My significant other recently got a job interview and we've gotten some very weird vibes from it. To start, we're obviously not going to share financial details, put any kind of down payment, or similar on a job, and we haven't seen that type of red flag pop up yet. This is what has us baffled.

That said, here's what's happened so far:

* It's a **text interview**. I've never heard of that, nor have some of my coworkers.
* They utilize Zip Recruiter
* There *is* a real position for that job. Quite detailed. The real company has been around for over a decade.
* They have the name of a real employee at that job. He's been there for 6 months
* The site's contact info is support@[company-name].com
* The *interviewer's* info is **[his-name].[company-name]@gmail.com**
* Their name is very American, their picture looks white or hispanic, but the interviewer types pretty broken english. E.G. An interview question was *'Do you understand the word"Privacy and Code of Conduct'* (I've attempted to replicate the lacking spaces and end quote on purpose.)

I've been encouraging her to flip questions, such as (after answering) asking "Can you point me to your specific Code of Conduct" and such. The position is for graphic design work, so the various kinds of scams I've looked up for remote positions don't seem to apply.

She says that the questions, as it continued, started sounding more like a real interview.

They *did* say something about "We'll have to set up a **mini-office** in your home"; which sounds like the hook, though we don't have evidence yet of that. I'm suspecting that they'll have no hook this interview and instead they'll contact again, require some kind of payment for the "mini-office" now that you think you got the job. It could, instead, be some kind of phishing scam that is just overly involved, but the info they'd have right now is essentially publicly available so..

I believe if it's a scam that is based around this mini-office thing. Anyone ever hear of something like this?

EDIT: We've confirmed it was a scam via chatting with the real person on LinkedIn.

*Note: I'm currently a remote employee myself and I've only ever dealt with myriad VPNs, bio-verification in the office, or 2-factor via the phone.*