A couple of years ago, I wrote a post warning job seekers about some of the most common resume writing scams. One of the most common scams I mentioned was the free resume critique offer. A resume writing service offers to review your resume in exchange for free, “honest” feedback about what needs to be improved. Of course, since the company also just happens to write resumes, they of course offer to fix it for you as well.

Apparently these services have upped their game. As more job seekers understand the importance of having a resume that can successfully pass a company’s ATS keyword screen, a new scam has emerged. It’s a free offer to upload your resume to a portal for a free scan to ensure that it is equipped to pass an ATS screen.

The Fix

As with the free critique, problems are quickly identified followed by a convenient, quick fix resume writing offer. There are legitimate ATS scanning sites out there, and I’ll list the ones that I know of at the end of this  article. This is a serious scam that has caused several unsuspecting job seekers to become victims of identity theft so it’s important to know what to watch out for.

Smoke and Mirrors

There are currently more than 200 different ATS systems currently in use in the U.S. These systems are amnually programmed with keywords based on a specific job announcement.  If a company asks you to upload your resume, there is no way they can offer accurate feedback without the actual job announcement. The job announcement keywords are what an ATS system scans. Without a announcement, how can a system know what words and phrases to scan?

Never upload your resume without first researching the company. Some of these scam scorers are from fake companies that don’t exist; and when you upload your resume with all of your contact information, a thief then has access to your personal data.

I won’t bother naming the offending websites because they are known for frequently changing names. Just know that any ATS scorer that does NOT include your job announcement is not legitimate. It’s a scam.

So are there any legit resume scorers?

Yes, there are. At this time, Jobscan.co is the only one I know about. In the meantime, I’ll keep researching to find others and keep you informed

Photo Credit: Unsplash.com, LinkedIn Sales Navigator