Morning Brew - 💵 ​​It’s a scam

Time-saving tools and products we’re really into rn.

Canned air is so Gen X, ya? To get your keyboard clean in 2022, try out this cleaning putty. It’s goo. It cleans. It’s doubly satisfying.

If you’ve ever dragged yourself out of bed for an early morning yoga session, you’ll reluctantly agree it’s a nice start to the day. But if that feels hard, the Yoga Wake Up alarm clock app is a low-impact way to wake up with guided breathing and light stretching (that can be done in bed).

For decades, predatory lenders targeted NYC taxi drivers who needed to borrow money for their medallion licenses. The Nation’s deep dive shows how an incredibly diverse group of people came together to achieve debt forgiveness after years of being ignored.

What’s top of mind at the watercooler.

When experienced exec assistant Kit Cali moved from Boston to Philadelphia to be with her partner, she immediately began searching for jobs on LinkedIn.

She had few personal and professional connections to tap into in Philly, so she hit the ground running and applied to every remote and hybrid EA position she could find.

Cali told Sidekick that she aimed for “low-hanging fruit” first—listings that didn’t require a cover letter because applying would be quick. You might imagine that the worst case scenario would be radio silence, but much to her delight at first, she saw response after response hit her inbox. Unfortunately, Cali said those responses “immediately were ringing some alarm bells,” offering super high pay or having critical grammatical errors or operational contradictions in their communications.

“[For instance] the English wouldn’t be idiomatic, or [the job posting] would be for an executive assistant position but say, ‘There’s an evening shift,’” she said. “Executive assistants don’t have day and night shifts.”

There were other warning signs, too. In one case, the person emailing her didn’t have an email address that matched the name of the company. In some instances, even the name of the supposed recruiter seemed like “not a real name someone would have,” Cali said. Profile images often looked like stock photos, and the suspicious companies wouldn’t have any employees listed on LinkedIn.

Then there was the biggest red flag: Cali said one individual posing as a recruiter requested money from her to run a background check.

“No company is going to ask you to give them money to hire you—especially a company that’s claiming to pay $36 an hour,” she said, noting that the advertised pay was unusually high for an entry-level executive assistant position, which usually pays an average of $20 an hour.

Cali reported the listing to LinkedIn. When contacted for this story, no representatives from either LinkedIn or Indeed were available for interviews, but the two services shared statements on safe job-searching via email.

Indeed stated in its email that it “removes tens of millions of job listings each month that do not meet [its] quality guideline” and it “will not do business with an employer if their job listings do not pass [its] stringent quality guidelines.”

LinkedIn shared a blog post with Sidekick describing its “automated defenses and people reviewers to stop fake accounts, spam, and scams.” The platform’s most recent transparency report also shows that between July to December 2021, its AI defense technology stopped 11.9 million fake accounts at registration and restricted 4.4 million accounts before they were reported. But another 127,000 accounts slipped through this net and weren’t restricted until after a user reported bad behavior.

So while there are precautions in place to protect job seekers, some scammers will still find workarounds. To protect yourself, Cali shared this advice:

• Read websites or materials about hiring norms. If you know what’s normal, you’ll be better able to spot what’s abnormal. And stay sharp because some red flags are subtler than others. Cali said that she reads Sidekick (awww, shucks!), and The Cut’s Ask a Manager column. We also like the Harvard Business Review and Fast Company.
• Follow basic cybersecurity best practices. Cali advised job seekers to ask themselves: “Is there consistency between names of the people who are on LinkedIn, the names of the people who are interviewing you, and the URLs of their email addresses? Is there a record of the company existing besides their website and their LinkedIn page? Are their employees on LinkedIn listed?...Is the job being described in a way that [matches] your experience as a person who works that job?” If the answer to one or more of these questions is “no,” beware!
• Talk to your peers. If you’ve been scammed, get your story out there. The more information everyone has about circulating scam tactics, the more we can all help squeeze out bad actors.

Finally, a tip from us: If you’re searching for jobs on a certain site like Indeed or LinkedIn, read up on their safety guidelines. Trust your gut and always do your due diligence if you suspect any funny business.—SS

After taking the steps necessary to turn an idea into a business, the next challenge is making the business grow. No matter how good the idea is, it can’t grow from any kind of one-size-fits-all blueprint (because that doesn’t exist). Even the savviest entrepreneurs will make mistakes. The founders on the Solo List confronted challenges head-on, and gave Sidekick a closer look at how they navigated early stumbles and celebrated big wins.

And to find out more about the founders and how they created their businesses, check out The Solo List, sponsored by Catch.

Your punch list for when you punch out.

Watch: Hello, Sidekickers! Leah here, editor of your *favorite* newsletter. I’m filling in for the indefatigable Sabrina and Maliah, and that means no rules. Today, I’ll be combining Watch and Read into one single deranged recommendation: Larva. Larva is a series of animated shorts featuring two grubs named Red and Yellow inching around in a sewer, on a desert island, and in the big city. My three-year-old daughter calls the show “Snakes on Beach” and “Snakes in City”—and if I put on the wrong episode…well, send thoughts and prayers.

Isaac Butler wrote about Larva for Slate back in 2018, and he pretty much nailed it when he called it the most terrifying show on Netflix. Red and Yellow communicate entirely through tears and snot, and they’re often in mortal peril. Common Sense Media warns the show has no educational value but kids will love the “pervasive, gross-out humor.” Larva is really something you have to watch with your toddler for (checks watch) 4,000 hours to truly appreciate. Oh, somehow there’s also a Larva film. A perfect start to the week!

Eat: Sorry, but if you watch Larva, you are not going to want to eat anything for a while. I promise you.

Everyday benefits. Not someday benefits.* Snag up to 3% Daily Cash back on every purchase—plus no fees and real cash with an exclusive, limited-time offer just for Brew readers —when you apply for Apple Card using this link. Terms apply.

^{*This is sponsored advertising content.}

Pearls of career wisdom.

“Enjoy the journey! [It’s] cliche but true. There are so many ups and downs with founding a business and the long-term outcome is completely unknown, so don’t get hyperfocused on where you’ll be in four years or whenever—try to focus on areas and initiatives that feel fulfilling whenever possible. Work to build a community early on [and] don’t wait until you launch your business. Find the thing that makes your business matter to your consumers, and engage with people around [that] through social content, emails, or other methods. This can have a huge impact on your business and your success.”—Suzanna Schumacher, co-founder of Character