Job-hunting designer nearly fell for two recruitment scams

A 41-year-old graphic designer in New York City says his search for a new role in 2024 and 2025 exposed two recruitment scams on major platforms—one pushing him to pay about $100 for a “professional review” and a special referral link, and another using a fake

When he had already spent hours chasing leads, the message arrived fast—so fast it almost felt like a breakthrough.

Julius von Brunk. a 41-year-old graphic designer in New York City. said he was still fresh out of a job at a large bank last year when he decided to try getting back in touch with the people he’d worked alongside in cybersecurity. From 2023 to 2025, he worked in the cybersecurity department of that large bank, designing newsletters, presentations, and other content about cybersecurity.

Last summer, he began looking for a new job and ran into two recruitment scams along the way.

The first scam began with rejection. He said some former colleagues from his team had gotten jobs at another bank, and he applied several times to work there too. He was rejected repeatedly, including for a position he described as sounding identical to the role he previously held.

Out of desperation, he went on LinkedIn and searched for recruiters at the bank. He found an account whose profile said the person was a hiring manager there. The account was set to private. so he couldn’t verify much from posts or history. but the bio told him that if he was looking for a job at the bank. he should email a Gmail address. He said it felt unusual that there was no company address.

After he emailed the person, he received a reply within minutes asking him to send over his résumé. He did, including a brief introduction about who he is, where he’s from, and what he was looking for. Then the conversation stalled—this time with the recruiter ignoring his details and asking him where he was from and what kind of job he was looking for. He said it seemed “fishy.”.

He also noticed the grammar. He described it as bad, and said it didn’t match what he expected from an HR contact.

Eventually, the account turned angry. The person told him his résumé was unacceptable. When he asked what was wrong with it. they said his résumé needed to meet the bank’s standards and that he would have to go to a certain website and pay around $100 for a professional review. The recruiter said that after payment, he would be given a special referral link.

Von Brunk said he sensed something was up, but he still went to the website. He found it was obviously a scam. He felt embarrassed, he said, because he had been emailing back and forth with the account for about an hour.

To verify what was happening, he dug deeper on LinkedIn and found the actual person the scammer was trying to impersonate. He messaged her to warn her. He said he didn’t hear back—but about 20 minutes later, the fake account disappeared.

The second scam came from a job listing that looked like it belonged to Meta. A few months before his eventual hire, he said he found a LinkedIn listing for a graphic-design position at Meta. It carried the Meta logo, but the listing wasn’t posted from Meta’s LinkedIn page. Instead, it came from a page called “MetaCareers,” which had zero followers and appeared to have been created that day. The page, he said, was full of emojis and seemed AI-generated.

He clicked the link in the listing to apply. That action took him off LinkedIn to another site. He then checked a domain registry and found the site had been purchased the day before from a company that wasn’t Meta.

To confirm his suspicion, he went back to the site and followed the instructions to click another link to apply. He said it led to a phishing page designed to get a Facebook login.

He immediately flagged the original LinkedIn listing to LinkedIn, and within minutes, he said it was shut down.

After those close calls, he said he kept applying—at speed and at scale. He applied to hundreds of jobs, refreshing LinkedIn “like a hawk,” restarting applications about every 10 minutes and applying to every position within his pay rate.

His job search also exposed just how thin the margin can be between a legitimate hiring process and a trap. “When you’re desperate for work, it’s easy not to notice these scams at first,” he said. In his telling. the daily routine of checking jobs from the moment he wakes up can make people click without slowing down.

The turnaround, he said, came through a recruiter call connected to someone he already knew. He eventually received a response from a financial-services firm and moved to a phone screening. The next day, the recruiter called back and asked if he recognized a person’s name. He recognized it—by coincidence—and said it was his former supervisor from an earlier job in his career. He said she was the hiring manager for the position he was seeking.

Von Brunk later learned that his former supervisor told the recruiter he was the right person for the role. She cited that the job required a creative thinker. he said. and she also referenced his personal work—building Lego creations and painting portraits of pop-culture characters in his spare time.

He got the job in April and started earlier this month.

Von Brunk said he posted a lot about his job search on LinkedIn. Reddit. and Facebook. not to ask for sympathy. but because he believes many people don’t understand how bad the job market has become—and how many scammers are operating in it. He said he has 16 years of experience in graphic design and had worked for big banks. yet he still couldn’t find a job anywhere for months.

A spokesperson for LinkedIn said. via email. that “our teams and technology work behind the scenes to spot and stop most scams before they even reach our members.” The spokesperson added that if members do come across anything suspicious. they should report it so the platform can take action quickly “like we did in both of these scenarios.”.

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