4 Signs That Job Ad is an MLM Scam
So you got the interview. Congratulations! Every job hunter knows that thrill of anticipation when an employer wants to meet with you. Finally, all your hard work is paying off. You print out a couple copies of your resume, get your suit dry-cleaned, and practice your answers to hypothetical questions.
But as I’ve learned, not all interviews are created equal. To appropriate a phrase: “Apply in haste, repent at leisure.” There are a surprising number of multilevel marketing schemes out there on sites like LinkedIn and Indeed. They pose as legitimate firms, post a couple dozen ads, and wait, eager to snap up the naive young applicants that fall into their trap. You may go through several grueling rounds of the interview process, only to find yourself sitting across from the hiring manager with a sinking feeling in your gut as you realize that he’s pitching you a thinly-veiled pyramid scheme.
So how can you make sure that you aren’t wasting your time on a horrible door-to-door sales job? Well, the upside of my being slightly gullible is that I now have the resources to save you the time and energy I wasted. I went through the full interview process with one multilevel marketing firm, and since then I’ve been contacted for interviews by three more. (Handy tip: LinkedIn Easy Apply isn’t really all it’s cracked up to be). I’ve gotten pretty good at picking out signs that the job I applied to wasn’t posted in good faith, and have saved several friends and family members the hassle of interviewing for jobs they don’t really want.
Here are a few warning signs that your upcoming interview is with a multilevel marketing scheme, not the company of your dreams.
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1. Their job ad is vaguely-worded and overly enthusiastic
Most legitimate companies are fairly specific with their requirements. They’ll want you to know how to use relevant software like the Adobe Creative Cloud or the Microsoft Office suite. They’ll want you to know how to do specific tasks or know specific programming languages. They’ll want to know you can write, photograph, or edit videos. Multilevel marketing firms, meanwhile, want people who can work in a “high energy environment,” “self-starters,” “career-oriented individuals searching for rapid growth.” And where a legitimate company might list job duties like “data entry” and “creating targeted copy,” multilevel marketing firms will list “participation in staff and training meetings” and “client and consumer communication.”
The reason for this is that legitimate companies are searching for the right candidate, but multilevel marketing firms are searching for any candidate. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have any sales experience, or any relevant experience at all. As long as you can knock on doors and rattle off a memorized pitch, you’re good to go. In fact, you’re likely very appealing to them if you have little to no industry experience and don’t have a lot of distinguishing qualifications. Because if you can’t do anything else, you’re stuck with them, and you’ll buy into the dreams they sell you because you don’t have any other choice.
2. Their GlassDoor reviews say things like “You’ll be fine if you’re motivated”
GlassDoor is your first line of defense against scam jobs. Usually there’ll be at least one person sounding the MLM alarm; people who have been scammed before you will usually say so, and you ought to listen to them before you waste your time and energy.
Even if all the reviews are 100% positive, there are buzzwords you can keep an eye out for even in “good” reviews of the company. Not everyone posting a review on GlassDoor is being honest. They may be a higher-up in the company pretending to be a humble employee, the same way the position you’ve applied to pretends to be a regular job. Or, they may be an actual employee suckered in by daily pep talks and corporate rhetoric. Look for keywords like “sales” and “direct marketing.” If they ever say “door-to-door,” run for the hills.
Also look for the “door-to-door attitude,” with people saying things like “It’s long hours but it’s worth it” or “Of course you have to work hard, it’s a job.” Believe it or not, there are jobs out there where you don’t have to work sixty hours a week banging on doors for a tiny commission! Hard work is important, and you shouldn’t go into any job thinking it’ll be easy, but remember that your time does have value.
3. Their LinkedIn profile has posted dozens of job listings in a short period of time
If the company’s GlassDoor leaves you scratching your head, your next step is to check their LinkedIn. A lot of MLM scams recruit primarily by posting dozens of vaguely-worded job listings, each with a slightly different title to lure in as many potential applicants as possible. Think of it this way: what kind of company is hiring an “Event Promotions Assistant,” a “Brand Marketing Associate,” and a “Junior Business Associate,” along with six or seven other similar-sounding positions, all at the same time?
Another thing to watch out for is if their job postings, from event promotions to copywriting positions, all proudly declare “No experience necessary.” Why, if this were a legitimate posting, would they be looking for people that don’t know what they’re doing? As nice as it would be if employers accepted wet-behind-the-ears college graduates on the strength of their sparkling personality alone, most hiring committees are looking for applicants that have something concrete to offer. There’s really only one reason why they’d be seeking inexperienced new employees — any guesses what that might be?
4. Their website targets potential employees, not potential customers
If all else fails, you can often tell an MLM by their website. Usually you have to dig a little to find the job listings for a legitimate company, since the future employee is not their primary target: the future customer is. Take, for example, the website for Georgia Power. If you go to their homepage, the banner links are almost all dedicated to selling themselves to you as a customer. They have information for businesses and individuals, a section dedicated to showing the good they do within their community, and a section all about the ways their company operates. If you want to apply to work for Georgia Power, you’ll have to either do some menu-hunting or scroll to the very bottom of their website and check the links there.
Meanwhile, check out the page for Peak Enterprises Corp, which posts multiple job ads a day in Atlanta. “Careers” is just as big a section on their site as “Industry,” and has more content than most other pages on the site. And even pages not dedicated to wooing applicants are full of red flags — anytime a company mentions “personal marketing campaigns,” they probably mean “sending underpaid representatives to bother your target clients in person.”
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Multilevel marketing firms rely on exploitation of young, under qualified job-seekers. They will offer you minimum wage rates to spend sixty hours a week going door-to-door, selling coupon books or AT&T services. They tell you that if you work very hard for them, one day you’ll work your way up through the company to be a manager — and then you get to make lots of money exploiting other young, under qualified job-seekers. They succeed because they promise a fast-track to management, where you’ll finally be paid a reasonable wage in return for your hard work. And when you’re faced with page after page of underpaid jobs, the promise of a way out is difficult to resist.
But multilevel marketing firms are not the answer to the wage crisis. They’re not really interested in training you to be a manager, or in making you rich. They’re in the business of taking the value of your labor at a cutthroat rate and making bank from it. Odds are, even if you do get to manage your own branch of the firm, you won’t last long. The company I interviewed for a year ago, Three S&R Consulting, was run by a woman not much older than me who bought into the larger exo-company’s narrative. It has permanently closed.