Work-at-home, no-skill jobs are usually scams where they charge a
startup fee and leave you out to dry, or turn out to be a pyramid
scheme of some sort. Speaking generally, not about any named
website...
When looking at a job offering, at-home or not, the first thing to
look for is a "startup" or "membership" fee, or whatever they call it
when they want you to pay money to get a job. Even if it sounds like
a ?good deal,? try to work out in your head exactly why they ask for
money. If they actually wanted workers to perform whatever job, they
wouldn't demand money to get in the door. Advertising for something
and then charging money for it matches the MO of selling something,
not hiring people (not independent contractors are usually asked to
pay for a job, unless some kind of licensing or legal paperwork is
required).
The second thing is "no skills" being required. Nobody would
advertise a legitimate job as such, because there are no such jobs
(and if there was such a job, they wouldn't need to send out spam
advertising it, would they?). As a worker, you might think a specific
job has no skill requirement. But you would be overlooking basic
skills that you personally have and take for granted. There are
plenty of people browsing the internet with inadequate language and
math skills for even the simplest tasks (I don't mean to insult them,
but they do exist in large numbers). If the job involves proofreading
or data entry, the company supposedly in need of these services
wouldn't let a randomly chosen person do it for any pay rate, not even
for free. A legitimate job would involve some kind of method to
ensure that people who can't spell their own names are paid to
proofread or enter data.
The third thing to look for is the company in "need" of help actually
being a third party. There are legitimate jobs where a company
specializes in hiring employees for other companies, but this is
usually done for to avoid the mess of hiring, screening (criminal
background or drug tests), and legal paperwork, especially for
temporary positions (hence the common name "temp agency"). The
benefit is that a company can hire an employee for a few months
without the hassle of figuring out who is going to process the hire.
If the job is truly no-contact, no-skill, and no-screening, why would
the other company use someone else to perform no task in particular?
Ask yourself, if you were a company needing the advertised job to be done:
Would you pay the advertised rate (usually well above the
nationwide average for ANY job) for substandard work?
Would you trust a completely unskilled person to do it at all?
Would you trust them with the data provided?
Would you want a virtually anonymous person to do a job that your
company might be liable for?
Ask the person/entity offering the job:
Will you ever need to pay them any amount of money for any reason
(some are happy to lie if you ask about membership of startup fees,
because they have no doubt come up with some other cleverly worded
excuse for taking your money)?
Can they name the third-party companies that have recently provided
work for members/employees? Seriously, not even ONE of them?
How many people are currently "employed?"
Does any part of the advertised compensation assume you will
recruit other people?
Are you paid by the company in questions, or by the supposed third
party needing help?
Although it may sound like I think this is all obvious, I myself have
wasted time listening to pitches for scams. Fortunately I have never
been taken in, but I have come a lot closer than I want to admit. :)
If anyone is wondering about this and seriously considering one of
these scams, I am aware that it sounds a lot more convincing when you
are unemployed. However, most of them are easy to weed out by
checking for membership fees and recruiting requirements. If you
don't see those warning signs, ask them the questions above. You will
probably find that they either won't give firm answers or give you
answers you don't like. |
