As the end of the spring semester nears, hopeful graduates will start to send out their resumes in hopes of landing an entry-level job to jump-start their professional careers.
As these young applicants scour the search engines for promising career leads, they may find themselves looking at what seems like the perfect position. Unbeknownst to the recent college grad, he or she has just invested themselves into an entry-level job scam.
I’ve met a lot of smart people who have succumbed to the pitfalls of job scams. Not because they lack the common sense to know whether or not they are being swindled, but because the system in which the scam operates is strategically designed to take logical individuals and turn them into obedient machines.
The best thing you can do for yourself is recognizing a job scam before you start. Otherwise you could end up losing your mind trying to get out of it when you realize you may have messed up.
The dead give away of a job scam usually can be seen in its description. Somewhere along the lines of, “Immediate hire! Positions in Management! Will train the right person!” They will advertise themselves as an “industry leader” even though the company is less than a year old. Don’t be fooled by the promise of working for “Fortune 100 and 500 companies.”
Straight up, do not work for a company that will hire you immediately. Understand that working your way up to management takes a tad bit more time than 5 minutes.
If you do land an interview and are unsure whether or not the job is a scam, it is best attend the interview anyway. If all else fails, you got the interview practice. No harm, no foul.
Upon interviewing, look around to see who else you are up against. If it looks like these people were picked off the street, they probably were. Your “competition” may be straight out of high school. As long as you can fudge through the English language and stand up, you’ll probably be hired.
In the actual interview, you may notice that your interviewer looks oddly young for his or her position. They may ask you some vague questions about your resume and assure you that you will be called if you are offered a second interview.
You will soon realize after accepting the second “all-day” interview that you are not actually on an interview at all. You may be asked to get into a car with some young “entrepreneur” who drives a scrappy Dodge Neon into the middle of the ghetto to sell coupons or office supplies. The really good scams take big company names such as Verizon or Direct Energy to lure in young people who recognize the name and trust them.
Make sure you wear comfortable shoes because you will spend your all-day interview trudging along a highway in the rain and snow soliciting small businesses by lying and using aggressive sales techniques to hard close owners into buying something they don’t want or need.
There is a good chance that you will feel uncomfortable and you will want to go home, however it is unlikely that they will actually bring you back because you have already wasted an hour of the day driving to your interviewer’s sales territory in East Jabip.
Understand that you are interrupting the interviewer’s day by being there. They are trying to meet their own sales goals while at the same time convincing you that this is a real job and that you will succeed. They were probably forced by their higher-up to take you out this morning.
Interviewers may show you the money by closing a small business for several hundred dollars a pop. They explain how easy it is to reach advance within the company and reach management by working hard and training others. You can make upwards of $100,000 a year! Unlimited earning power!
If you do manage to make it through the day without getting thrown out of businesses, your interviewer will bring you back to the office where you will witness what looks like a cult. You will be asked to memorize a manual with the “3 T’s” and “8 closing signals.” This is just the beginning of the brainwash. Little do you realize that you will be repeating this manual every single day, morning and night, in the office’s “mandatory” unpaid meetings. Team members begin to clap and chant and ring bells and hit gongs to announce their personal sales to everyone else in the room. There is nothing like talking about money to motivate people to make more money.
These types of jobs can really take a toll on your physical and mental health in a very short amount of time. They also drain your bank account due to the incredible amount of money spent on gas, tolls, lunch, and professional attire that is necessary for working each day. These scams work because they boost your ego and convince you that you have the power to earn all the money you want if you simply pledge allegiance to the company.
While you are basking in your sales and new-found friendships, the company is plotting to use you. Remember that for every sale you make, they make double. Your safety and well-being is not a concern. Your personal life gets pushed on the back burner as you struggle to work absurd hours and are expected to attend team-building events and leadership conferences to further groom you into the perfect “manager.”
These jobs may seem fun at first, and you may even be good at it. But if the top sales people in your office suddenly drop off the radar, don’t be surprised if the top dogs in the office try to cover it up like it’s no big deal. That same person who was praised daily is now forgotten entirely and never spoken of again.
Do yourself a favor and do not sign your name to a 1099, where you are legally working for yourself. Sign a W2 where you actually have working rights and stable hours, and are going to get paid.
Hopefully you never get to the point where you are “hired” within one of these companies, but if you do, don’t wait until you’ve lost all everything trying to own your own branch of a scam.
