The Interview, Part II - JOB WARNING!

The unsustainable geometric progression of a classic pyramid scheme, from Securities and Exchange commission report on pyramid schemes. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Hey friends!

I have some exciting news, but I need to back up and tell you some not so exciting news. Actually, I’m going to warn all the job seekers out there about fake jobs; you know the ones that promise you booku bucks for not doing anything. Sadly, these are the types of jobs that sometimes can’t be missed or are written as such, you don’t know they’re bad until you’re in too deep.

So, from my last blog, you guys know that I came out to Denver to actually just do one interview, which suddenly blossomed into something like seven or eight after I arrived. One of these moved me on to a second interview – the position advertised for office management positions, which of course was what I was going for. On a lark, I of course sent in my resume and left it at that.

Well, later in the day, I actually got a call to come in to interview, which was great. And then, later in the afternoon, I got another great surprise when getting to a second interview. This is what led me to postpone my flight to later in the week so that I could go. Everything was looking good – despite my annoyance at having to spend another $135 on extending my trip and losing my $66 hotel reservation – a second interview was awesome.

Let me paint the scene – the office itself was a small one, nestled within a larger building with smaller offices. My second interview was conducted by one of the company’s managers and I was interviewing with several other people. Now, I can’t remember when I have ever interviewed with a group of people before, so immediately my thoughts were, “huh” but I went ahead.

The overall meeting was about the company itself, what they did, and the training program in which we, as the trainees, would be involved in. It was a fun interview and I felt that I would be getting the final call. In telling my friends who I’m staying with about said job, we of course started looking at the website, which I hadn’t been able to do before as I didn’t have a site address.

First thing I saw, aside from a very nice looking website, was that the company’s name was misspelled. That of course was a big, “huh. Fire your web designer“, but as we looked further, we discovered the truth. Apparently, the company Exclusive Enterprises was actually a company who had originally been known as Scentura. Scentura, apparently, had been a ton of legal trouble because their company’s employment scheme was that of a pyramid scam.

That’s right, folks – what I thought would be my big break back into Denver was a pyramid scheme.

I was hurt and devastated of course – I had nearly run afoul in Virginia when I had been ‘hired’ by a guy for his office admin, only to get suspicious when receiving a large check and then asked to cash and send it back. In fact, I’ve gotten a number of these since applying while here too. For all my job seeking friends out there, be careful. Always look into a company’s background if you can and certainly get suspicious if they ask for information that is easily found on the resume you sent them.

And definitely beware of Scentura/Exclusive Ent – I lost $200 in this by extending my trip, however in hindsight, it was a good cause. Many people aren’t so lucky.

Stay tuned for the really good news!

Related articles

• The Interview! (freelancerr.wordpress.com)
• I Spy: How to Scope Out a Company Before the Interview (conduitsourcing.com)
• Warnings signs and tips for job seekers (conduitsourcing.com)

About these ads