“Boy, you almost did something really dumb,” I chastised myself when I logged off my computer one day last week.

I thought of all the people I read or hear about who fall for the grandparent scams or the one that goes something like, “We’re the FBI, and your account has been hacked. Withdraw the rest of your money, put it in a shoebox, and we’ll come and get it and keep it safe for you.”

How could anyone not have heard about these scams, I‘ve wondered. They’re all over the news. And then I, too, almost fell for one ― a fake job offer.

I hadn’t read much about employment scams because, stupidly, I never thought I’d run into one. I just wanted one or two more part-time clients for my freelance writing business, and the Indeed job board frequently had some possibilities. Also, I had just deleted two early career positions to shave a few years off my age after seeing the suggestion in a magazine. So when I skimmed the subject lines of my incoming email that morning and saw a positive-sounding email about a position, my only thought was that revising my resume had worked. And so quickly!

I received confirmation messages whenever I applied to gigs, so I didn’t pay much attention to the subject line until I realised — thought — an actual company was getting back to me. I had been looking at part-time copy editing and proofreading jobs, and voila! a health care company was interested in my qualifications and just wanted me to take a proofreading test.

The business name used was that of an actual company, but I had applied to so many health systems over the previous months that I didn’t think to check further into job titles at the company or email addresses, for example. I was tired of hunting for work, so I was multitasking that morning and not paying enough attention.

When I opened the email for the job, I met “Caroline,” a woman from HR who gave me the test and said she wanted to meet over Teams. No alarm bells rang. I use Teams all the time. I took the test, and later that afternoon she got back to me and reported I passed with flying colours. I didn’t find it as difficult as one I had taken for another health system — which I didn’t pass. Most of the questions were general and easy, like, “Why is proofreading so important when it comes to health system material?” I convinced myself that was an OK question, like the company might have wanted to know if candidates realised patients may be reading life-threatening medical directions, for example.

The HR woman then launched into more information, including about the company........

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