Michael petronella & aaron hutsell

“the fake recruiter”

In this “Fake Recruiter Podcast” episode of HeadHunters NW, Shaylene speaks with Mike Petronella, a retired law enforcement professional and sales leader, about sophisticated job seeker scams that surged after he marked “open to work” on LinkedIn. Mike describes receiving highly realistic emails about a VP of Sales role at Zev Technologies—complete with role details—before scammers pressured him to pay for tiered resume/CV rewrites, using red flags like Gmail addresses and urgency.

Shaylene is also joined by Aaron Hutsell, a computer science professional who created GhostJob, a Chrome extension for LinkedIn that scans job posts and provides a trust score and evidence such as real application paths, matching official company sources, generic “word salad,” contradictions, and repost context. Aaron emphasized independent verification is crucial to obtain and that any request to pay fees is a major warning sign.

FIND OUR GUESTS

Michael Petronella

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-petronella-698866151/

Aaron Hutsell

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ahut/

GhostJob and Hatched Pixel (Aaron Hutsell)

Hatched Pixel https://hatchedpixel.com

GhostJob: https://www.jobghost.io/

Chrome extension: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ghostjob-ghost-job-detect/clbbopifmidceplphamfdfapgacgbhnd

How the GhostJob Trust Meter works: https://www.jobghost.io/how-trust-score-works

What is a ghost job?: https://www.jobghost.io/what-is-a-ghost-job

Contact: aaron@hatchedpixel.com