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!