With
the no sign of an economic turnaround and the job market
in shambles, job seekers have gotten so desperate that
they've turned to a new breed of scamsters calling
themselves "career marketers." While the term may not
sound familiar, chances are you've run across them
without knowing it.
Like so many mushrooms around a dead tree, career
marketers lure unsuspecting job seekers into their
offices with job listings then turn around and promise
guaranteed '$50K to $500K' and '$75K to $750K' executive
and professional positions for an up front one-time
non-refundable fee of $5K to $30K depending on the
options you choose and how much you make.
Many frantic job seekers take them up on this promise
envisioning that their days of job searching will be
over once they pay this fee. If they can start on a new
job within 45 to 90 days as promised, the cost of the
fee can be easily recovered in a month's salary.
Unfortunately there is no pot of gold at the end of
this rainbow. Once the career marketers have your money,
their interest in you diminishes as fast as the bubbles
in a glass of Alka Seltzer. You are channeled into the
regular routine of updating your resume, squeezing a
mailing list out of a Dun & Bradstreet database
based on your area of expertise, doing a mass mailing,
and waiting for six months for something to happen
before realizing that you have been had.
Who are the culprits? How do they work exactly? What
can be done about them?
This column is an adjunct to the web site www.execcareer.com [site]
which I started one year ago to cover one such company
that scammed me. The web site now features 45 such
companies nationwide, brought to my attention by job
seekers who were scammed by them.
The web site is designed to warn job seekers about
these companies and shows up on Google and other search
engines whenever a job seeker types in the name of one
of these companies. No such warning existed when I was
scammed. It also contains secure discussion boards which
were started earlier this year so victimized job seekers
could plan how to get their money back and how to
publicize the misdeeds of these companies. There are
also links to many recently published articles about
career marketing in national magazines and
newspapers.
This column which will be published every Tuesday
will feature the latest news on career marketing scams
as well as the best ways to search for a job in these
difficult times.
Reader input is appreciated and will be incorporated
into future columns. You can contact me directly if you
like at http://www.yahoo.com/~alansmithns.
