How does this (presumed) recruitment scam work?

Question

Over the last several days, I've been bombarded with private messages on LinkedIn. Each one comes from someone I have no prior history with, and all of them follow the same template:

Open Job Positions For "[role name]"

Hi Mason

I hope you are doing well.

One of our clients "[company name]" is hiring immediately for the role of "[role name]". I came across your profile and was wondering if you could be interested in the role available with them. For more information and to apply for this opportunity, Please visit the link given below.

[link here]

Let me know once you have applied on the role.

Many Thanks,

[name]

Recruiter at [staffing company]

Clicking the link sends me through a redirect to what appears to be a completely legitimate job posting by the company in question. But that's not how recruiters work; they get their money by finding and submitting candidates to the company, so having me apply to the company myself would cut them out of the loop, whether I let them know that I've "applied on the role" or not. So this really feels like some sort of scam, but I can't see where I'm being tricked out of anything valuable.

• I'm not paying to apply anywhere
• The website I get sent to is legitimate
• It's possible that somewhere in the redirect, they're earning a fraction of a cent for an "ad impression" or something along those lines, but that hardly seems like a business model!

So... what am I missing?

Answer 1

It's possible that somewhere in the redirect, they're earning a fraction of a cent for an "ad impression" or something along those lines, but that hardly seems like a business model!

This.

These are automated scripts that run on volume. Sometimes the goal is not even to solicit resumes but rather to advertise the company. "Look at us, we're hiring, we're successful!". There's tons of spam like that on LinkedIn, and I keep getting those daily. Sometimes they copy some words from your profile to make it seem like it's personalized to you, most won't even bother matching your location to the job opening they send you to.