AI psychological assessments forge high-match reports, chaining job seekers in multi-stage scams

Who Gets Targeted

Victims are mostly fresh graduates, frequent job-hoppers, or young groups who have been job hunting unsuccessfully for a long time. They generally harbor psychological weaknesses such as employment anxiety, self-doubt, and an urgent desire to land a job. They are easily swayed by pitches like 'high match between personality and position' and 'discovering hidden strengths,' lack the ability to discern authoritative assessment reports, and have fragile mindsets when facing sunk costs, making them prone to continuously purchasing subsequent so-called 'optimization services' and 'tutoring courses' after the initial small payment.

骗局怎么运作

• Fraudsters post fake job openings such as 'high-paying urgent hiring' and 'enterprise internal referrals' on platforms like BOSS Zhipin and Zhilian Zhaopin, attracting job seekers to submit resumes and guiding them to add WeChat or QQ under the guise that they must first complete a customized AI psychological assessment to determine person-job fit.
• After the job seeker completes the online assessment, the counterpart sends a well-crafted AI-generated report showing that their personality traits and target position match by over 90%. However, they deliberately point out '1-2 key shortcomings' or 'insufficient resume competitiveness' to manufacture mild anxiety, laying the groundwork for subsequent sales pitches.
• Under the pretext of 'we have an internal optimization team,' fraudsters induce job seekers to pay several hundred to several thousand yuan for services such as 'in-depth report interpretation,' 'resume optimization,' and 'background enhancement,' promising to boost the match rate to near perfection and displaying forged success story screenshots to enhance credibility.
• After the job seeker pays the optimization fee, fraudsters introduce high-end paid items such as 'one-on-one interview tutoring,' 'written test question banks,' and 'direct referral interview slots,' charging thousands to tens of thousands of yuan each time. Their pitch emphasizes 'you've already come this far, giving up is too regrettable,' utilizing the sunk cost fallacy to continuously extract additional payments.
• Ultimately, the job seeker discovers that the so-called 'internal referral' does not exist at all, and the contact person gradually loses touch. They realize that the assessment, report, and tutoring were all part of a chained scam by the same gang, while the AI-generated report content is highly templated and useless for any real job-hunting scenario.

红旗信号（看到这些快跑）

• 🚩 Legitimate corporate recruitment does not force job seekers to purchase paid assessment services before interviews; virtually anything requiring 'mandatory payment to view detailed reports after assessment' is a scam.
• 🚩 The match data in the report is exceptionally flawless, but defect descriptions are vague and general. The report structures received by all job seekers are highly similar, with only names and job titles replaced.
• 🚩 The other party emphasizes 'internal channels,' 'exclusive optimization,' and 'guaranteed interview passing,' but refuses to provide a real corporate office address or corporate bank transfer accounts.
• 🚩 Collection accounts are personal WeChat, Alipay, or non-recruitment entity corporate accounts, and formal invoices cannot be issued after payment.
• 🚩 Communication frequently uses urgency-creating tactics such as 'rare opportunity,' 'only one slot left,' and 'if you don't apply today it's gone,' rushing rapid money transfers.

真实案例

• In December 2025, Literature City reported and exposed the 'AI forged major company offer' scam. A job seeker stated that after paying over ten thousand yuan to purchase so-called 'AI career assessment and optimization services,' they received a templated report, and the contact person immediately lost contact.
• In August 2026, Procuratorate Daily disclosed an 'immersive recruitment scam,' where a fraud syndicate used online traffic direction combined with offline fake onboarding to make job seekers believe they had secured high-paying positions, and then collected fees under the guise of pre-job assessments and capability enhancement, involving hundreds of thousands of yuan.
• In September 2026, Beijing police cracked down on a fake recruitment fraud case. Fraudsters collected high fees from multiple job seekers under the pretext that 'mandatory paid assessment and training must be attended before joining,' and ultimately 11 suspects were apprehended.

Official Stance

• On April 9, 2026, Beijing Daily reported on BOSS Zhipin exposing the 'tool person' trap, reminding job seekers to beware of induced payment behaviors under the names of part-time jobs, assessments, and training.
• On September 2, 2026, Sina Finance published an article disclosing multiple click-farming scam cases released by BOSS Zhipin, which involved chained fee-collection scams starting from 'interview assessments' and 'pre-job training.'
• On August 14, 2026, Procuratorate Daily released an expose on immersive recruitment scams, reminding job seekers that any recruitment process requiring payment before onboarding is suspected of being illegal.

How to Protect Yourself

• ✅ Verify recruitment entity information, check whether the company genuinely exists through the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System, compare corporate certification information on recruitment platforms, and focus on three items: establishment years, paid-in capital, and insured employee count, to see if they support the claimed recruitment scale.
• ✅ Refuse all pre-onboarding fee requests. Legitimate companies only process fees through payroll deductions or corporate accounts after employment, and will never ask job seekers to transfer money to personal accounts.
• ✅ Maintain skepticism toward AI-generated assessment reports, ask the other party to provide scientific evidence for the assessment tools and third-party certifications, and immediately terminate communication if they cannot be provided.
• ✅ Keep all chat records, transfer receipts, and original reports. Report anomalies immediately to the recruitment platform and dial the 110 or 96110 anti-fraud hotline upon detecting abnormalities.