Verify every opportunity.
International recruitment attracts people who impersonate legitimate agencies. This page explains how Bantu contacts candidates, what Bantu will never ask you for, and how to check that a vacancy or a recruiter is genuine.
How Bantu contacts candidates.
Bantu approaches candidates through a small number of published channels. If a message does not match the pattern below, treat it with caution and check with a Bantu office before you reply, send documents or agree to anything.
What a genuine approach looks like
- A role you can find on this website, or an approach that refers to a role published here.
- Email from an address ending in @bantuagency.com.au or @bantuagency.com.zm.
- A named consultant who is willing to confirm who they are and to be called back on a telephone number published on Bantu’s contact page.
- An interview arranged in advance, with a clear explanation of the employer, the role, the location and what happens next.
- Requests only for the information an employer genuinely needs — your CV, qualifications, work history and right to work — shared through the route your consultant has given you.
Genuine email from Bantu always arrives from one of exactly two domains — the part that follows the @ sign:
- bantuagency.com.au — Australia
- bantuagency.com.zm — Zambia
The mailboxes Bantu publishes on those domains are info (both countries) and hr (Zambia). Bantu’s published Zambia office number is +260 97 3399864.
Check the domain character by character. Any other domain is not Bantu, including close look-alikes that add, drop or alter a single character, swap the country ending, or place the Bantu name inside a longer address at a different domain.
[TO BE CONFIRMED BY BANTU: the official Australian office telephone number, any further mailboxes or office numbers in use, whether Bantu operates an office in the UAE or wider Middle East and the contact details for it, and whether Bantu ever uses WhatsApp or another messaging channel to contact candidates — so that this list can be published as a complete and definitive set.]
What Bantu will never do
- Ask you to pay a fee to register, to apply, to be shortlisted, to be interviewed or to be placed.
- Ask you to send money to an individual’s personal account, or to pay by wire transfer, gift card, voucher or cryptocurrency.
- Ask for your online banking password, your card PIN, or a photograph of your bank card.
- Offer you a job with no interview or assessment of any kind.
- Press you to accept, to pay or to decide within a few hours.
- Ask you to keep an offer secret from family, from an employer or from the authorities.
Bantu does not charge candidates to find work.
Bantu’s recruitment services are paid for by the employers who engage Bantu. Registering with Bantu, being put forward for a role, being interviewed and being placed do not cost you a fee.
Some costs in an international move are genuine — a government visa charge or a medical examination, for example. Those are paid directly to the authority or the provider concerned. They are never paid to a recruiter and never into a personal account. Your consultant should tell you in advance about any cost you may need to meet yourself, and what it is for.
[TO BE CONFIRMED BY BANTU: confirm which costs, if any, candidates are expected to meet themselves in each region, so that this section matches actual practice in Australia, Africa and the UAE and wider Middle East.]
If someone asks you for money
Stop there. No genuine Bantu process requires a payment to a recruiter. Keep the message, send nothing, and contact a Bantu office yourself using the details published on the contact page rather than any details supplied in the message.
How to verify a vacancy or a recruiter.
Four checks will settle almost every case. They take a few minutes, and a genuine opportunity will still be there afterwards.
Start from this website
Open Bantu’s website yourself instead of following a link in the message, and look for the role on the Find Jobs page.
Check the sender
Compare the full email address, character by character, with Bantu’s published addresses. A near-identical lookalike domain is the most common trick.
Call the office back
Use a number published on Bantu’s contact page, never one supplied in the message, and ask to be put through to the consultant who contacted you.
Ask for it in writing
A genuine consultant will confirm the employer, the role, the location and the process in writing, and will not object to you checking first.
If anything does not line up, pause and ask. Bantu would far rather answer a question about a message that turns out to be genuine than hear about a loss afterwards.
What fraudulent approaches have in common.
Fraudulent recruitment is usually a variation on the same few patterns. One of these on its own is a reason to check. Several together is a reason to stop.
Money
- Any fee to apply, to be interviewed, to be trained or to be placed.
- Payment requested into a personal account rather than a company account.
- Wire transfers, gift cards, vouchers or cryptocurrency.
- A promise that the fee will be refunded from your first salary.
- An unexpected cheque or transfer you are asked to pass on to someone else.
Identity and channel
- A free email account, or a domain that is nearly but not exactly Bantu’s.
- Contact only through a messaging app, with no office number and no callback.
- A recruiter who will not confirm their full name or be called back.
- Offer letters or contracts with mismatched logos, wrong addresses, or obvious spelling and grammar errors.
- A vacancy that does not appear anywhere on this website.
Process and pressure
- A job offer with no interview and no assessment.
- Deadlines measured in hours, or being told the role will go to someone else.
- Requests for bank passwords, PINs or full identity documents very early in the process.
- Pay or conditions well above the market rate for the role.
- Being told not to discuss the offer with anyone.
What to do if you think you have been targeted.
Being targeted is not a failure of judgement. These approaches are designed by people who do this full time, and they are convincing. What matters now is acting quickly and keeping the evidence.
- Stop communicating. You do not owe the sender a reply or an explanation.
- Send nothing further — no money, no identity documents, no bank details.
- Keep everything. Emails with their full headers, message threads, telephone numbers, names, website addresses, screenshots and any account details you were given. This is what makes a report useful.
- Tell Bantu, so that misuse of Bantu’s name can be acted on and other candidates warned.
- Report it to the authorities where you live. Most countries have a police cybercrime unit or a national scam reporting service.
- If you have already sent money or shared bank details, contact your bank immediately. Speed matters, and banks can sometimes stop or recall a payment if they are told quickly.
- If you have shared identity documents, ask the issuing authority what protective steps are available to you.
[TO BE CONFIRMED BY BANTU: the official scam and cybercrime reporting services Bantu wishes to name and link to for Australia, for its African markets and for the UAE and wider Middle East.]
When you report it to Bantu
Include as much of the following as you have: the sender’s name and email address or telephone number, the date of first contact, the role you were offered, any payment details you were given, and copies of the messages.
Bantu cannot recover money that has already been sent. A report still helps: it lets fraudulent listings and accounts be taken down and other candidates be warned.
Report a suspected fraudulent approach.
Use Bantu’s official contact page to report a suspicious message, or to check whether an approach you have received is genuine. Ask for the recruitment fraud team.