When corporate recruiter Kirsten Lambert came into work this week, the last thing she probably expected to see was a LinkedIn message from yours truly asking about the new position she had just offered me earlier in the day. That’s because she had made no such offer. It was a scam. Someone impersonating her had spent the better part of three hours "interviewing" me via Google Hangouts for a position that was never mine in the first place.

Fortunately, I’ve been around the industry long enough to know how the recruitment process is supposed to work. And in this case, I was suspicious from the outset. For starters, this "fake" Kirsten wasn’t the first person from the firm I’d interacted with. An equally fictitious "Helen Meek" had contacted me over the weekend to tell me that she’d seen my profile on ZipRecruiter and that she was "impressed by my qualifications" -- that I’d be a "great fit for her Software Engineer position at Belcan, LLC, in Windsor, CT" (one of my four homes is located in a nearby town, so…easy commute!).

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