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This is the story of how we got so popular that we are now getting impersonated...

It's very frustrating and hurtful, but recently we have received several messages from candidates asking about non-existent job opportunities, allegedly being referred by our non-existing employees. We're doing all we can to stop this, but in the meantime, these are a few steps you can go through to ensure that you're really speaking to us, and not to a scammer who's trying to weaponise your personal information.

1. Check our Meet the Team page

It might not be the case for many companies out there, but we are actually very meticulous in keeping our Team page up-to-date. Every single one of our employees is listed there as soon as they start and taken off as soon as they leave, with their work phone numbers and email addresses.

So if a Lorraine from Priority reaches out to you - it's not us. In the last 12 years, we somehow never employed anyone named Lorraine or Kris, and we'll update our Meet the Team page if that ever changes.

These are real-life examples, unfortunately, take a look below:

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2. Details about the job role

We would never get in touch with you to discuss a role without saying what it actually is. We are a specialist agency operating within just a few sectors: Retail & Sales, Healthcare and Operations & HR, and Emerging Tech on our Priority Crypto side. So you can probably see why it's impossible that we would text or email you with a non-descript 'job' without mentioning the job title and specific experience required. If the initial message doesn't mention:

• Job Title
• Location
• Salary range
• Experience or other things required (for example, driver's license or a particular software experience)

...then it's likely you're dealing with a scammer. Always ask these questions first before providing any personal details, in the 1% chance that they're a real recruiter who's just not very good at their job.

3. Phone number, name and profile picture

The scams we saw evidence of mainly happened on WhatsApp. The scammers are getting better every year, but sometimes you can still see through them - is the number a UK number? Does the photo look real or like a stock image that could have been taken straight from Google? Does the name in their WhatsApp account match what they just put in their message? Is the message written in correct English? Stay vigilant.

If you're one of the people affected by this, we can only say we're deeply sorry. We're here to provide people with awesome recruitment experiences and we're honestly quite angry that someone out there is trying to weaponise our name and brand for dishonest purposes.

Always check with our website and stay safe out there!