The creation of job posting websites like monster.com, hotjobs.com, careerbuilder.com or even dice.com has really made the marketplace of employers finding employees and employees finding employers an automated, fast and high quality process. Of course, finding 300 resumes in a week is easy. Finding the 5 resumes of the people that you really intend to interview is another story.
The visitor’s familiarity with job sites and knowing that they can lead to interviews and hopefully a job or a better job makes them vulnerable, and makes the thief’s job easier.
A story in BusinessWeek highlights the risk of ‘how much information’ you should give to a jobs website. In the story, identity thieves are asking for your social security number, drivers licence number, mailing address and birthdate details – even before you start the search let alone start the job.
My recommendation? Never divulge birthdate information except to family, and never, ever, ever give your SSN to a website.
