Jan 4, 2012

Multi-level Marketing Companies 1 - LIA GROUP

As a recent college graduate, my search for employment has been one of my primary goals. The minute I made up my mind that I would not be traveling to England to Study Abroad but will graduate early instead, I’ve been raking employment websites ever since. I use Careershift.com a website that consolidates all jobs from major employment websites of even from corporate company job sites into one site. When I landed an interview with McGraw – Hill last summer I was hooked. With the positive results from before this was my go to engine, and I believed things put on this website are legit. Wrong. You see it doesn’t take much for a so-called company to post on CareerBuilder, or Monster. Here’s my story:

Original my job search was for internships, because I believe that internships are a foot in the door and the best way to get hired later on. But in order to make money to save for what I’d like to do in the future, would it not make sense for me to look for Entry Level Positions? I can live with my parents for a little over a year, take my masters entrance exam, and still have money in the bank to move into a nice 1-bedroom apartment. Wouldn’t that be sweet? When I put entry-level marketing, this group called LIA Group in Mineola, LI showed up, a company that is a direct marketer for several Fortune 500 companies. I quickly applied, although the job description was pretty vague. Can you believe I got a call to come in for an interview the very same day? I was ecstatic, unfortunately I was still up in school and I wouldn’t be in NYC until the following Monday. No worries, they were able to schedule me in for that following Tuesday, what nice folks, they must see potential in me.

Fast forward to Tuesday, my brother drove me to the location, from outside I joked with my him on how this company must be bootleg if it’s housed in a building that has no business name displayed outside. We both laughed, because we knew I was still going up. When I got upstairs, there were many others there waiting to be interviewed. Judging by the people who were waiting, it seemed like this company had no filter, everybody off the street and their momma was here. Amidst all the, what it seemed like unqualified people, I saw a middle aged man that was unshaven, asleep in the corner, seriously? Something is sketchy man. My interview was scheduled for 11:30 am and I was quickly whisked into a nearby office to be interviewed by a man with lolling eyes, who was unnecessarily boastful of what great things their company does. Despite that I was nervous and eager to show him how qualified I was. The interview lasted approximately 7 minutes, during the time he spoke mostly about the company, but when he was done I drilled him with questions. “What type of person would you like to fulfill this position?”, “Why are you guys looking to hire now?”, “How did you get involved?” ,”Why are you still with the company, what keeps you here?”. I felt that some of these questions caught him off guard because he immediately began to smile, and respond with almost generic answers. Something is sketchy man! At the end he smiled, thanked me and told me if I make the next round I’d get a call between 4 and 5 in the afternoon today, complemented me on my suit, and opened the door quickly for me to exit.

Hmmm, something seemed sketchy, but I still hoped to get a call back though! I believe I made my choice not to go back when I got to the LIRR to Penn Station. Seven dollars off peak hours one-way! No way Jose, I don’t have that type of money, or time! That would be $14 – 16 dollars on the LIRR and $4.50 for the Metro. I had another interview to go to that same day so really the price did not body me for the day, but I knew it’d bother me later on. Long behold, I got a call from them in the afternoon around 4:30, I was underground due to the subway at the time so ‘Morgan’ had left me a voice mail stating to call back that I qualified to the next round. Although it would have been nice, I was not about sacrificing my time and money to this vague and sketchy company. At this time I still did not understand what this company stood for, but I just gave up that prospect.

So I did not return her call.

Continued, my next blog will dissect what Multi-level companies like LIA Group LLC are all about, what you can do to avoid or notice them.