After I placed my resume on an online job site, I received an e-mail from Bernard Haldane Associates (BH). This was proposing a free career assesment. The suggested link was www.jobhunting.com/? Key=#.
I never follow such links. So, instead I went to www.jobhunting.com just to see what they had. The whole site, despite its misleading address, is about this would-be-assesment. I wondered how they do it. So, I filled out the first page, which contained general questions and seemed a bit like a survey. Second page, however, was demanding particulars about me. So, I went back and started over.
The style and the degree of professionalism of the site, or lack of them indeed, already made me quite suspicious. Thus, I started giving bogus and conflicting answers, some only alphabet letters. Despite that the "assesment" came. It was laughable, but disgusting as well. It was a page too obviously prepared before the process, and given in response to what your answer is to the "current position" questions. I felt quite insulted.
Yet, I was also surprised, because they claimed to have offices all over the continents, to have been in business since 1947, etc. I tested an office location, and a valid address showed up. Then, I said to myself, however unlikely it seems, this must be grand scam.
So, I did various searches about BH. I found out that they also maintain other Internet sites, such as www.job-hunting.com and www.bernardhaldane.com, etc. Why would a company have this many sites with apparently the same function?
All the sites gave no tools to the job-seeker. Important employer links were intentionally disfunctional. The only thing the sites had was grand sayings and big claims.
Then, of course, I found usacomplaints.com site, which sufficiently verified my feelings.
Now, what to do? I saw on their sites a list of well-known companies they claim to have done business with. So, I will forward my report to those companies' HR, and invite them to visit BH's sites. If BH's claim is bogus then they are in real trouble. If not, they should loose those businesses, since anyone with a right mind and who had seen BH's sites would not maintain a relationship with them. That should hurt them enough. Another thing that can be done is to set up a web site that shows up in search engines whenever someone requests a career related search. That would be something!
I hope this helped.
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