Look before you leap with "Entry Level Marketing" jobs

As graduation draws near some students, many with significant student loans on their back, begin to panic. It doesn't matter if they majored in Business, History, or Psychology they need a paying job, like, yesterday. These students become prime targets for recruiters looking to fill the numerous "Entry Level Marketing" positions that always seem to be available regardless of the state of the economy.

First, let me just say there is nothing wrong with sales as a career. Many people have highly successful sales careers with legitimate companies and make lots of money. Short of owning your own business it is one of the few occupations where your effort has the best chance to directly correlate to your compensation.

However, it is a job function that is very often misrepresented in the recruiting process. Most employers know if they write the job description as "door-to-door office supply sales" almost no one will apply. Marketing, however, is sexy. That conjures up images of writing the next great Super Bowl ad campaign. So, the job going door-to-door selling staplers is transformed into "premier marketing company seeking entry-level marketing assistant to help promote Fortune 500 brands". Some companies will take this a step further and offer you the "freedom and excitement" of "running your own business", and some of them are exploitive if not outright illegal. As you conduct a search it becomes hard to tell the potentially shady businesses from the legitimate ones, especially when a company you have never heard of is in the Monster or CareerBuilder search results right next to major companies with which you are familiar.

Here are some red flags to watch out for:

• When an ad SCREAMS AT YOU using LOTS OF CAPITAL LETTERS about HOW MUCH MONEY YOU CAN MAKE!!!!!! Seriously, have you ever seen a job posting from someone like General Electric telling you how GREAT their EXCLUSIVE JOB OPPORTUNITY is? If they have to sell you that hard, beware.

• If the email address given as the contact does not match the company website.If you are applying to "ABC Marketing" and the contact is a free Yahoo or Gmail address it should be something to question. Domain-based email addresses are given out free with many webhosts and most legitimate businesses will have one. There are always exceptions to this rule, but it is another reason to look more closely. Google the email address itself and see what comes up.

• If they mention compensation as the first and most important thing. Money talks for many people, and they know it. Salary is a common element in many legitimate job postings, but if an ad starts with "You can bank $2,000 a week!!" or "Unlimited Earning Potential!! Up to $100K typical in your first year!", be very skeptical. As a rule, the earlier the salary is mentioned in the process, the less likely those claims are to be true.

• The job offers no salary. True, there are many legitimate sales jobs where the compensation is "commission only". Sales managers like to "keep you hungry". This shouldn't be a disqualifier, but it should get your attention. Is this purely commission, or is there a salaried period during training? Is there training? Is the salary a draw against future commissions? Is the draw a "recoverable" or "refundable" draw (meaning you owe it back to your employer if you sell nothing)? What is the one-year retention rate for staff (how many sales people make it to year two)?

• The job requires you to recruit new salespeople. Again, nothing illegal about this, but ask a lot of questions. Most legitimate businesses prefer to have their salespeople selling, not recruiting. You may have found a MLM business (Multi-Level Marketing). These are the legal cousins of Pyramid Schemes and they may or may not be legitimate. Check out the company very carefully before getting involved. 

• They offer you a "face to face" sales position. It sounds so nice when they put it this way, like you are going to be sitting across a mahogany conference table from the potential client in a luxurious office suite. Most of the time you can translate "face-to-face" to mean "door-to-door". Put on your comfortable shoes and be prepared to hit every house in the neighborhood. And you better make 500 contacts this week. Again, nothing illegal here, but probably not the future you were imagining while daydreaming in your Consumer Motivation class. These positions often require you to make some sort of initial "investment" which may be difficult or impossible to recover.

So, what do you do if you are contacted by a company with a "marketing opportunity" that concerns you?

• Never, ever, give them any information that is financial or personal in nature until you have checked them out thoroughly and preferably met them in person. Until you have received an offer, there is usually not any legitimate reason for an employer to ask for anything personal. For example, an employer might need your bank account number to set up direct deposit, but that should happen well after you receive an offer. Your employer will need your exact birth date upon hiring, but until they offer you the position it is actually illegal in the U.S. for them to ask for it. Until an offer has been made they can only ask general age questions based on the job requirements (e.g., Are you over 18?).

 

• Check them out with the Better Business Bureau. Some really bad companies know they are bad and change their name often to stay ahead of the BBB. So make sure you always take the next step as well.

• Do a quick Google search. Enter the company name and "scam" together in the search field and see what comes up. Remember, it is the internet so take it with a grain of salt. You can find complaints about legitimate companies, too. But if you see 22 pages of scam complaints on one company, move on.

The best advice is the oldest. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Use common sense and do your research before jumping in!