I was contacted by a company a couple of months back call Hi Profile. The pitch was: one of our VPs received your resume from a headhunter, and I would like to do a phone interview to pre-screen you for a position. I was in the middle of something, so I asked if we could schedule a time to talk later that day. No problem, she said, and promised to call me back at 4pm. When she did not call, I tried to call back, but only managed to get a automated switchboard.
A few months later, I get a message from a company called BIO-Shortlist. I googled it, and found nothing. I went to a reverse phone directory, and discovered the phone number was the same as for HiProfile a few months before. I did not call back.
A month later, I was called again. I challenged the kid on the other end of the phone about the previous calls and different company names. He got a bit flustered and defensive, but finally explained that the conmpany was BIO-Shortlist and HiProfile was the parent company. I asked outright if this was a company that was paid by the company doing the recruiting or by the candidates, and he informed me in no uncertain terms that it was cost-free for me—all costs were paid by the companies seeking candidates. I decided not to be too paranoid, so I went through his "pre-screening". A lot of it was standard interview questions, but then he turned to questions that seemed more aimed at gauging how vulnerable I was to a sales pitch from an outplacement firm. I asked again: do I pay anything? Clear answer: no!
So I went for the first meeting. If you want to know how it went, read the report for Bernard Haldane from Bridgeport, CT. Same M.O.—except no invitation to bring my wife along. Everything else: leather-bound bio book, meeting with senior associates to see if they would accept me, meeting scheduled that would go through unless he called me, blah, blah—same pitch.
He did a very good job of showing me that I am not well prepared for an interview, and did a reasonably good soft-sell on how I could be helped by coaching. He gave me the background of the firm, telling me that companies pay an annual membership fee for access to their database of pre-screened candidates, blah, blah, blah. Unfornately, the longer he went on, the more inconsistencies appeared in his story, and many things he said just did not add up (number of member firms, number of candidates with resumes in system, etc). But he kept in reasonable control of the meeting—since I was the one who needed THEM to help find a job.
Then came the clincher: "And of course there is no cost to you, but we do ask for a $3000 refundable marketing fee upfront." From this point on, he was the desperate one: now he wanted something from me. He said essentially that the $3000 fee was to make sure I was serious about looking for a job, and that I would show up for all appointments. I was sceptical, but vulnerable enough from the first part of the sales pitch that I agreed to a second meeting to see what he would say.
The second meeting was like a bad joke. Here they were supposedly placing exec earning more than $100k, and he gives me a cheesy powerpoint presentation, in black and white, using a standard pointpoint template. The content was crap that anyone could pull of the internet in 10 minutes. And now the marketing fee was $3100, and it was not refundable, but rather they promised that in salary negotiation they would raise your salary by an average of 18%, which for the sake of argument would be $10k. And 10k minus $3100 is $6900—which I got to keep! Rubbish.
So then I sank him: I asked for references. After some hemming and hawing he said, yeah, he could give me references, but he only would do that if I was serious. I told him I was serious, and then he said he would give me ONE reference, and I could call that person after 6pm. "But, " he said, "I want to get this thing moving, so what I want to suggest is that you sign the contract, which you can cancel within three days under MA law, and then we can start work right away. The you call the reference, and if you are not happy, then you can cancel the contract, and we are done." Basically, he refused to give me a reference unless I first signed the contract.
For your information, many of the people who work there are Bernard Haldane alums—and show up in other consumer complaintss. Names to look out for are David Eysmann, Donna Mase and Paul Fowler.
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