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jacobyf
Community Member

Possible-Probable Scam on Upwork

I am new to upwork and have not received work on the platform yet. So when I received two interview invites from prospective job agencies as you can guess I was excited. Both interviews took place over skype messaging and both interviews asked me the same set of questions which I will list here: 

 

( 1 ) Tell me about yourself
( 2 ) Are you currently employed?
( 3 ) What do you understand by keeping the Company code & conduct?
( 4 ) How would you rate your writing skills?
( 5 ) Are you a team player?
( 6 ) Tell me three of your major attributes.
(7 ) Provide an example of a time when you were able to demonstrate
excellent listening skills. What was the situation and outcome?
( 8 ) How would you be an asset to our organization?
( 9 ) Tell me why you feel you are the right person for this project?
( 10 ) For high quality and timely writing, what will you require from us?

 

The second half of the questions is where it gets sketchier:

 

1. How many hours are you willing to Work per week? (10hrs Minimum per week )
2. Are you willing to work flexible or long hours? what time range?
3. When would you be available to start if HIRED?
4. Do you have an HP laserjet printer, copier, and scanner?
5. How much will you like to receive as your hourly pay?
6. Payroll Method (Check/Direct deposit)?
7.
What is the name of the Bank which you currently operate with so as to
see if it tallies financially with the company's official salary payment
account?

 

Give or take a few questions, both "organizations" sent the same questions. Both asked about my bank info and both wanted to pay outside of Upwork. One job posting was removed and one is still up. Here is the one still up:

 

**Edited for community guidelines**

 

Both job posters had Upwork accounts that were made in the past couple days. I am fairly certain that both are scams, but I would like some confirmation from some more experienced Upwork freelancers. In addition, I would like to spread awareness to other new freelancers about scams like this. In the job posting above there are 15-20 proposals and 16 people interviewing for the job which seems like another red flag.

 

One claimed to be **Edited for community guidelines**. The other didn't list a company name. I am currently awaiting a reply from both and did not give them any information they could use against me. 

 

I have also attached the pdf that one company sent me after reviewing my proposal.

 

If you got this far, thank you for reading. Please comment below if you are experienced something similar on Upwork. And if it is 100% a scam I request that Upwork remove the job posting that is still up and notify any freelancers who were contacted by these organizations.

 

 

 

2 REPLIES 2
martina_plaschka
Community Member

They claim to be the upwork HR department but at the same time a third party company? That makes no sense and should have been your first red flag. Nobody uses the term hiring manager. 

No client looking for a freelancer will ask that many questions about your person. They are supposed to gain your trust so that you will accept the fake check they will send you (you are in the US, right?)

It's a bit weird that they tried this scam on you twice from different accounts, that's pretty sloppy. 

 

BojanS
Community Manager
Community Manager

Thanks for flagging this for us, Jacob. I've checked and it looks like the job has already been taken down because it was in violation of Upwork TOS and action has been taken on the client account. 

 

Please, check this help article for more information on how to use the flag option found on each job post or message to report any suspicious or inappropriate content. Also, check out this post for more tips on how to avoid questionable jobs.

 

Thank you!

~ Bojan
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