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from the get-the-pitchforks-and-torches dept.
Nick Corcodilos of Ask the Headhunter is familiar to many in the tech community for his career and employment advice. This week, Corcodilos' readers started chronicling the misdeeds of a recruiter variously known as 7F, SevenFigureCareers, 7Figure, and several other names in the comments section of one of his articles about recruiting scams. It seems 7F has been taking people's money and then failing to deliver on its promises:
"They promised interviews for six- and seven-figure jobs," said [7F victim John] Rice, "but delivered short phone calls with illiterate phonies."
As more and more information emerged, the crowdsourced evidence helped persuade credit card company American Express to terminate 7F's ability to do business through Amex. 7F has been stopped from scamming, but Corcodilos hopes Amex will pursue the matter until 7F "gets hauled before the authorities, goes to court, is tried, fined and goes to jail." I'm sure the people 7F scammed agree.
Any Soylentils out here do business with 7F or similar scummy recruiting firms? You might want to see about getting your money back.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 14 2016, @04:10PM
At the conclusion of the interview/sales pitch, you were asked to sign a contract that said your future employer had to pay them a fee equal to 1/3 of your first year of pay. And, here's the goodie. If the employer refused to pay, then you had to pay! Said so right in the contract. I soon had visions of them pulling a scam, colluding with an employer to fire the new employee after 91 days. The employer would of course not pay the fee. Every penny the hapless ex-employee had earned, plus an additional month of pay, would be owed to the recruiting firm. Even if there was no way they could get away with that outrageous a scam, it was still a terrible bargain. I about broke the door down running away as fast as possible.
This sounds like a scam in the colloquial "horribly predatory practices on the naïve," but not a scam in the way you are suggesting. First, I would argue that if you were fired on day 91, your "first year of pay" would be that 91 days of pay, not the theoretical 365 days. After all, that is the money you earned in your first year.
Second, what you are describing is illegal (I'm not a lawyer, but I would probably suggest it is "conspiracy to commit fraud"). If it were done, the contract would not be binding (it was not enacted in good faith, and it was created under false pretenses so there was no meeting of the minds... it is no more valid than if I sell you my "working car" which turns out to be missing an engine). Also, if a prosecutor caught wind of this there would be heaps of legal trouble. Of course, this assumes somebody has the money to fight this or the wherewithal to get State involved, but that is still a large risk to take.
Third, think about the business model. "We are trying to get money from people, so we are going to target new college graduates who have mountains of student debt, place them in a position where they have no income, and then try to squeeze them for money." You might as well try to get blood from a stone. I'm sure you could get some money, but wouldn't it be better to target the naïve and wealthy, or at least have them continue working for the full year so you know they have money you can take?
So rest assured the world is not quite as slimy as you had thought. Not quite.