Beware of Fraudulent Hiring Practices

WARNING: FRAUDULENT HIRING SCHEME

Planet Fitness has been made aware of an increasing number of hiring fraud schemes across numerous platforms. Planet Fitness never requires advance payments of any kind for computer equipment or any other purpose at the start of employment. Any request for you to provide payment information during the application process is part of a fraud scheme. Further, we recommend that you do not provide sensitive personal information (SSN, DOB, driver’s license number) as part of the initial application process.

Please keep the following information in mind as you search for a job at Planet Fitness:

  1. Planet Fitness does not use publicly available email providers to communicate with candidates. You will never see @gmail.com or @hotmail.com, for instance, from a legitimate Planet Fitness recruiter. We have also seen jobs@planetfitness.careers used as part of a hiring fraud scheme – this is NOT a legitimate Planet Fitness email address.

  2. Cyber criminals are using a variety of techniques to divert candidates to fictitious job postings, in an effort to ultimately steal sensitive personal information or obtain payment information. Beware of the following:
    • Fictitious recruiter or employer websites using a company’s IP or templates to make their materials look credible. Company websites are spoofed, and criminals use a domain name similar in appearance to a legitimate company.
    • Fictitious job postings on social networks, with either fictitious opportunities or with opportunities that are actually available through a company’s own website or social network recruiting page. These fake job openings may direct applicants to the spoofed company website mentioned above.
    • Cyber criminals often impersonate company recruiters, executives, department heads and/or human resource employees.
    • Cyber criminals offer unsuspecting candidates a job, and may provide official-looking onboarding materials such as expense policies, direct deposit forms, welcome letters etc. They will often then ask candidates to purchase computers, iPads, or other alleged work-related items, to be reimbursed later. They will ask for payment information.
  3. Cyber criminals often request information that legitimate employers may ask for – but some of these red flags may indicate the existence of a scam:
    • Interviews are conducted through a chat function or teleconference app rather than in-person or through a secure video platform.
    • Potential “employers” require applicants to purchase start-up equipment or pay upfront for background checks or other items immediately upon “hire.”
    • Potential “employers” seek sensitive personal information or credit card information before hire. This information is best provided in-person, or at least after a video call confirms a legitimate offer has been made by a company.
    • Job postings appear on job boards or on social media sites but are not on a company’s official website.
    • The email address is a non-company email address, has misspellings, or is a publicly available email address.