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Has anybody ever heard of \"YourTravelBiz,\" or \"YTB\" for short? I have a coworker of mine who is very optimistic about an \"opportunity\" given to her by a friend to earn $5K/mo for operating an online travel agency or something like that. It is something like a $500 initial fee and then about $50/mo to keep and they keep 60% of all sales or something. I had a PPT of the sales pitch but deleted it due to server space in my email. If Consumerist wants it, I will have her send it to me again.
As someone who used to work at Careerbuilder, I can tell you they don't give a damn about the quality/legitimacy of the jobs they are posting, as long as they are getting paid. And with the high-pressure sales quotas, the sales reps will take anything, or risk getting fired for not meeting quota.
I had initially gone job hunting (careerbuilder.com) I encountered a place like this.
I live in the Philadelphia area... After leaving school and looking all over for work, I was very excited to get my first interview - didn't matter where, anywhere was good.
I did do my research prior to going to the interview - couldn't really find anything on the company, thought it was a little strange, but went to the interview anwyay.
I could tell that the place was full of schemers. It was the whole nine yards, same thing as what was described in the recent article about DS-Max or whoever.
I got home and dug deeper trying to find out about the place. Sure enough, I finally got the idea.
Needless, to say I didn't go to the follow-up interview.
I kept looking for jobs and these places were ALL over, it was disgusting. There is one good thing however... once you recognize one, you recognize them all.
Around here they had people hustling businesses to convert them to Verizon (phone), almost all of the postings had the phrase 'COR' (or 'CORE') in their company name. The one I dealt with was CorConcepts.
Whatever, I truly believe there is a spot reserved in hell for the people actually making money off this.
I completely agree with Ben-M above. I live in the Philly area too and almost fell victim to a company call IMG, Inc. that use these same practices. I still get emails from Monster containing at least 3-4 of postings from MLM scum per day. I really wish Monster, CareerBuilder, etc. would add a filter to get rid of these things. I have a fear that good, honest people will get suckered into the trap that these companies create.
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Ah, CareerBuilder... Want to see real quality listings of theirs? Run a search for \"phone actress.\"
Hoo nelly.
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@SaveMeJeebus: Testicles is right. My wife's parents signed up for this junk. They invited us to one of the meetings to hear about the company. At least the guys that were there were honest enough to tell you that the way to make money was through getting other people to join and not through booking trips. You get money from people joining and if your recruits get people to join you get money for that too. The meeting was nothing short of a big pep rally of people enthusiastically telling how great YTB was. To me it seemed like a modified pyramid scheme.
I applied for and was asked to interview for Wentworth Marketing in Atlanta. Look at their website [www.wentworthmarketing.net] What do they do? I sure couldn't tell. All they talk about is the people they hire and how they train their employees. Nothing about the service they provide.
I realized what was going on and did some research on DS-Max and all that stuff. Went home and told my boyfriend about this ridiculous scam job I had stupidly applied for.
Turns out he had applied to the same company a few years ago when he was fresh out of college! Unlike me, he went to the interview and even got suckered into going to the 2nd interview. He shadowed salespeople door to door pushing Bell South all day and then went back to the office where they banged on a drum and chanted! They really did!
He decided not to take the job.
That site: [www.wentworthmarketing.net] is just a TemplateMonster.com template. You can always tell by the boilerplate text (it often comes in the template already) and the cheesy music.
Look at any DS-MAX style company's site, and if it has that same bargain basement \"techno\" style music looping in the background, lots of useless Flash with suspiciously vague marketing-speak text, then Hot Dog, you have a wiener.
Head over to the various web template sites and if it's on their, scam. Real companies pay more than $65 for a website!
Aside: If consumerist ever wanted to get some dirt on how the shady side of the web-design / hosting game works, I got some stories to tell!
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We (I guess that means Consumerist) really needs to rake the job boards over the coals for enabling fraud and deceit. Every month, if not more. Interviews with HotJobs, Monster & Careerbuilder execs (or notices here informing Consumerist's readership that they're dodging.
These places are con jobs taking advantage of the board's primary audience.
They clutter up the listings away from legitimate employers to the point that I stopped going to one board (Yahoo (we suck!) HotJobs).
These places create incentives that coerce employees to commit fraud.
I could go on.
Or, perhaps, force these companies to use proper job categories (Sales ONLY). That way the boards make their money, the companies pay (and pay) but we can weed them out.
A long time ago I had a job for a place like this (for 3 days, literally). They were called Five Points Marketing, so if anyone ever sees a job offer from them, please ignore/delete it.
I've seen a bunch of postings that list a $65000 yearly salary, but when you go to their website to complete the application process, it states in small print that the salary will be adjusted based on performance (meaning: sales) after six months. The $65k figure is just a made up number to get your attention.
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Is there some way we could get a coordinated vigilante attack launched against these bastards... like, I dunno, repeatedly calling and asking one question at a time about their \"job offer\" etc. 1-8xx numbers charge the call receiving party per call you know...
Or hell, do the same with Monster.com, et al, and record ourselves grilling them over their shitty practices of letting scum like these MLM dirtbags harrass earnest employment seekers with their duplicitous ads.
I think we need to take the hate to Monster, HotJobs and CareerBuilder for allowing them to miscatagorize these things, or list these sleazes to begin with.
DX-Max people are shameless scum. They'll just giggle.
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Here's another - SKYMAX - San Antonio TX
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I'm currently out of a job, and am certainly will NOT be fooled by their BS. Doing a google search for every job you apply will help. IF they don't reveal what name of the company is or refuse to, walk away.
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What you need to do now is get some people to make a fancy script that can filter out all of this junk when people try to use said career sites. Maybe then this third party site that can get worthwhile jobs from the big guys, but filter out all the junk will actually be useful...Since places like Monster seem to have become next to worthless much of the time...