I come from a hospitality background, and, having found myself out of work, I was on the job hunt through any channel I could think of. One of my go to places for job ads is Craigslist; a place that has a rather special reputation as I'm sure you all know. It's always a mixed barrel, but I always give it a go because I've found good stuff there in the past.
I was definitely looking for something higher up in the food chain this time around with regards to jobs, so I wasn't expecting a lot from Craigslist, but then I came across an ad for an entry-level Sales & Marketing position with a small private firm. The odd thing was that the ad was nested in the Food/Beverage/Hospitality section!
My reactions were that this company was either searching for cross-over talent, that they had made a posting error, or that there was something dodgy going on in that they may be one of those scam sales companies that makes money from convincing just about anyone to sign up for some training package or whatever.
There was very little information on the company (which I will keep anonymous for now) from my Google searches, and their own website had a dysfunctional home page. Not good signs!
However, the fact remained that I was unemployed, so I fired off an email with my resume and a cover letter pitching myself as a potential asset based on my sales experience in hospitality and my comfort level with approaching random people.
The ad said very clearly that it was B2B selling (business-to-business), not a charity, and that training was provided. These were important points to me. I didn't want to be selling vacuum cleaners to house wives, or standing on any corners trying to guilt trip people into donating money they don't have.
My questions at this point were basically:
What the hell is the product?
Are there going to be any ethical issues here?
What is the pay?
What is the commission?
Is Training really provided or do I have to pay?
Will this job be useful on my resume later?
How transferable will the new skill set be to future career paths?
Is it a scam in some other way that I haven't thought of yet?!?!?
And so I waited....
