Maybe I’m simply lucky.
Or, probably, frauds on Web are so many that it’s normal to frequently run into one of them. Especially if you apply to 30/40 vacancies a day.
I have been receiving unreliable e-mails from presumed companies for weeks. Some of them asked me to provide just some more personal details. Others, a scanning of my ID card or Passport. The rest of them even asked for a scanning of my Birth certificate. They said that those documents were absolutely necessary to complete my registration to their database. False! Never, ever give to recruitment agencies or companies a proof of your identity before meeting them for the preliminary interview!
Sometimes I have been asked to bring with me a document, of course, but only if I had to go to the agency for the interview. They do not need a copy of an an ID card or Passport or whatever document just to submit the CV and the application to a database! They have to take a look at candidate’s skills and experience and references and only then arrange an interview and ask for a document.
In my instance, they asked me to provide a scanning of my ID Card or Passport or Birth certificate through e-mail, otherwise I could send them a printed copy to their postcode. I don’t know, maybe they just wanted it to register a new candidate in their files – and probably get a bonus from that. Being unsure, anyway, I decided to simply cancel the communication. Why take the risk to become the next Salome Bally? In that case, scammers surely got Salome’s ID Card scanning with a similar request.

.
Anyway, as for the umpteenth scam they tried to involve me with, it came through my mailbox yesterday evening. There was no specific subject in the e-mail. It just referred to a generic “Part time vacancy”. No reference number, no job title. Not that strange: it’s not so uncommon to receive e-mails from real recruitment agencies with a simple “Re:” as a subject.
I read the first line. Something didn’t work in that sentence. Then two words were blindingly obvious: Western Union.
Right, I thought. Everything’s clear now. A scam.
Why the name Western Union has to be always linked to scam and frauds nowadays? All the frauds they proposed me relied on Western Union services. Unfortunately, in some countries its offices are out of control. A pity, for an international service of such importance.
I read the whole message. The presumed role had to deal with bank transfers. Through Western Union, of course.
IP address was from Mexico. E-mail address shown on the message was not the address that appeared when I clicked on the ‘reply’ button. They sent those messages at an address I use only for job applications. Read: they got it after receiving an application of mines or they are even subscribed to a website providing CVs and contacts to employers. In any case, they’re bastards. Attempting to scam unemployed people trying to steal money they’re not earning: what’s worse?

I wanted to be 100% sure I was right and really facing a new scam attempt. I wrote them a reply. I asked for some more infos about the job. Their answer, arrived at 7.40pm – ’cause all the recruitment agencies are opened after 7pm in the UK! – was almost indecipherable.
I got the confirmation I needed and immediately proceeded with a vibrant answer that would stop any further attempt to offend my intelligence.

I copy and paste the three letters below, hiding the name of the company.
Enjoy your reading!

___________________________

Subject: Part time vacancy
From: Dolores W****
To: Juana Romandini
Date: 22/3/2010 14:34 (but arrived at 7.20pm)

Ceff*** Cons***** & Finanace is 1 of the leading providers of consulting services in the world. Our success depends both on high quality of services and on professionally managed and reliable business processes.

This is the reason why quality is our main concern. However, the only way to reach top-notch quality in our business is permanent struggle for quality and engineering of very stable procedures.

It is not possible to reach high quality standards without dedicated personnel striving for flawless operation of processes and projects in their daily life. Currently we have a Financial Manager opening. No deadlines for applications are set.

The job of Financial Manager includes processing of money transfers, sent to his bank accounts by company clients. Upon receiving a transfer the Financial Manager has to redirect it to the account specified by our dispatchers. All you need for this job are: 3-4 free hours a day, your wish, ability to work in a team and responsibility. The initial wages will equal fivepercent of total turnover.

Requirements to employee:

* Foreign language, English.
* To have an opportunity in any working hours to go to closest Western Union location and make money transfer.
* Should have bank account
* Have a skill to communicate and access to the Internet.
* Be able to check your e-mail several times of day
* twenty years old and more

What we offer:

* Free seminars and training courses, after six months of good work.
* Increase in your salary.
* Generous wages. Your salary will originally make five % from every payment. After five remittances if you will operatively work and correctly, your salary raises up to 10 percent.

If you are interested in this vacancy, reply at our email: cefincfk@lav****.com

2010 © Cef*** Cons****** & Finanace
All right reserved.

—————

Re: Part time vacancy
From: Juana Romandini
To: cefincfqq@lav****.com
Date: 23/3/2010 19:22

Dear Dolores,

I will be pleased to provide you with all the information needed if you would be so kind to tell me a bit more about the role.
What should I do exactly on a daily basis?
I have no financial or credit control background. Is that a limitation to my application?

If you should have any question, please, feel free to ask.

Best regards,

Juana Romandini

—————

Subject: Cef*** Cons****** & Finanace
From: cefincfqq@lav****.com
To: “Juana Romandini”
Date: 23/3/2010 19:40

Greetings,

Cef** Cons****** & Finanace company thanks you for being interested in our
offer.
All additional information about our company you may read at our official
site.

http://www.ceff******.com

Below the details of vacancy operational scheme:
1. The payment notice and the details of the beneficiary for further
payment transfer will be e-mailed to your box. All necessary instructions
regarding the payment will be enclosed.
2. As a next step, you’ll have to withdraw cash from our account.
3. Afterwards you shall find the nearest Western Union office and make a
transfer. Important: Only your first and last names shall be mentioned in
the Western Union Form! No middle name (patronymic) is written! Please
check carefully the spelling of the name, as it has to correspond to the
spelling in the Notice.
4. Go back home soonest possible and advise our operator on the payment
details (Sender’s Name, City, Country, MTCN (Money Transfer Control
Number), Transfer Amount).
5. Our operator will receive the money and send it to the customer.
6. Please be ready to accept and to make similar transfers 2-5 times a
week or even more often. Therefore you have to be on alert to make a
Western Union payment any time.
Should you face any problems incurred in the working process, don’t
hesitate to contact our operator immediately.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us by e-mail.

If you have understood the meaning of work and ready to begin working with
us, please send us your INFO in the following format:

1) First name
2) Last name
3) Country
4) City
5) Zip code
6) Home Phone number, Work Phone number, Mobile Phone number
7) Bank account info:
a) Bank name
b) Account name
c) Account number
d) Sort code

Scan you passport or driver license

2010 © Cef*** Cons****** & Finanace
All right reserved.

—————

Subject: Re: Cef*** Cons****** & Finanace
To: cefincfqq@lav****.com
From: Juana Romandini
Date: 23/3/2010 20:16

You are just ARSEHOLES! You steal CVs from websites to scam people who are UNEMPLOYED AND SEARCHING FOR A JOB! YOU FRAUDSTERS! How do you DARE to propose yourself as professionals? Shame on you!!! Your e-mail came through the wrong mailbox, darling!
But I am now being ungrateful. You are offering me a job and I am shouting at you… I want to do something to pay you back for your kind offer. I want to give you some advices:

1 – Be smarter and AVOID PUTTING THAT FUCKING WESTERN UNION REQUEST IN ANY SCAM YOUR BRILLIANT MINDS DECIDE TO GIVE BIRTH TO;

2 – If you want to scam Britons and people living in the UK, TAKE A DAMNED COURSE BOOK AND START LEARNING ENGLISH, THEN!

3 – If you want to be a believable company, if you really want to seem PROFESSIONAL, then YOU MUST AVOID OPENING AN OFFICIAL COMMUNICATION WITH A DREADFUL “GREETINGS”. For your information, “greetings” IS A GREETING that means BYE BYE, SEE YOU, HOPING TO HEAR YOU SOON, WHATEVER!!!

4 – Please, avoid answering to this communication. I fear that my brain couldn’t manage another BRILLIANT, CLEAR AND GRAMMATICALLY CORRECT E-MAIL OF YOURS!!!

Best regards – or greetings, you choose,

Juana Romandini

___________________________

No answer after my burst. Silence along all the line.
Did I left them speechless or did they simply ignore me and go on? I don’t care. It’s none of my business.

.
What’s outrageous is that in this instance they used a really existing company to make their scam even more likeable. I cannot write the compete company name, or in search engines results it’ll will jump out together with the word “scam”. Anyway, I can assure that’s a professional and big financial company operating in New York city. Existing and hiring people, not scamming them.
How did I get to the right web address? Because scammers put it at the end of their last message – see it above. I just had to compare the e-mail address given by the real company with theirs to discover that they used an indecently similar nickname – but with a different extension after the @. Of course. They can misappropriate of a name, but they cannot fake website address and extension.
I wrote an e-mail to the company straight away. Maybe they won’t care, but I wanted them to be aware of the problem all the same.

__________________________________________

UPDATE OF 7 PM:

The e-mail I sent to the “company” this morning bounced after trying to reach its mailbox for 5 hours. I immediately checked the e-mail extension: it didn’t match with the website address.
I browsed more carefully. I was astonished: 100% it was a fraud, but the website was so damned likeable that I barely could believe I was looking at a scam! I was absolutely angry.

I started an immediate control of the domain owner: a Polish man from Warsaw. The reference e-mail was, again, a Hotmail account.
Next step, typing “Cefin Consulting & Finance Fraud”. Here you are what I found on the Web:

http://www.bobbear.co.uk/cefin-consulting-and-finance.html

Administrators of this website have done the very same checks I did. Whois, IP address, complete and full website browsing.
I am still upset. It’s starting to be hard to identify those scammers at first sight. In the end, also Cefin Consulting & Finance is a fraud.

A small note before closing: if I have to select ads matching my CV among hundreds of ads, if I have to pay attention to avoid to be trapped in a door-to-door disguised as a Customer Service role and if now I have also to pay attention to not get scammed… well, mates, I know I’m unemployed and plenty of time, but I would like to use it for more productive and interesting activities than running away from those sons of a… yeah, you know of whom.

.
Recruitment agencies and companies nowadays use to say: job situation is tough.
Oooh, yesss. It is indeed. But the tougher it is the weirder become assessments and tests you have to do to get a job. No, I apologise. Not to get a job. To submit the application!

.
I was going to apply for a role available for an important travel company. Their vacancies were all around the UK and I would have tried to apply in Lancashire and Merseyside both.
Personal details, qualifications, achievements. All right. I can handle that. Then, the longest part of the application: the 30 minutes assessment test. They would ask me tons of questions trying to identify my skills and match them with the job I was about to apply for.
Ok, I can do it. Let’s go ahead with the assessment, then.

.
I sat down. I was ready to start with the examination. I was applying for a travel consultant vacancy, so I supposed I should answer above all to geographical questions. I was wrong, completely wrong.
Now please just try to guess my face when the first question popped up on the screen and I saw the following:

(Click on the image below)

I thought I was going to be a travel consultant, not a competitor of Jamie Oliver!

.
Straight after the cake baking test they asked me to decipher a mobile text and re-write it in a letter format. Right words, sentences and punctuation: easy!
The step that followed asked me to correct the answer to the letter I had just completed. It was full of errors and with an awful lack of punctuation. Easy again!

.
The third step involved the comprehension. I had to read the article they were proposing me and select firstly its three main subjects, then its three most important quotations:

(Click on the image below)

Of course I didn’t guess any, not even one, neither after reloading the page and starting it all from the beginning. Did I really deserve my Media & Communication degree? Shame on me, cheated by an automatic test!
Feeling miserable, I tried to do my best with the title (my apologises, kids!):

(Click on the image below)

Straight and precise. If I’m booking a cruise and the travel consultant deals with my kids the way I dealt with that article I am sure I will go for a rubber dinghy trip.

.
As if my embarassment wasn’t just enough, here comes a sequence of questions regarding the subject I’ve always fought against in my life: Maths.
“Please calculate the surface of this, please calculate the area of that, how many metres of wall paper do you need to cover a room of 4x3x2.5metres with a covered chimney jut in the middle if the paper costs 6.5£ per strip and a strip is 50 centimetres large and 2 metres long?”
What?!? Who the hell cares how much it’ll cost the bloody wall paper to cover the bloody chimney when I live with 6 other people, I’ve got no chimney and my room is covered in plain paint that once was white and now is Tweety yellow???
Of course I typed the first numbers that came up in my mind. Obviously the result was far from being good: your score is really poor. Do you wish to go on all the same?
Yes, I do.
Attention! If you will click on ‘continue’ button again, you won’t be able to go back anymore! Do you wish to continue?
Yes, holy cow! Go on!
And here’s what the system proposed me straight after. A cook at the beginning, then the kidsister of Albert Einstein, the daughter of Chris Lowe and now… a waitress!

(Click on the image below)

When the hell will I finally become a travel consultant?!

.
Surely not the step after. For the umpteenth time, I found myself making a face. The new question was even vital: can you please help your healthy granny to put the right amount of fats in her wrecked body?
Sure, mate! Let’s start and defeat the bastard fatty salad!

(Click on the image below)

They gave me just the first numbers. I was supposed to calculate the ones left. Again, I felt puzzled: what the hell does this has to do with travelling???
But, for the first time, the answer perfectly made sense: they were teaching me how to calculate the fats I’d surely put on my belly staying sat all the day beyond a desk if I wasn’t smart enough to eat healthy!

.
The very last question was the classical icing on the cake: distances. To be calculated without any TomTom or Garmin or Mio, of course!

(Click on the image below)

I hurried to Google Maps. From Edinburgh to York, here and there, up and down along the UK. At 20p per mile. Why didn’t she buy the tickets before jumping on the train? What if she catched a wrecked Northern with no ticket inspector in? And what if the price didn’t match with her hormones? What would she do? Would she get off in Newcastle and then go on by foot? Stupid Sandra!

.
Did I have to give up and renounce to my promising carreer as a cook/handiman/mathematician/journalist/waiter/dietician/SatNav&train-ticket-machine?
Yes, because in the end I have been unsuccesful!
Usually they consuider I have been unsuccesful after forwarding my CV to employers and filling out the application form. This really is the first time I run into a system who shuts browser’s door on my face. But, you know, job situation is tough and you can be really succesful only if you can demonstrate to be very versatile. That’s why, probably, I couldn’t apply again as a travel consultant. At least, not until I won’t get some experience also in cooking a proper Sunday roast.

Cool.
So, just because I’m not a Windows/MacIntosh user I cannot apply to any vacancy available at Royal Bank of Scotland? A bit enervating and limiting, especially considering that Firefox’s starting to be the most common browser installed on PCs!

Fortunately, Firefox is smart enough to cheat those kind of limitations – usually. I just had to set “Internet Explorer 6.0″ on its user agent switcher to make RBS system happy, hadn’t I?
Indeed, something changed: instead of the error message, I got a completely blank page! Setting “Opera 8.51″ instead of “Internet Explorer 6.0″ on the agent switcher, I got the same page as Firefox: this combination is not currently supported for this assessment.
Trying directly with Opera web browser – after spending again 10 minutes time to fill out all the fields required – the result was a blank page again. Moreover, even if it wasn’t working once reached the last step of the registration, RBS system had already recorded all my details. Read: I had to use different email addresses each time, or it wouldn’t go on!

Would I be considered as an ideal candidate for RBS roles? Who the hell knows? They don’t even give me the possibility to forward them my application!

As all the recruitment agencies and companies use to say nowadays, job situation is tough. There are no vacancies available. If there are, they require a level of skills and knowledge and experience that most part of young people haven’t.
I’ve been applying to thousands of vacancies any single day. In some way, I’ve wasted my time: as usual, no answers at all, neither automatic. If I ring recruitment agencies I’ve been visiting this month, they answer they have no jobs available “or they’d give me a call”. If I e-mail them a copy of my CV again, they simply ignore me.

.
After weeks of silence and refusals, I decided to completely re-build my CV. Maybe it was just a matter of layout or contents or highlights. So I searched on the Web for some CV samples to fill out with my datas.
I run into tons of websites that said they’d be “pleased to help me to find the perfect job just re-writing my CV for me”. A team of experts would transform my banal CV into something unique, something able to catch employers’ attention before other candidates could do it.
There it is the solution, then: letting someone else building my résumé! It would be more powerful, more interesting. In a word: great. But… how to pay a CV Review team if I am unemployed? Because, of course, those services have a cost. How much? It depends. Prices start from 49£. Not that much, but let’s first read the T&Cs: for 49£ they’ll just review the CV you wrote by yourself. They’ll just correct grammar and typos, nothing else. If you want them to re-write it all, well, conditions change then: prices start from 59£, depending on how much they should change it. Read: fake it to let it be more impressive.

.
To support the astonishing efficiency of their work, CV Review teams have published on their websites testimonies from people who asked for their help. With a brand-new CV written by them, those people found a job just the day after receiving it in their mailbox! Surely impressive and maybe true. After all, situation wasn’t that desperate until few years ago. Indeed, a perfect and brilliant and readeable CV could make the difference. So, who wouldn’t accept to pay 59£ for a stunning résumé if he/she was sure to get a job in max 48 hours?
But situation has now changed and I couldn’t pay anybody to write my CV for me.

.
I downloaded a CV sample from The CV Centre website and proceeded to fill it out with my datas.
Actually, it was more readable and shorter now. It seemed to be able to catch employers’ and agencies’ attention with just a blink of an eye. From that day on, I started to forward that one. But nothing changed. No answers from recruitment agencies – I will talk about that particular phenomenon in another article: it’d be too long to be explained here! – no answers from companies. The few of them that decided to give me a response just sent me the typical “We’re sorry, but you have been unsuccesful this time”. And that’s all.
After a month spent searching for a job any single day – I am still unemployed – I started to wonder if I should really pay one of those teams to review my CV. Sure, I was unemployed and XX£ are quite a lot, but maybe it’d help!

.
I filled out a couple of information forms. The first agency didn’t reply at all. The second, before going on, adviced me that the complete review and re-writing of my CV would cost me 69£. I gave up. Not to be a Scrooge, but 69£ are half a month shopping in Tesco! Whilst I can manage to be successful using a not totally perfect CV, I cannot avoid buying food!
I continued to apply using my old CV. Maybe not the best CV in the world, but surely cheaper. Moreover, a recruitment agency – the only one that replied! – meanwhile told me that my CV was correct. There were just a couple of typos here and there. I sighed of relief: I had saved my money.

.
I had almost forgotten about my CV Review subscriptions. Yesterday I received an email from one of them. What they wrote froze me on the chair.
According to what they say, my CV is a complete crap. Language, layout, content: everything’s a mess!
I went on reading. I was absolutely positive that all those light accusations had to lead somewhere. And I perfectly knew where.
I just copy and paste the whole message below. I’ve disguised the name and the details identifying the company.
I suppose it doesn’t need any comment. Except, maybe, for some – let’s call them – typos.

________________

Hello,

T**** C** CV Review Team

________________

.
“In its current state I would be surprised if you were able to get recruitment agencies to put you through to enough clients to get that next step up in your career“
Surely I am the one surprised! I would never imagine to find a psychological blackmail in a message that’s supposed to offer me a help!
Many people could be really susceptible to that kind of subliminal attack. Instead, I’ve found myself just pissed by that sentence – and now I’m trying to calm down simply reporting the whole episode.

.
“There were lots of grammatical / spelling and sentence errors including a number of duplicated words”.
Surely my English is far from being perfect. I’m doing my best to improve it day after day, but I’m not a British native and I’ve been living in the UK for a year so far. I suppose it’s normal to show a lack of language knowledge now and then.
On the contrary, people working for the CV Review Team should be English native to correct my “language horrors” in the best way possible, shouldn’t they? So why are they confusing “your” with “yours” and using the word “areas” with such a frequency? Isn’t that a repetition?

.
“The layout was very poor, improvements could be made by utilising the space better and therefore reducing the length of the document. Ideally 2/3 pages is more than enough”
Well, maybe they just didn’t pay enough attention, but my CV is 2 pages and a half long. As for the layout, it comes directly from a sample downloaded from a website recommended also by Job Centre Plus.

.
All those CVs Review agencies have started to multiply like ants only in the last 6 months. Before, they were not that many. The lower the credit crunch falls, the higher becomes the number of foxies ready to exploit the situation. CV Review teams, leafletting jobs proposed as events promotion roles, door-to-door presented as customer service and sales jobs. It doesn’t matter if targets of those almost-scams are unemployed and young and needy people. Those companies take advantage of credit crunch consequences like vulturs.
After being cheated 5 times, I’ve learned that Marketing Advertising Company is a professional way to call a door-to-door job in 99% of cases. Sometimes they hide it using words like “face-to-face”: hard to foresee that you’ll find yourself knocking at others’ doors when it sounds to be more an Events Promotion position!
Sometimes they don’t even write face-to-face. They just say they are “a marketing advertising company searching for talented and smart sales agents”. If, while applying, you specify that you do not want a door-to-door job, they cheat you telling that’s just a Customer Service role.

.
Anyway, getting back to my sincere, darling friends of the CVs Review Team, I’ve decided to give them a second chance. Maybe my CV is really as rubbishy as they say. That’s why I’ve downloaded another sample from The CV Centre and modified just the name and the personal details. I am now a young British guy, a webdesigner searching for a job. I have been working for the company since my degree in 2008 and I live in London. Degree? The same: Media & Communication. The most modern and useful, nowadays! You’ll surely have no problems finding a job!, they told me when I started university in 2001. Thank Goodness! What if I had chosen a classical, genuine Liberal Arts course?

.
What upsets me most is the way those CV Review teams operate. They use the perfect words to hit the mark they want. No matter if that means to dip the knife into unemployed people’s scourge. They know they’ll convince a good part of them to pay for their service just sending those emails. After staying home for such a long time, unemployed persons would do anything to get a job. If those teams are really able to offer them a small chance – according to what they write about the service – desperate people will be more than glad to pay 69£ to get a powerful CV.
“As our CV writing prices start from £69, your new CV only needs to get you your next job 1 day earlier for it to be cost effective!”
Personally, I’d prefer to get a job one day later and save 69£ instead of risking to lose them to take a chance “one day earlier”.
Anyway, let’s wait and see what they’ll say of Alex’s CV. He’s a great webmaster with a perfect CV. Why should they destroy it?
I’ll wait and see.

_____________________

15th March 2010 – Update

I had no doubts: the opinion that the CV Review Team sent to Mr Alex B. regarding his CV is identical to the one they wrote me 4 days ago. Scores are a bit different – not that much! – but… hey, he’s a professional webdesigner! And he has an excellent cultural background, too! But, despite of that, he’s got just the double of my scores. Read: less than a half of the total. So, again, Alex’s CV is a complete crap as much as mine!
A bit comfortable, but surely not less irritating!

___

Hello,

T**** C** CV Review Team
___