How to Verify a Job Offer or Viral Job Post in India Before You Apply

By Influish Editorial Team · Published 6 November 2026 · Last updated 6 November 2026

Why isn’t a screenshot or a news story enough?

A viral job post usually reaches you three steps removed from the employer: a screenshot of a repost of a summary. Each step can drop the date, the conditions or the real link — and add a fake one. Even a job board listing isn’t conclusive: in May 2025 the Free Press Journal reported that a company named on a widely mocked “₹10 a month” internship listing said the post had been crawled by the board’s bots rather than posted by the company. The goal of verification is to get back to the employer’s own words, on the employer’s own channel, and check that the employer is real.

What are the eight steps?

1. Find the original post and its date

   Search the job title plus the company name and look for the earliest report or the company’s own post. Note the date. Many viral jobs are months or years old — the 2025 Monk Entertainment “doomscroller” posting still circulates alongside the 2026 Influish one. Old stories are not live openings.

2. Go to the company’s own website — by typing it, not clicking

   Search for the company yourself and open its site directly. Does it describe a real business? Does it have a careers page, and is the job listed there? If the role was announced on social media instead, that’s possible — move to step 3 — but note the gap.

3. Confirm the official social account

   Check that the account posting the job is the company’s: does the company’s website link to it, does the bio name the company, does it have a long posting history? Watch for look-alike handles with extra underscores or letters. Apply only through links on that account, not through forwarded links.

4. Look the company up in MCA master data

   Indian companies and LLPs are registered with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs. On mca.gov.in, the “View Company or LLP Master Data” service (under MCA Services) lets you search by name or CIN and see the registered name, status, date of incorporation and registered address. Check that the name matches and the status is active. Remember the limits: a registered company can still be impersonated, and a brand name may differ from the legal name.

5. Check the domain’s age

   Paste the website’s domain into ICANN Lookup. If the registry publishes it, you’ll see a creation date. A recruitment site registered last week, especially one imitating a known brand (“-careers”, “-jobs-india”, odd extensions), is a strong warning sign.

6. Check the email domain and phone number

   A recruiter for an established company should write from the company’s own domain — the part after the @ should match the website. Free webmail, misspelled domains and recruiters who only use a personal WhatsApp number are red flags. Don’t reply with documents until this checks out.

7. Read the news trail critically

   Is the story reported by more than one credible outlet? Do the reports agree on the basics? Are claims like applicant numbers attributed (“the company said”)? Missing pay, deadlines and eligibility are common in viral posts — treat the gaps as unknowns, not as “no requirements”.

8. Never pay, and never share OTPs or banking logins

   No genuine employer charges you to apply, train or “activate” your profile. Government advisories on task-based scams describe victims receiving small payouts and then being asked to deposit money that is never returned. Hiring needs your CV and contact details — never your OTP, UPI PIN or net-banking password.

How do I check whether an offer letter is genuine?

An offer letter proves nothing by itself, because a logo and a signature are easy to copy. Check what the letter says against sources the sender does not control:

If anything fails, email or call the company using contact details from its own website, not the ones in the letter, and ask HR to confirm the offer before you send any documents.

What does a genuine hiring process look like?

A genuine process usually runs in this order: you apply through the employer’s channel, you are screened (a form, a call or a sample task), you have an interview or test, and you get written terms. That holds even for unusual viral roles. Two things should make you stop. One is being “selected” without ever being assessed. The other is a process that moves from a public post into a private Telegram or WhatsApp group where you are given paid “tasks”. The second is the task-scam pattern described by the Ministry of Home Affairs (IANS via The News Minute, December 2023).

What about placement agencies and overseas job offers?

Overseas recruitment has its own official check. In a December 2023 advisory reported by ANI, the Ministry of External Affairs said every registered recruiting agent (RA) is issued a licence number. It told job seekers to check an agent on emigrate.gov.in under “List of active RA”. The advisory also said the Emigration Act 1983 caps an agent’s service charge at ₹30,000 plus 18% GST, with a receipt, and that unregistered agents often communicate only through WhatsApp. So for overseas jobs, a fee is not automatically a scam, but an unregistered agent, a fee above the cap or a payment with no receipt is a stop sign. For jobs in India, the rule above stands: employers do not charge candidates.

How does this look on a real case?

We ran these steps on the Influish “doomscroller” story: multiple reports agreed, the company website was live, the Instagram account identified itself as the company’s, no fee was reported — but the role was not on the website, the dedicated subdomain didn’t resolve, and pay and deadlines were undisclosed. Read the full worked example, or browse more viral job case files.

What should I do with the result?

Before sharing anything, run through the printable job safety checklist. If money has already gone, follow how to report a job scam right away.