One of the downsides of using the various job sites on the web when hunting for work is that you get all sorts of crank calls – I don’t mean the Spammy fake jobs here, as that tends to be exclusively emails. And all of this is quite apart from legitimate agencies who tend to waste your time approaching you about work that bears little resemblance to what is on your CV. No, I mean those people who call you up telling you that they work for a blue chip company that has Investors in People and wants you to work for them with unlimited earnings. When you dig a little deeper, they are trying to get you to flog Aloe Vera products via multi-level marketing. The MLM folk will tell you that it isn’t a pyramid scam, but, frankly, you would be hard pushed to tell the difference. The difference being, a pyramid scam doesn’t involve a product. Apart from that, the system is identical. I’ve had several calls from these people over the past year – along with emails as well – wanting me to sign up as an agent. That’s how desperate they are to create downlines that feed income to them, otherwise, they don’t make their money. All of this despite it being pretty obvious from my CV that marketing in any form isn’t what I do – or want to do.
More recently, I’ve been receiving calls from a couple of marketing companies based in Bristol. One is Mantra Marketing and another Arcedia Direct. Now, they won’t tell you what it is that they want you to do, merely that they provide marketing solutions for their clients and that there is scope for rapid progression into management.
You wonder, sometimes, whether they actually read the CVs of people they call. I mean, mine screams “training professional”. So why would a training professional want to join a company selling stuff that no one wants, door to door on a commission only basis?
If you are job hunting and you are called by these organisations, be aware that this is what they do – door to door selling whereby you are trudging the streets, slogging your guts out for up to twelve hours a day for nothing – unless you convince some mug to sign up – or chugging in the city centre again for commission only.
Of course, if you want to do that, then don’t let me stop you…
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Google “Forever Living”, “Arcedia Direct”, “Mantra Marketing” or the “Cobra Group” for plenty of eye openers on this lot.