I’ve just been “headhunted”, rather unusually, by (or rather on behalf of) a tech sales company…
They sell software mostly, but also the associated hardware. I’m not going to name the company, but it’s POS-related…
Leaving aside the weirdness of the way they “found” me, or how very odd the entire contact has been - if it turns out that this is legit, would you take it?
The base salary is the highest thing I’ve ever been propositioned, and then they claim up to 50% commission on top of that (I believe commission-only is illegal in Aus - hence the base salary). The recruitment was full of weird millennial shit like “Free breakfast!” and a bunch of emojis. It was all very… Cringe. It was also written with really poor grammar, considering this is a tech company, in Australia…
I dunno. I’m yet to ascertain how “legit” it all is, and it is very much too good to be true, but, apart from being parasites, what are your thoughts on that sort of work/company as a whole..?
It’s setting off a whole bunch of red flags, to me, but I’m also willing to… At least communicate with them further, without giving away anything too identifying, simply because I am looking for work.
I dunno. I don’t like this, and I’m trying to be as wary as possible, but the research I’ve done so far suggests that this is how companies like this do things, even if it is utterly alien to me…
Just wondering what people think, beyond “Run a thousand miles the other way”, lol…
Just look up the company. Maybe it’s newish or a startup with only a year or three of funding.
Check linkedin to see if <person> works for company. If it’s an external recruiter, they may be spamming everyone on the internet looking for commission. If it’s an internal recruiter, it’s probably legit.
It's an external recruiter... :-/
Everything about the recruiter is dodgy, and definitely spammy. The company she apparently works for (if she is a real human) has good reviews, but there's a massive disconnect between what they have on LinkedIn, and her emails to me...
As for the company that apparently "wants to recruit me", their... Reputation is not so good. But it depends where you look.
It's not a startup. It's like Square, if you know that one. Essentially a payment processor. They're international, I believe - this is the Australian branch...
I dunno. There's a lot of red flags.
I fully expect it to go south, which is why... I'm trying to minimise the information the recruiter gets from me.
While also not directly saying "No", yet, just in case...
It's all very weird. But apparently "normal" behaviour from these Linkedin-scraping recruiters, as you say...
The more of your info the external recruiter gets, the more jobs she can slam your resume into. It’s not necessarily a terrible thing, but it’s not the best.
The pay levels are probably real. If you want that pay at that company, apply directly.
Yeah, I did try to find out whether I could apply directly, but they don’t even have any job listings (in Australia), and, for that matter, no way to apply directly.
It also has a strange disclaimer on the “careers” page, that states that if you send an unsolicited CV, they will “charge you a fee”, which is… Possibly not even legal.
It just screams “scam” to me. The whole thing…
But maybe I’m just not used to this “industry”, which is why I asked…
It’s all a bit frustrating.
Welcome to your zoomed plagued HR and marketing teams where everything matters life and death except things like grammar and professionalism
Plenty of money to burn too. High-high pressure cooker revolving door. The only job security is that breakfast bar
Do I even need to say how much you'd need to hide your power level at a place like that? If you're AUS I probably dont
Power level??
I agree on all counts, but... What does that mean, in this case? :-/
I could guess, but...
"Power level" originally refers to video games (it actually originally refers to Dragonball, but stay with me). For instance, if your 9 year old niece were to invite you to play Mario Kart with her, you would (most likely, unless you like seeing little girls cry) do something that a lot of people call "hide your power level." You wouldn't do a lot of drift boosts, you wouldn't take optimal shortcuts, you might intentionally run into a few stage hazards...you would be holding back, as a more common phrase.
Here, he's probably using the phrase to refer to your political leanings. You might need not to bring up the billions of people Communists have killed, the gender imbalance in women's favor in schooling/courts/etc. You might have to hide your "based" power level.
Oh, I see. Yes, this makes complete sense.
Before I realised this was probably a scam (you can see my slow mental breakdown over the course of these comments), I had actually thought about this, in relation to one specific thing:
In Aus, now, you are, at many workplaces, corporate or otherwise, generally "obliged" to conduct an "Acknowledgement of (Indigenous) Country" - sovereignty never ceded, yadda yadda, before every meeting, and sometimes, at the start of each day.
Think, the Lord's Prayer, or an oath, or a pledge of allegiance, but woke. It's everywhere, and has spread extremely rapidly, very recently...
I despise the thing. I actively scoff when someone does it, say on a plane, and I patently refuse to play any part of it at, for example, civic and sporting events. It is fundamentally anathema to my beliefs, if you will.
So, what would I do in the event that this company made me play along..? Note, this is never written into employee contacts (at least, in my experience), but is, rather, an "unwritten expectation"... Which makes it all the more nefarious? So, what I settled on is this: I would be willing to sit there, diligently enough, while someone else did it, but if they told me it was my "turn", I would refuse, consequences be damned.
Like, that's where I draw the line. I fundamentally will not do this, even at pain of "disciplinary action" or whatever.
There are a couple of examples of people being let go from voluntary positions, when refusing to do this, and I know of a few local politicians and the like being "censured", but as far as I know, there isn't a test case of anyone in paid employment being sacked for it, yet. Which is something...
So yeah. Very specific example, but I get the idea of what we were all talking about, and agree, thoroughly.
What Dox said. It's a /pol/ term used by people who think they are too radical for their surroundings.
Fair. Apparently I had a bit of an idea, but was a tad "out of the loop" on its exact meaning.
Re being "too radical", see my other comment...
I never thought I would be "the resistance" to something so inane, but when you're surrounded by quislings, I guess someone has to stand up...
It's amazing how spineless people are, on this Indigenous shit, and the tranny stuff, IRL. Hence why I feel like I can't afford to be, lol.
See my other comments...
I don't even know if it's "real".
There's absolutely no way that a company as fucked as their website and corporate videos suggest they are can afford the wages they are claiming. No way...
All I have now is a headache. :-(
An ex of mine did this sort of work at a tech startup…
She loved it (though she was a textbook narcissist, so)…
But she also met the founders of it at an in-person networking event, so it’s considerably different. Especially since that was some small startup, and this… Isn’t. But she was recruited similarly, without relevant experience and the like…
I dunno. I just find it all a bit… Offputting.
But I also don’t necessarily want to just “grey rock” it, at least yet, if it is legit…
Eugh. I’m just not sure what to think of it, right now, tbh…
Usually base salary would be lower to offset commissions. It being the highest ever seems weird
I mean if its too good to be true, trust your instincts
Yeah, all of it has been thoroughly... Not right. The more research I've done into it, the more it seems like a fairly sophisticated catfish...
So much so, that if this company really does exist, going by their website, I'd say they are dodgy AF, and almost certainly not who or what they say they are...
The website certainly hasn't been written by a native speaker. But then, nor had the PD I was sent, at a guess. And nor have the emails...
It's really, really weird.
You probably won't get a response but have you tried to send the company an email directly asking them if this recruiter works with them ?
Add in that you are worried that this person is using their company's name to potentially scam people as the email you received is incredibly unprofessional.
You might get an answer back as generally it's not a good idea to get your company's name associated with scams or unprofessional behavior so someone might take the time to disavow the recruiter.
As for whether I would take the offer....well it's not worth considering before I can verify it's legitimacy so I'd probably base my decision on what kind of answer I get from the email to the company itself.
Yeah, I spent several hours last night trying to look into that…
Essentially the company does not have a contact email…
I mentioned elsewhere, but to find any contact information that would be useful in this instance, I had to go to the parent company (which is NZ-based), and then continue searching around to be taken to another “Investors” site, which had a contact form but no email…
The Australian site doesn’t even have any job listings, and the careers page has all this weird legally dubious garbage about “If you send us an unsolicited CV, we will charge you a fee”…
It’s all very weird. Hence my increasing confusion… 😑
Oh, and they also have lots of links back to LinkedIn, but then no way to contact either the company or individuals on LinkedIn…
Honestly, if they even do exist, they have a very strange way of doing things, to say the least.
They very clearly do not want to be contacted, except by potential “clients” who they can sell the tech to, fml…
I looked at their website. Smartpay.au
Seems totally normal from the perspective of a start up.
What are you making now that they is “the highest paying job you’ll ever have” maybe you make shit wages. I did. Then I got into a different industry and literally increase my take home by 50%.
The red flag you should hear as a sales person is that your inbound leads and total sales run rate is probably shit. They probably have a high base salary, because you’re not going to make anything in commission for a while.
Also their technology doesn’t look like it will survive.
I’m making less than minimum wage right now, so anything like this would be massive for me…
I called them on Friday, though, to try and “investigate”, and it was… Horrendous.
The only person who would speak to me had never even heard of the recruitment agency, and nor had her direct line manager…
They refused to help beyond that, and wouldn’t even let me speak to someone in HR or recruitment…
They basically said that this was my problem, and up to me whether to take the risk to send further information to the recruiter or not…
She wouldn’t even tell me if the vacancy that the recruiter advertised was legit… 😔
So all round… I don’t think this will be proceeding further (if I would even want it to), at this point. Unfortunately…
If this was legit, I would pursue it, but… Again, this all feels very, very wrong.
I also phoned the recruitment firm. No answer all day, and the messagebank redirects to the “director’s” mobile voicemail (i.e. not even the business one, even in the middle of the day)…
Dodgy AF.
Ok, well things got much, much weirder...
Did some more research on the company. It's this: https://www.smartpay.com.au/careers/
Their website is incredibly dodgy, with nonsensical sentences, and dead links (such as when you click "current job listings", and it takes you to a keyword search on a job board site, Seek, where there aren't any jobs listed...
All of it is dodgy and weird.
It matches the dodgy-weirdness of the recruiter, but it also makes the whole thing seem even more scammy...
I dunno. I'm gonna back right out, but man, this is one fucking strange catfish, if that's what it is.
This is their "work culture" video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Zp7rjYMpG0
Holy shit everything about this is fucked.
I have no fucking clue what is going on with all of this. All I know is that I'm gonna nope the fuck out, at this point.
I think this is a scam, sadly.
To quote:
I sincerely do not think that a real person, in this position, for whom English is their first language (not only that, but she claims on her LinkedIn to have studied at a British Uni), would write like that...
I think I've been "catfished", in a sense. Which is... Really shit.
But yeah, I think I'm gonna "nope out", at this point.
Yeah, I tried contacting them…
They’re really cagey about contact details, though. I think I mentioned elsewhere that the only way I could find “Contact Us” was to go to the parent company site (in NZ), and then to an external “Investors” site, for the umbrella company that I guess owns both…
That was literally the only way to contact them except via a “Sales” phone line…
All really weird. 😒