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Have you been scammed into thinking you were getting a job and the company was bogus? Tricked into a pyramid scheme? Unwittingly found yourself involved in some unethical practice? If so, share your experiences here so that others might be able to avoid the same fate.
For this one position I interviewed for, in the ad the job title was listed as "Management Trainee." The description of the ad was very vague, except for the fact That they were supposedly an authorized dealer for a huge national burglar alarm company. So I assumed the position was similar to the Management Trainee positions that places such as Aldi and Hertz have, where they pay you a reasonable salary and you trained to become a manager.
When I got to the interview, they claimed how they were so impressed with my resume and that they wanted to hire me. Essentially, I was hired on the spot, which raised the biggest flag. So we had scheduled a time for me to come back in for orientation and begin training. They stated that they would go out with me on the job for the first few weeks to show me how it's done. I thought to myself "Ok, why would someone training to be in a management position do that type of work?"
So at the end, I ultimately asked "Is the job performance-based?" And they said "yes." In actuality, instead of true Management Trainee position, it was a commission-based job going door to door selling their alarm systems to people (in other words, you were a salesman).
After thinking about it for the past few days, I called them back and told them "no thanks." The 313Weather of today would have likely left them hanging, given that they pulled a bait and switch on me.
My nephew just started selling Cutco knives and he came over to do a demo. After his demo, he asked for the name of FIFTEEEN of my friends that he could go and demo to. FIFTEEN.
Anyone familiar with this? It seems like a pyramid scheme to me.
My nephew just started selling Cutco knives and he came over to do a demo. After his demo, he asked for the name of FIFTEEEN of my friends that he could go and demo to. FIFTEEN.
Anyone familiar with this? It seems like a pyramid scheme to me.
Cutco/Vector Marketing is probably the most well-known "Pryamid Scheme" out there. They've been around since at least the 1980s.
The devil is in the details with some places who use creative wording to describe duties that do not reveal the actual duties performed. Sites like glassdoor are good to check out companies to see experiences from former employees and is pretty accurate also.
i once went to an interview for some pyramid scheme thing selling art, a long time ago. i've successfully avoided this kind of thing ever since.
the things i watch out for:
- vague job descriptions with ridiculously high compensation (usually phrased as "potential to make $_ a month")
- sales jobs in general, although plenty are legit. luckily i am not in sales and don't really want to be anyway
- jobs that require you to pay money up front
- jobs that are described as "multi-level marketing". that's just a prettier way to say pyramid scheme.
if i haven't heard of the company i'm applying for, i google it. this is a good idea anyway, so you know what they're all about and what to talk about in your cover letter. but it also roots out sketchy companies.
there are also websites that post what seem to be fake job listings (i mean, maybe they're real but i've never gotten that far, and i've seen some that i KNOW you can only apply to through the employer's website) and try to charge you to apply to them, or at least get you to sign up for their site and get bombarded by spam. gigats is one i've come across like that.
also, there are the 100% scam jobs that you see advertised on craigslist - nigerian scams that involve fake checks and identity theft and whatnot. here's how to spot those:
- these can also be pretty vague, but:
- the scammers have gotten better at making realistic ads. they steal the text from other ads now. but if you scroll down, you'll often find that there is some white space and then another totally unrelated ad. i guess this is keyword spam of some time but it's a total red flag as well.
- the location will be the name of the craigslist subdivision. if your craigslist is regional, it's a dead giveaway - no real employer is going to list their location as "western mass", for example. they would name the town. in bigger cities it's a little harder, but still, you'll often see neighborhoods mentioned in legitimate ads.
- if you're in the u.s., look for english/european terminology and spelling in the ad and any correspondence you receive. this is not a dead giveaway, but it's definitely a clue if other things are fishy.
- if you do respond to the ad, you will very quickly get a response saying you're hired. the job will often have nothing to do with the ad and will involve mailing checks out or picking up packages.
- if i'm suspicious of the ad, i'll send an e-mail explaining that due to the preponderance of scams on craigslist, i wanted to get reassurance that the ad is legitimate before i send my materials. this will generate the same "you're hired!" e-mail as a resume submission if it's a scam. i once sent my resume to a scammer and i ended up getting a ton of spam texts. and who knows what else they used the information in my resume for. it's scary. NEVER send reference info in response to a craigslist ad unless you're 100% positive it's legitimate. you don't want your references to get spammed because of you.
when you see ads you can tell are scams on craigslist, do everyone a favor and flag them.
I remember my friend, who is very naive, asked me if I'd go to her aunt's house with her, to look into a job or something. can't remember what exactly.
So I went. Maybe 2 sentences in, and with the mention of Donald Trump, I knew it was a scam and said no thank you, and shame on her for bringing her neice into it, and left. My friend was so confused (seriously my friend was SUPER NAIVE), she had no idea what was going on. I explained to her it was a pyramid scheme. I can't remember the details but it was obvious what was going on. She was actually really upset with her aunt lol. Specially because she was about to "buy in" to the business.
yeah, my old roommate told me one day he was going to a talk at the library about "health and wealth" and came back telling me how he was going to invest in some magic egyptian berry juice that gives you nutrients that are not possible to get from any other source or something.
i argued with him a bunch about it because i didn't want him to get scammed. he kept saying "but the product is good, how can it be a scam if the product is good?".
now come on, magic egyptian berry juice for $80 an ounce is not a good product, but i just told him that even if the product is good, the pyramid/multi level marketing model is unsustainable unless you are at the very top. that the money is not made by selling the product, but by getting other people to sell the product, and you can't just keep doing that forever. i think i also may have drawn a pyramid for him at some point.
i finally convinced him not to do it, but it took a while.
naive doesn't even begin to describe this guy, by the way.
When you check Glassdoor be sure to actually go through all the reviews. A lot of companies that do this have learned about major review sites and fraudulently flood them with 5 star reviews. Check out American Income Life (AIL) for an example. Page 1 and 2 are gleaming reviews clearly places by the company. Jump to page 5 and you find the real reviews (all 1 star.)
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