I received a curious interview offer recently. Curious, I say because it was for a position I had never applied for and a company for which I had not even applied. Upon some proper investigation, I determined it was fake. But it had some interesting aspects I wanted to call out.
1. It was grammatical English. In years past, one of the hallmarks of a scam email (and this is still the case, just check your SPAM folder) was poor English and grammar. That is no longer the case thanks to AI. Here is the full text of the email I received:
Dear Applicant,
I hope this correspondence finds you in good health. SEGULA Technologies would like to extend our gratitude for your application for the Remote IT Support Specialist position through LinkedIn. Your impressive credentials and experience have caught our attention, and we would like to invite you for an interview.
We believe that you possess the potential to be a valuable addition to our team, and we are eager to get to know you better. The interview will provide you with an opportunity to gain further insight into our company, and for us to discover more about you.
If you are interested in proceeding with the interview process, kindly respond to this correspondence with a simple “YES”. We will then contact you to arrange a mutually convenient date and time for the interview.
We appreciate your interest in joining our team at
SEGULA Technologies and look forward to your prompt response.
Best regards,
Martins Rodriguez
SEGULA Technologies
As you can see, the the grammar is perfect, but there is that uncanny machinelike quality to the email. This had to be AI, right?
To test my theory, I loaded up Chat GPT and used the following query: “write a brief letter thanking an applicant for their application and inviting them to an interview, and telling them to simply reply yes if they are interested.”
And I received the following output:
Dear [Applicant’s Name],
I hope this message finds you well.
We sincerely appreciate the time and effort you invested in submitting your application for the [Position Title] role at [Company Name]. Your qualifications and experience have caught our attention, and we are excited about the possibility of having you join our team.
After careful review of the applications received, we would like to invite you for an interview to further discuss your candidacy. The interview will take place on [Date] at our [Location] office. Please find the details below:
Date: [Date]
Time: [Time]
Location: [Office Address]
To confirm your availability and express your interest in attending the interview, kindly reply to this email with a simple “Yes” by [Confirmation Deadline, if applicable].
We look forward to the opportunity to learn more about you and discuss how your skills and experiences align with the requirements of the position. If you have any questions or need further information, feel free to reach out to us.
Thank you once again for your interest in joining [Company Name]. We appreciate your enthusiasm and look forward to meeting you in person.
Best regards,
[Your Full Name]
[Your Position]
[Company Name]
[Contact Information]
While not a word for word representation of the email I received, there are so many key phrases that are similar that there is no doubt the text was machine generated.
2. The email came through ZohoRecruiter. Zoho is a legitimate service used by legitimate companies. It’s also extremely easy to sign up for. I am not a recruiter and yet was able to use my existing website and website email to set up and account with just a few minutes. All you need is an official domain website and you are on your way, So do you really want to trust all emails you get from Zoho?AI scams are only going to increase in 2024. This is just one of many. I’d advise everyone to play around with Chat GPT and other generative AI’s to get an idea of the content they produce.