Almost scammed!

If there are any reasons to be happy for a job-seeker that would be returning for a second stage of the interview process.

Executive Advertising (www.executive-advertising.com), otherwise known as Executive Advertising, Inc. based in Boston Massachusetts, was rather quick to wrap up my first round of interview, in Manchester, which lasted well under 10 minutes.

75% of the time was spent talking about what they do. How they have grown so big and expanding rapidly across the country -- a reasonable justification for a successful business (of scamming people by brainwashing!!) They used prominent brand names like Sky, Boots, Pizza Hut, etc. to show that their clients are big players in the market.

"Are you okay to interact with people face-to-face?", I was asked the question; to which I said on the level of preferences, of course, I'd dealing with people face-to-face!

As I walked away feeling like I was on top of the world, I was also quick to inform HF about the success of the first round of interview. I read their job description over and again not believing that I was going to be a candidate for a management training position. Well, having already two bachelor's degree (not tooting my own horn here) I thought the management training fits me well. Here's the job description, found on a job website:

GRADUATES, GRADUATES, GRADUATES!!!

TRAINEES, TRAINEES, TRAINEES!!!


CAREERS, CAREERS, CAREERS!!!

SEEKING: DIRECT MARKETING, DIRECT MARKETING MANAGERS, DIRECT MARKETING GRADUATE/TRAINEES


Are you a graduate searching for a career opportunity with a proven company? Still hunting for a position where hard work and ambition arerewarded instead of just seniority? Look no further!

Based in Manchester, Executive Advertising is a direct marketing company which specialize in the sports, home improvement, and telecommunication industries. Planning and executing promotions for our premier clients is our main focus. This year, our success with our portfolio has led us to increase our marketing and management teams. We value innovation, leadership, and a positive attitude. We offer career opportunities, competitive pay based on merit, a fun work environment, and paid training.

THE POSITIONS:
We are currently looking to fill entry-level Account Representative positions with career opportunities available in:

Promotional Marketing
Management Training

All positions are FULL TIME and ENTRY LEVEL. Advancement is based on performance, not seniority.

Executive Advertising develops a complete business solution targeted to our clients’ specifications, which makes our Account Representatives responsible for a wide variety of things, such as:


Teaching and training a team of marketing/sales/public relations experts to achieve a high-powered presence in the Manchester market.
Monitoring campaign and individual progress to ensure a steady stream of results.
Establishing relationships with local business owners to acquire new clients and strengthen our client’s presence in the market.
Communication of daily progress reports and maintaining established feed of information to and from our clients.
Execution of special promotions, test and target marketing, and brand management.
THE PERFECT CANDIDATE:
We are seeking individuals who enjoy working in a fast-paced environment. You must possess initiative, teamwork skills, and the ability to set and achieve goals. As our company is constantly expanding to national and international locations, we need people who are highly motivated and driven by the opportunity to financial and career growth.

TO APPLY:
Please send your CV to Jennifer Tanner at manchester@executive-advertising.com, or call 01612421780 and ask to speak to Jake Bradford. We are looking to fill all positions immediately. We apologize, but only those whom we wish to select for preliminary interviews will be contacted.

Thank you for your interest in Executive Advertising!

Feel free to visit our website @ www.executive-advertising.com.


All details and descriptions for the job sounds legitimate. Anyone will see it as the golden opportunity and would click-to-Apply right away. In fact, many people did and I was there (venue of the interview) to know.

Had I not took an interest to find out more about the company (their products, services, history, etc) last night, I would already be in Manchester for the second round of interview.

I began my search for, naturally, the company's name -- Executive Advertising. There was nothing much about the company and I began to be very curious. If ExecAd claimed to be as big as it claims to be, their histories (acts, profiles, deals with other businesses, news, etc) should be picked up and made traceable by search engines. I remember I was told,
"We've been around since 2001..."
If that was the case, I did a Whois search to find out about their website. Apparently, there were some discrepancies and I began to get very suspicious. First, the address of the registrant:
69 Wilson Street
First Floor,
Yukon Territory EC2A 2BB
Zimbabwe
1. Wilson Street... There are ten Wilson Streets all across United States.
2. Yukon Territory is in Canada.
3. EC2A 2BB refers to Islington, a part of central London, UK
4. Zimbabwe, is well one of Africa's country

It sure looked like an address on first glance. But this address points to nowhere, which translates to mean that the registrant does not want to be known/discovered.

Having discovered new information, I went back to their website to read their entire contents. I realized that the choice of words used were mostly ambiguous and unspecific. Reputable companies do not use ambiguous words. They will specify exactly their nature of business, how they are conducted, and choice of words are directly specific. But Executive Advertising's website was just the exact opposite.

Then I applied search filters filtering keywords like: jobs, leeds, manchester, -site:.co.uk, etc. and the first item to appear on the search outcome was DS-Max -- Direct Selling to the Maximum. Uncertain what has DS-Max has to do with Executive Advertising (I didn't even know what it was all about), I clicked into it. I was definitely in for a surprise!!

Executive Advertising (and I made sure the two terms referred to the company, and not some corporate position) is a real company that is out there to scam job-seekers by brainwashing them into believing they are doing something good for the company with the hopes of career progressions -- with hard work!. As far as I have read, the candidate will never progress. He will be going door-to-door selling discount coupons, shabby goods, while claiming that he's doing it on behalf of big company names (legitimizing his sale pitch).

There's a whole lot more about job scam stories on http://www.ripoffreport.com, a consumer website for which I am thankful. It has made aware there are giants out there to make you scapegoats. Searching for "Executive Advertising" + scam yielded more search results than just searching for "Executive Advertising".

I am, nevertheless, happy to have found out about such scams. I am not disappointed in any ways. I hope job-seekers alike will have the instinctive interest to find out more about the company they will be working for. As HF said, "If a company does not show an interest to know more about you, clearly the company is ONLY interested in what you can do for them!" The absence of such simple reciprocity is what raises suspicion.

Pressing on!

Caged-like

There's nothing I can do to change what have been going on up in my head since I returned to Leeds on Sept 30. Somehow, rather perplexing, I finally found myself imprisoned in Leeds. Although my freedom space can be stretched to the city's span, I have only found myself circling in and around my 50 square foot apartment that sits on Leeds city centre's border.

The grocery store, Morrisons (I still can't spell its name correctly without referring to its plastic bags I usually use as [waste] bin bags), is conveniently located less than 600m away so that I could continue to stay alive. Everything I last saw here before I left for Kuala Lumpur has now been changed. A total make-over of the store that is, fortunately, not beyond recognition. I could just dart straight to the frozen food section and jet off back home to dump it in the microwave. That's meal! That's good enough to go on for another day. Another day of feeling trapped here in Leeds.

Again, I couldn't help to imagine everything accessible to me when I was back in my hometown. My sense of adventures have always kept me away from staying at home longer than 2 hours (after waking up). Traveling from town to town on my Mitsubishi's V6 Storm (pick-up truck) not only made me feel on top of everybody else (on the road) but also the very sense of freedom. My very same sense of adventure is still very much alive but I have gotta tame it and tune it down. There's nowhere to go anywhere further than both my legs will bring me. No wheels, unfortunately. It does actually feels like I've got an invisible hand (nothing to do with Adam Smith's theory), as that of an amputee who's trying to adjust to his new environment with one arm.

Despite the above, I've come to accept that my hiding-out lifestyle is temporal. I'm back here looking for employments. Usually this time of the year I would be in classrooms and lecture halls but not now. I'm done with university. I am behind my desk scouting job websites. It's hard to convince myself there's a purpose to this because the efforts put in always feels like a futile attempt as potential employers always appear as though they're out there to tear you down. Pulling myself through is a challenge. To make ends meet, I've got to take up this challenge and make myself proud.

Life is truly not a bed of roses. Student's life is definitely the bed of roses that I am now out of it, for now.

The Secret to a Lasting Marriage : Embrace Imperfection (Must read for married and unmarried people)

Thanks to LYHV for this forwarded-mail, which I find quite insightful and perhaps useful to my current relationship with HF. I invite all to have a read.

When I was a little girl, my mom liked to make breakfast food
for dinner every now and then. And I remember one night in
particular when she had made breakfast dinner after a long,
hard day at work.

On that evening so long ago, my mom placed a plate of eggs,
sausage and an extremely burned toast in front of my dad. I
remember waiting to see if anyone noticed! Yet, all my dad did
was reached for his toast, smiled at my mom, and asked me how
my day was at school.

I don't remember what I told him that night, but I do remember
watching him smear butter and jelly on that toast and eat
every bite! When I got up from the table that evening, I
remember hearing my mom apologize to my dad for burning the
toast. And I'll never forget what he said: "Baby, I love
burned toast."

Later that night, I went to kiss Daddy good night and I asked
him if he really liked his toast burned. He wrapped me in his
arms and said, "Debbie, your mommy put in a hard day at work
today and she's real tired. And besides, a little burnt toast
never hurt anyone!"

In bed that night, I thought about that scene at dinner...and
the kindness my daddy showed my mom. To this day, it's a
cherished memory from my childhood that I'll never forget. And
it's one that came to mind just recently when Jack and I sat
down to eat dinner.
I had arrived home late...as usual...and decided we would have
breakfast food for dinner. Some things never change, I
suppose!

To my amazement, I found the ingredients I needed, and quickly
began to cook eggs, turkey sausage, and buttered toast.
Thinking I had things under control, I glanced through the
mail for the day. It was only a few minutes later that I
remembered that I had forgotten to take the toast out of the
oven!

Now, had it been any other day -- and had we had more than two
pieces of bread in the entire house -- I would have started
all over , but it had been one of those days and I had just
used up the last two pieces of bread. So burnt toast it was!

As I set the plate down in front of Jack, I waited for a
comment about the toast. But all I got was a "Thank you!" I
watched as he ate bite by bite, all the time waiting for some
comment about the toast. But instead, all Jack said was,
"Babe, this is great. Thanks for cooking tonight. I know you
had a hard day."

As I took a bite of my charred toast that night, I thought
about my mom and dad...how burnt toast hadn't been a
deal-breaker for them. And I quietly thanked God for giving me
a marriage where burnt toast wasn't a deal-breaker either!


You know, life is full of imperfect things...and imperfect
people. I'm not the best housekeeper or cook. And you might be
surprised to find out that Jack isn't the perfect husband! He
likes to play his music too loud, he will always find a way to
avoid yard work, and he watches far too many sports. Believe
it or not, watching " Golf Academy" is not my idea of a great
night at home!

But somehow in the past 37 years Jack and I have learned to
accept the imperfections in each other. Over time, we have
stopped trying to make each other in our own mould and have
learned to celebrate our differences. You might say that we've
learned to love each other for who we really are!

For example, I like to take my time, I'm a perfectionist, and
I'm even-tempered. I tend to work too much and sleep too
little. Jack, on the other hand, is disciplined, studious, an
early riser, and is a marketer's dream consumer. I count
pennies and Jack could care less! Where he is strong, I am
weak, and vice versa.

And while you might say that Jack and I are opposites, we're
also very much alike. I can look at him and tell you what he's
thinking. I can predict his actions before he finalizes his
plans. On the other hand, he knows whether I'm troubled or not
the moment I enter a room.

We share the same goals. We love the same things. And we are
still best friends. We've travelled through many valleys and
enjoyed many mountaintops. And yet, at the same time, Jack and
I must work every minute of every day to make this thing
called "marriage" work!

What I've learned over the years is that learning to accept
each other's faults - and choosing to celebrate each other's
differences - is the one of the most important keys to
creating a healthy, growing, and lasting marriage
relationship.

And that's my prayer for you today. That you will learn to
take the good, the bad, and the ugly parts of your married
life and lay them at the feet of GOD. Because in the end, He's
the only One who will be able to give you a marriage where
burnt toast isn't a deal-breaker!

At a malay wedding