Hiring Yourself

My fall semester of Senior year at Clark was supposed to be spent entirely on courses for a minor in Entreprenuership and business courses. I've always wanted to be my own boss to some extent and I figured if it were to ever happen I should probably know how to write a business plan and navigate a startup. Unfortunately, that summer I took an internship on the campaign in NH and got sucked in for the entire semester and took the Fall off from school. I learned a lot but not about starting a business. 

Lately, this job hunting business has me looking at all my options, including going into business for myself. One thing that I've been reading about is passive income. Basically, work you do once that grows as an investment. One of these is writing a book. Costs nothing to write, and I have a lot of free time, so why not? They say that you should write what you know so I've begun doing some mind mapping for a book about volunteer recruiting, refining techniques, and building a self sustaining organization of volunteers for non-profits, small campaigns, and local committees. 

My opposition research has shown that there is a bit of a gap in this area of literature. There hasn't been a book written on volunteer recruiting since 2004. What this means is that there's a big opening for someone like myself to write about the techniques used on the various campaigns in 2007-2008. 

The various incarnations of this idea that I've been toying with for the past couple days has brought me to the conclusion that a website on this topic is both viable, but with back up tools such as a book/ebook, and seminars/workshops I could turn this into a real business or consulting firm. I'll probably be using this as a sounding board as I flesh out my ideas and move forward on this project. At the very least it is giving me a chance to expand my portfolio and develop some skills that I can bring to a job once I get hired if this doesn't fully pan out. 

Job Searching, Marketing Scams, and You: Northeast Consulting, Inc

Now, it takes a lot to make me mad. Even more to make me angry, and few if any have ever seen me truly enraged. Right now I'm pretty pissed the fuck off. This is why:

So last week on a whim I checked out marketing jobs in Boston and the Boston area. Mind you, this was immediately after waking up, so I wasn't fully awake or anything. This tends to be the time of day that I do most of my job hunting and applying. Why? It's easy to wake up, grab the laptop off the floor, check the email and any postings that came in and just follow it from there. Well, I came across an ad seen in another posting here. Now, my main thinking on this was "well, as a campaign worker I'm selling a candidate all day. I've done this stuff before, I do it well, why not take a stab at marketing?" So, I sent off my resume and stuff right away. Then I started researching the company. I didn't research first because who knows how many other applicants there are? Better get your stuff in faster and research later.

Well looking at their website you see a modern, professional website. It looks snazzy. First thoughts: oh looks like they may be a good sized firm that has their shit together. I dig a little deeper and start looking at the individual pages. Something starts to seem off. What is the point of a corporate website? To instill confidence in the corporation to its potential clients and show off accomplishments. This site seems geared entirely towards those looking for jobs. Here ladies and gentlemen, we have Red Flag #1. Well, ok maybe thats not terrible, their site says they work on relationships with clients and direct sales. Sure, that makes sense. If you're approaching a company they might not care all that much for your website if they aren't looking in the first place, use it to attrack talent, especially when looking to expand like they say. Fair enough.

OK so then we come to Red Flag #2. I get an email within an hour or two. It's a form email signed by the "Human Resources Department" asking me to call THEM for an interview. What? Who requires that you call them for an interview? No one, that's who. But wait! They call me first! OK, so I have a resume that they think would compliment them well. AWESOME! Sounded legit on the phone I guess, so that's great. They want an interview with me on Tuesday at 2:30. Fantastic!

Now it is time for some deeper research on them to prepare for the interview. Onwards, to Google, Master of Company Lore! Wait, what the fuck? Red Flag 3: Googling Northeast Consulting, Inc shows up with nothing but job postings for the past 3 months. "Well, they did say they were looking to expand, it only makes sense that they're posting on all the different job sites, they could really find the cream of the crop so-to-speak." No big deal there. But... still, it goes for over 7 search pages and there's no press on them. Maybe they're a start up? Let's find out when they were started.

Ok, now I don't know if any of you are geeky enough to know that you can find out who owns websites and when they were registered with ease. Now, I hate the godaddy.com commercials as much as the next guy, but you can use their site to get all this information for free. The search is called a "whois" search. Well, turns out that their website was registered in 2008 by a website design company from Colorado or something. Fair enough. That fits the start up motife and the lack of any info on them, they haven't been around long! Great, so while there are a couple "Red Flags," what else have I got to do, get off Cape, go for an interview. What do I have to lose at this point? After all, googling "Northeast Consulting, Inc + Scam" turned up nothing. I also decided to check the Better Business Bureau's website. It turned up nothing on the name or website. I also checked some other companies that I know are real and legitimate, some of those didn't turn up either so I thought nothing of it.

So, I mention all this to my friend AJ from college. He mentions he had applied to something similar and found out it was a scam after he applied. He mentioned that it too was in Braintree, but was called Bdi or something. But so far as we knew, Braintree was the only similarity.

A few days pass, it is now Sunday night and it just isn't sitting well with me. By this point their whole presentation just doesn't feel right, no company should be presenting themselves. I read their email and note they specify what your dress code is. That's odd, shouldn't that be a test of your potential employee? Seeing how they present themselves? If they can't sell themselves, how can they sell your product or that of your client?

I ask AJ again for more details of this company he found out was a scam, and he doesn't respond for a bit, so in the mean time I look up marketing job scams. I found the holy fucking grail of marketing scam company listings here. Reading through there's some good information. In the comments there's a list of known scams. Northeast Consulting isn't in there. Ok, I'm feeling alright about this. Then AJ responds. BSI Boston was the name of it he says. Well, scrolling down the comments further, lo and behold! BSI Boston is listed on that page. He asks me what the name of the person that called me was... sure enough. Same fucking lowlife. Now, when I got her name it sounded really lame and fake: Jen Jenson. I googled it, found nothing related to Northeast Consulting Inc initially. But its a real enough name, people have it. Fine. Now, she's related to a pre-existing scam. Fuck me.

I go find BSI Boston's website. The language and text are exactly the same on the Northeast and BSI sites. They're they same company. Scrolling further on the about.com page reveals that they recently changed their names and phone numbers.

I got pwned. Doomed to remain on Cape longer.

Now, I wasn't planning on writing this up, but Depo asked me to write up some stuff on job hunting and I want to make sure that google comes up with this whenever anyone searches for Northeast Consulting, Inc. I want people to know how fake this is and any further iteration that comes from 100 grossman ave, braintree, ma.

Also, Jen Jenson: Fuck you.

[Edit 09/03/09]: So it appears Jen Jensen and Andrea Anderson may in fact be different people. Good for them. That still doesn't excuse this company from their shady business practices. Scam or not, they're still out to screw people for their own gain. That is not OK in my book. I will not sit idle and allow people to spend money to interview or quit a job or relocate for this bullshit. I'd also like to take a moment to point out that this is the 2nd hit on google after their own website. Awesome.

The Unending Job Hunt

So, I've been unemployed basically since Nov. 7, 2008. It's getting old. I've sent out several resumes and cover letters a week. I can count on one hand the number of responses I've gotten (and that includes notice of receipt), and on one finger (preferably the middle finger) the number of interviews I've had. I'm constantly asking myself what am I doing wrong? I've got a solid cover letter, I've got a solid resume in a good modern format, so seriously, wtf? 

Am I looking in the wrong places? Most of my job hunting is online, I use craigslist extensively, I've got a good network of people in various places that I've gotten good tips from and have postings forwarded from them (this is where I got the only interview from a House Chief of Staff's mailing list, yay for random people!), and the HRC alumni list has been helpful too. It's fantastic that I'm getting several postings to my email every day. Unfortunately, just about everything out there is not entry level or anything that I can apply to. 

You name it, I've used it: USAJOBS, Idealist.org, Monster.com, Careerbuilder.com, Senate employment board, Massachusett's agencies job postings, the list goes on and on. What am I missing? Are there really no jobs out there for my level of experience? What other resources are out there? I feel like no one posts real jobs in newspapers any more. 

What are your thoughts on job hunting? Where would you be looking?

Job hunting sucks

Job hunting sucks enough to begin with, but it wasn't so bad only a year or two ago. Now, I don't mean to say that being unemployed at any point in time didn't suck, or that it was necessarily easier at one point or another, but there was a level of respect towards the applicant that seems to have been tossed in the dumpster next empty beer cans, dead cats, and the local homeless man. In the past if you applied for a job, you got an acknowledgement that you were considered and the job went to someone else. Fine, it's going to happen. You aren't going to get everything you put your name in for, but at the very least, you used to get confirmation that your application was received, even if they made it clear you wouldn't be contacted unless you were selected for an interview. What happened to that? I've sent out 31 applications and resumes to various employers and I've gotten just one response. One. 1. Uno. Ein. Even then it was just a one line rejection because I got the person's personal email address from a person that knew them. Where the fuck did common courtesy go? If someone sent me a response to a job that I posted I would feel pretty obligated to at the very least thank them for putting the effort in. I can only imagine how they treat their employees and clients when they can't take 5 seconds to try to expand their employee base. Bah.