How Recruitment Scams Work and Why You Are the Product

Amar Kumar Thakur
5 min read · September 2026

A few weeks ago, I received a message on LinkedIn from a recruiter at a tech startup. They were offering a Founding Engineer role, the kind of opportunity most engineers dream about. I was excited. I filled out their form and started thinking about what the opportunity could mean for me.

Then they disappeared for a few days.

A few days later, late at night, I suddenly received an assessment. The message was simple: Build an AI companion in 24 hours.

I worked on it, built the project, and submitted my code the next day. I had spent real time on it because I genuinely believed I was being considered for the role.

Then they disappeared again.

Four days later, I received a rejection. There was no feedback, no explanation, and no real conversation about my submission.

At first, I thought it was simply a badly managed hiring process.

Then I started talking to other candidates.

That is when things started getting interesting.

The Setup

When I looked back at the original interaction, I understood why I had believed it was legitimate. The recruiter communicated professionally. The role sounded exciting. The company was presented as a serious technology startup. The founder was presented as having a Stanford background.

There was also a strong sense of urgency. They needed someone quickly, and the assessment had to be completed within 24 hours.

The role itself was attractive too. Founding Engineer sounds very different from a normal junior engineering position. It makes you feel like you are getting an opportunity to build something from the beginning.

The recruiter also contacted me directly. It felt personal.

Looking at all of these things together, the opportunity felt real.

And that was the point.

The entire setup made me feel selected, important, and rushed at the same time.

I invested my time and submitted real technical work because I believed there was a real opportunity on the other side.

The Pattern

After getting rejected, I started speaking with other candidates who had gone through the same process.

That is when I noticed the pattern.

Different candidates were receiving essentially the same experience. They were contacted through messages, asked to fill out forms, given a short deadline, asked to complete an assessment, and then left waiting after submitting their work.

Eventually, they received a rejection with little or no meaningful feedback.

It was not just my experience.

It appeared to be a repeated process.

New candidates would come in, complete the process, submit information and work, and then another group would go through the same cycle.

At that point, I stopped looking at it as a bad hiring process.

I started looking at it as a possible recruitment data collection pipeline.

What Could Be Valuable?

This is where the situation becomes more concerning.

When you apply for a technical job, you are not only sending a resume. You can end up sharing a large amount of information about yourself.

Your resume contains your education, work history, technical skills, location, contact details, and other professional information.

Your LinkedIn profile adds even more context about your career and professional identity.

Then there is your contact information.

Your email address, phone number, LinkedIn profile, and other details can become part of the information you provide during an application.

And then there is the assessment.

This is the part that concerns me most as an engineer.

You can spend an entire day building something for a company that you have not properly verified.

You may share your code, architecture decisions, product ideas, technical approaches, and problem solving process.

That is real work.

Once you submit it, you have much less control over what happens to it.

Why Does This Work?

The economics of this type of operation can be very simple.

Sending messages is cheap.

Creating an online form is cheap.

Hosting an assessment is cheap.

Repeating the same process with hundreds of candidates is also relatively easy.

The candidate pays in a different currency.

Time.

You spend hours researching the company. You spend hours preparing. You spend hours building the assessment. Then you spend more time waiting for a response.

And if the opportunity was never genuine, all of that time is gone.

For students and people actively searching for jobs, this can be especially damaging.

Those same hours could have been spent applying to legitimate companies, building your portfolio, learning a new technology, or preparing for interviews.

The Red Flags

Looking back, there were several things I should have questioned earlier.

The first was the lack of a clear public job posting.

If someone contacts you directly about an exciting role, take a few minutes to check whether the same position exists on the company website or other legitimate hiring platforms.

A private message does not automatically mean the opportunity is fake. But if there is no public information anywhere, it is worth asking why.

The second red flag was the extreme urgency.

The assessment had to be completed within 24 hours.

Urgent hiring can be legitimate. Startups can move quickly.

But urgency combined with a generic assessment and limited information about the company should make you slow down instead of rushing forward.

The third red flag was verification.

Before investing hours into an opportunity, look at the company website. Check its employees. Look at its LinkedIn presence. Search for its founders. Look for customers, products, funding announcements, or other information that confirms the company actually exists and is operating.

The fourth red flag was what happened after the assessment.

They were responsive when they wanted something from me.

Once I submitted the work, the communication changed.

Then there was silence.

Then a generic rejection.

That pattern should make any candidate question the process.

What Should You Do Before Applying?

The first thing is simple.

Verify the company.

Do not rely only on the information sent to you by the recruiter. Search for the company yourself. Visit its official website. Look at its employees. Search for independent information about the company.

Then verify the recruiter.

Does the person actually work there? Do they have a history of working in recruitment? Have they posted about hiring before? Does their profile match the company they claim to represent?

None of these checks guarantee that an opportunity is legitimate.

But they can help you identify obvious problems before you spend hours on an assessment.

Be Careful With Take Home Assessments

Technical assessments are normal.

There is nothing wrong with a company asking an engineer to demonstrate their skills.

The problem starts when the assessment becomes unreasonable or the company cannot explain why the work is needed.

Before starting a large assessment, ask what will happen to your submission.

Ask who will review it.

Ask whether the submission will remain confidential.

Ask whether the code will be used only for evaluating your application.

Ask what the next stage of the process will be.

These are reasonable questions.

You are not being difficult by asking them.

You are protecting your time and your work.

If You Have Already Submitted Your Work

If you have already gone through a suspicious recruitment process, do not panic.

Start by saving everything.

Keep the messages, emails, assessment instructions, submitted work, recruiter profile, company information, and timeline.

If you believe you encountered a genuine scam, report it through the platform where you were contacted and the relevant cybercrime reporting channels in your country.

Most importantly, share your experience carefully.

If you have evidence, document it.

If you are not certain about something, describe it as your experience rather than presenting it as an established fact.

That distinction matters.

This Is Bigger Than One Recruiter

The reason I decided to write about this is because the problem goes beyond one suspicious hiring process.

Job seekers are often hopeful.

They want their first opportunity.

They want to work at startups.

They want to become founding engineers.

They want to work directly with founders.

That makes these titles and promises extremely powerful.

When someone tells you that they have a role waiting for you and you only have 24 hours to prove yourself, it becomes easy to stop asking questions.

That is exactly when you should start asking more questions.

If You Are Hiring

There is also a responsibility on the other side.

If you are a founder or hiring manager, make the process transparent.

Explain the role clearly.

Tell candidates what they will be working on.

Give reasonable timelines.

Explain how assessments will be evaluated.

Respect the time candidates spend on your hiring process.

Good hiring is not only about finding talented engineers.

It is also about respecting the people who apply.

Final Thoughts

That 24 hour assessment took a lot of my time.

At the time, I thought I was simply applying for a job.

Looking back, the experience taught me something much more important.

Your time has value.

Your data has value.

Your code has value.

Not every opportunity deserves access to all three.

Before you spend an entire day building something for a company, spend a few minutes verifying that the company is real, the role is real, and the process makes sense.

A good opportunity should not require you to ignore every warning sign just because the title sounds exciting.

Stay cautious.

Verify everything.

And when something does not add up, stop and investigate before giving away your time or your work.