The safest way to check a recruiter is to ignore the contact details they gave you and rebuild the connection yourself. Scams fall apart the moment you go around them.
The rule
A genuine recruiter can be verified through the company, welcomes the check, and keeps the process on normal channels. If verifying them is hard, or they push back when you try, treat the offer as a scam until proven otherwise.
How to verify in five minutes
- Open a new tab and find the company by typing its name into a search engine, not by clicking a link in the message.
- Look for the recruiter on the company's team page, its verified profile, or by calling the company's main line.
- Reply only through the company's official email domain, and confirm the role on its careers page.
- Check that the recruiter's email is the company's real domain, not a free or lookalike address.
What a scammer does instead
They keep you on WhatsApp or text, get vague when you ask to verify them, rush you toward an offer, and ask for money or your ID before any real interview. That pattern is recruiter impersonation. A real recruiter, by contrast, is happy to confirm their identity through the company and to keep things on its official channels, so resistance to a simple check is itself a strong signal.
What to do
If the recruiter checks out, continue with normal caution. If they do not, stop, share nothing, and report the profile to the platform and the FTC. The complete guide has more. To skip the manual work, paste the message into the free checker and it runs these checks for you.