How to avoid job scams

This intermediate ESL lesson looks into job scams, and what people can do to avoid them. Students will learn useful vocabulary to talk about looking for and finding a job, will discuss their experience with job hunting and spotting fake job ads and offers. You can combine it with other lessons, such as “How to ace your job interview”, “How to spot a liar”, “Don’t fall for these crypto and NFTs scams”, “Phrasal verbs: job interviews”.
The lesson starts with a few conversation questions related to finding a job. After that, students look at the process of searching for and finding a job, and put them in order. This also serves as a vocabulary activity, as it introduces important vocabulary for this lesson (e.g. job seeker, job hunting, recruiter, hiring manager, to apply for a job, to be a good fit for the role). To practice, students look at 8 sentences, and decide which word or expression best describes the situation.
Next, the lesson moves on to the topic of job scams. Students look at a news headline, and discuss several questions related to job scams. Then, they find out what job scammers usually want by putting the options given into the correct category (extracting money from the victim, obtaining personal information, or making the victim word for free).
After that, students look at opposite adjectives (e.g. bogus, legitimate, genuine, fake, unprofessional, vague), and discuss red flags that indicate that a job offer is a scam. They are also given 3 examples to help them.
Video: Before watching the video, students complete the 10 tips given with the correct word. Then they watch the video “How to AVOID job scams + spot fake job offer letters“, and check their answers. The second time they watch the video, students complete the extracts given with the words they hear.
Finally, students engage in a post-listening discussion.
To review the target vocabulary from this lesson, and for more speaking practice, you can use the conversation cards.