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Jobseekers Beware... Scams Galore

SurrealisticSlumbers

📠girl in an 🎠world
Joined
Dec 31, 2016
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If you're like me, you've maybe had the rug pulled out from under you this year due to COVID. Either your hours were cut significantly, you were formally let go, furloughed, you're an independent contractor / self-employed person whose business took a nosedive, or some other immensely stressful situation came up pertaining to your work life. So you do the logical thing and start looking for another job, both in person and on the internet, perhaps using sites like CareerBuilder or ZipRecruiter.

Unfortunately, having scrolled through these job boards and clicked on (what I thought were) these "jobs," I have been discouraged to find so many scams.

It's either...

  • A job title that says something like "Data Entry Clerk," but when you click on it and get redirected to the company website, you're taken to a survey-taking website. For the uninformed, taking "paid" surveys online is a known scam, with few people making any more than $25-50 a month. For example... you're asked to take a survey, but five minutes in, you don't meet the demographic they're looking for and are disqualified, then directed to another survey, same story - so you waste so much time. Plus, there's often a minimum amount you need to reach to cash out, usually anywhere from like $20 - $50. And many survey takers get so close to cashing out only to be deactivated for breaking any number of arbitrary, poorly disclosed and often ridiculous rules, at which time they forfeit the right to that money.

  • Companies that, upon getting to the interview process, you come to find operate as literal MLMs, hardly any different from Lularoe. You won't be an employee, but sign a 1099 Form and will likely be making very little yourself, but your upline is really raking in the dough (in other words, a pyramid scheme). This happened to me just last week, I'm sorry to say. Nonchalantly applied for the customer service job, even though I've never worked in the insurance industry, got a follow-up email that said my resume stood out to them, and registered for an interview slot. The day of, clicked that link to the Zoom "interview," only to realize it was a webinar livestreamed to me and probably about a couple dozen other suckers, pitching their pyramid scheme. My mic and camera were turned off, and at no point was I asked any questions. Company has something like a two-star rating on Glassdoor. People are saying it's an entirely commission-based wage (most MLMs are) and that you have to stand in the Walmart lobby and hawk life insurance to people. To confuse things further, they operate subsidiaries / regional offices under different names - all life insurance - so there's damn near 10 different "customer service representative" jobs on ZipRecruiter that, upon closer inspection, are all with the same scammy life insurance company that actual customers don't seem to like. It's my fault that I got overeager and didn't do a quick Google search of the company to learn this in advance.

  • A UPS or trucker job. Lots of CDL jobs, freight and packing / unloading. Of course, you need to be comfortable driving a truck and have the correct license...

The only jobs that don't seem to be a total lie are the Amazon warehouse jobs and gig-economy jobs (i.e. Uber). I don't approve of Amazon as a company and have boycotted them ever since learning of their many scandals and poor treatment of workers. And I've done Uber and Lyft in the past but found the ridesharing to be scary as hell. What little money I made really wasn't worth some of the drama encountered, from the occasional handsy passenger to lewd behavior to somebody shoplifting and then using me as the "getaway driver."

I can only assume that the people who fall for any of the aforementioned "jobs" are those who can't discern the cold, hard truth from whatever crackpot fantasy these dubious companies are pitching using so-called legitimate job sites. The MLMs in particular love to target recently single mothers, military wives, and other women (they predominantly reach out to women with their marketing tactics) who may be vulnerable to the Koolaid these people are peddling.

Several girls from my high school ended up in MLMs like It Works, Monat, and Thirty-One Gifts. They are in deep.
 
Last edited:

Jaq

Remember, Humanity.
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Thanks for posting this. Watch out folks.
 
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