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No, South African retail store Mr Price not hiring on Facebook

Job-seeking South Africans may be lured by a recent Facebook post claiming that clothing store Mr Price is hiring.

The Facebook post says: “From tomorrow Mr Price will be taking CVs. Mr price is hiring 100 men and 28 women to work drop ur number down here I will call u, no certificate wanted.”

The post goes on: “Salary R6500 per Month. Thursday we will be opening new branch.” It includes a link where readers are encouraged to apply, and then reassures them: “No scam Thank u!!!”

Africa Check has previously debunked a number of false employment-related claims. We’ve also written a guide on avoiding Facebook job scams. Is this another example?

MrPriceJob_False

Job ad fake

The job ad on Facebook contains a number of tell-tale signs it’s not to be believed. The link in the post takes you through to two different landing pages before clicking through to the Mr Price website. 

The position described on these pages is entirely different to the one in the Facebook post and there is no job listing on the Mr Price page.

Suspicious posts are often written with inconsistent capitalisation and poor grammar and spelling.  In this post, the first sentence is in all capitals, and it uses casual abbreviations such as “ur” instead of “your” and “u” instead of “you”. This would be highly unusual for a genuine job ad.

Another red flag is the request to leave your phone number in the comments. This is an example of engagement bait – posts that ask people to interact by liking, commenting on or sharing. The more people do this, the greater the Facebook page’s reach. 

Genuine companies often list links to online forms or portals where job seekers can submit their details. Mr Price has a dedicated careers site, where job seekers can create a profile and apply for open positions.

Pages sharing info not trustworthy

The page which posted the suspicious Mr Price ad, JobFinderZA, has used similar formats to advertise job ads for Danone and the South African post office. These ads also contained links that had no relation to the companies the posts claimed were hiring.

The author of the page said in a comment that people who shared the page in other Facebook groups would receive job notices via WhatsApp. This is another example of  engagement bait.

Africa Check also made multiple attempts to call the phone number listed on the page, with no success. 

There is no indication that any of the positions listed on the page are real.

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For publishers: what to do if your post is rated false

A fact-checker has rated your Facebook or Instagram post as “false”, “altered”, “partly false” or “missing context”. This could have serious consequences. What do you do?

Click on our guide for the steps you should follow.

Publishers guide

Africa Check teams up with Facebook

Africa Check is a partner in Meta's third-party fact-checking programme to help stop the spread of false information on social media.

The content we rate as “false” will be downgraded on Facebook and Instagram. This means fewer people will see it.

You can also help identify false information on Facebook. This guide explains how.

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