Questionable job interview

[marshall-debbie]

I recently submitted a proposal and was excited to recieve a request for an interview a few hours after I completed my submission. Naturally I selected the first interview time slot available. I entered the Zoom meeting thinking I would be having an interview with the hiring manager.  I was surprised to be thrown into a group interview which quickly turned into a 2 hour presentation introducing an insurance company and what seemed like a pyramid type sales agent position. The position I was hoping to land was customer service/ administrative assistant based. The so called interview sent up red flags immediately but I decided to sit in and listen hoping I would soon be hearing about the job and not listening to the insurance spiel. They would talk a bit about the MIT - Manager in Training position which I thought was a fancy description of the position I was applying for. After sitting through a long so called interview I was selected to go to the next level and meet directly with a hiring manager one on one. Still leary about this whole process I figured I would see what this next step was like since I had already invested my valuable time prior to the one on one. The one on one was interesting, it leaned 99% into the sales agent position, basically selling life insurance. I informed the so called hiring manager that I was interested in the MIT position and that although I am confident I can be a great sales person that was not what I was applying for. She informed me that I had to learn the product first and that I had to put my time in doing the sales gig before I would be able to move on to the MIT position. Turns out you have to pay to be licensed and spend a week of unpaid time getting your license as well as spend a week or two of unpaid time memorizing a script. When I asked about pay or the position I had originally bid I was given vague answers. It did not appear there was any pay involved for the first 2-3 weeks and then the pay question was never really clarified. The next step was to set up a call for the final step of hiring, so of course since I had spent my valuable time already I agreed to a phone call later that day. I had planned on getting more solid answers during this final step but no phone call came in. The next morning I recieved a text saying they were sorry for not calling and that they gotten busy making final decisions and did not want to reach out too late. They wanted to set up a phone call that second day, I agreed because at this point I am irritated with the time they have wasted. I was hoping to dig into the unaswered questions I had. I emailed the original person who emailed me to set up the first email.....no response. I texted the person I had the one on one interview with and who was the person I was setting up the phone call with.......no response.  I am worried that they have done this to multiple other people as well. This company had 2 days of these interviews set up so I am sure they wasted a lot of people's valuable time. On the second scheduled day of interviews and the day they had rescheduled my phone call I saw that the job had been pulled from UpWork and that my proposal had been archived. 

I am new to UpWork and I am excited to find a new avenue to use for my job searches but I am concerned about this encounter I had right out of the gates. How do I explore the company I met with to find out more details on their ligitimacy? My main concern is privacy although the amount of time they wasted is another concern. Please let me know how you would explore this incident. Was this a ligit company? Is this how a lot of job interviews go on UpWork? What should I do to avoid these encounters? What does Upwork do to weed out companies that are not what they seem? 

Thank you for your time and consideration on this issue. 

[prestonhunter]

re: "How do I explore the company I met with to find out more details on their legitimacy?"

I have completed 297 jobs on Upwork.

I have never "explored a company" for details about their legitimacy.

I have never Googled a company or client name.

I only use the information available to me on Upwork to make decisions, and then I talk to the client as part of the "interview" process.

I make my decisions about whether to work for a client based on on the job that she posts on Upwork, the stats associated with her client account as seen on her her Upwork job posting page.

The personal account you posted contains "red flags." I know that these are red flags based on my reading of threads in the Upwork Community Forum.

Here are some simple tips that I follow:
Don't let people waste my tiime.

My time is valuable.
If somebody wants to hire me, then they hire me, and I log time while I work on their project.

I don't not waste time playing games with scammers.

Experienced Upwork freelancers can recognize a scam job post or a scam "client" wthin two or three seconds. This is not an exaggeration. We really are that fast in spotting these things. Because scammers are pretty lazy when it comes to creativity and they mostly just circulate the same scam scripts. We rarely see anything new.

re: "I was surprised to be thrown into a group interview which quickly turned into a 2 hour presentation introducing an insurance company and what seemed like a pyramid type sales agent position"

Debbie:
This doesn't like a real paying job.
It sounds like a pyramid scheme.

re: "Turns out you have to pay to be licensed and spend a week of unpaid time getting your license as well as spend a week or two of unpaid time memorizing a script. When I asked about pay or the position I had originally bid I was given vague answers. It did not appear there was any pay involved for the first 2-3 weeks and then the pay question was never really clarified."

Debbie, if I was a real client who wanted to hire you for a real job, then I would hire you with an official Upwork contract and I would expect you to log all of the time you spend in training and in meetings.

[marshall-debbie]

Thank you for the feedback. Being new to this site and my first interview I did give this one my time, assuming I was learning the system. I will certainly have a different approach next time. 

I am wondering if UpWork looks into the company in question ? or do they leave them in the system ? Just frustrating to see this on here. 

Is there a way to contact UpWork directly? 

[prestonhunter · Accepted solution]

re: "I am wondering if Upwork looks into the company in question? or do they leave them in the system?"

If nobody flags this company's job posting, then the answer is: No, Upwork will not look into it.

re: "Is there a way to contact Upwork directly?"

You have already posted a detailed account of your experiences here in the Community Forum. These threads ARE monitored by Upwork employees. It seems likely that someone from Upwork will look into this based purely on what you have described in your original post.

For future reference:
Every job posting has a "Flag as inappropriate" link button in the top right hand corner of the screen and/or under the "Three Dots" icon.

That has a place to flag jobs and clients which are likely scams. This includes a way to provide information directly to the correct Upwork team.

It is NOT necessary to contact Upwork directly outside of that tool. That is the most efficient way to flag scam jobs. Such jobs are typically removed from the platform quickly.

[resultsassoc]

Debbie,

Preston is absolutely correct. I'm slow, it sometimes takes me fifteen seconds to detect a really well-designed scam. NEVER PAY ANYTHING TO GET A JOB.

This is a Multi-level-marketing scheme, also known as a pyramid. RUN, DON'T WALK, TO THE NEAREST EXIT.

That wasn't an interview, that was group testing to see whho would fall for the rest of it.

Good luck.

[marshall-debbie]

Thank you

[BojanS]

Thank you for reporting this, Debbie.

I've gathered information about your report and will escalate it to the correct team for their review. 

Please check this thread for more information on how to use the flag option found on each job post or message to report any suspicious or inappropriate content. Also, check out this post for more tips on how to avoid questionable jobs.

[marshall-debbie]

Thank you, if anyone needs the name of the company, job listed or people I dealt with let me know. 

[lysis10]

So it was like a pyramid scheme sales pitch? Interesting twist to the scam clients on Upwork.

I don't envy you noobs at all. This is the way of the freelancer platforms. The check scammers don't bother me anymore but they used to.

[marshall-debbie]

Thank you, I do have all information saved if you need details. 

[mwiggenhorn]

Debbie, another point is that you "interviewed" on Zoom.  According to the Terms of Service, all communication prior to a contract being signed must take place on the Upwork platform, through messages, telephone contact or Zoom, but always initiated and continued through the platform.  By insisting on following the rules, you will scare off a certain number of scammers (and save yourself from being suspended or banned)

[marshall-debbie]

Thanks for the feedback, helpful. It was an invite through the Upwork platform, code for zoom through upwork. I'll keep plugging away. 

[colettelewis]

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Debbie M wrote:

I recently[...]

Thank you for your time and consideration on this issue. 

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_________________________

Debbie I have flagged your post as this is not the usual scam and you wasted hours of your time. . Hopefully a mod will come along and say the 'job' has been delisted. 

[a_lipsey]

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Debbie M wrote:

I recently submitted a proposal and was excited to recieve a request for an interview a few hours after I completed my submission. Naturally I selected the first interview time slot available. I entered the Zoom meeting thinking I would be having an interview with the hiring manager.  I was surprised to be thrown into a group interview which quickly turned into a 2 hour presentation introducing an insurance company and what seemed like a pyramid type sales agent position. The position I was hoping to land was customer service/ administrative assistant based. The so called interview sent up red flags immediately but I decided to sit in and listen hoping I would soon be hearing about the job and not listening to the insurance spiel. They would talk a bit about the MIT - Manager in Training position which I thought was a fancy description of the position I was applying for. After sitting through a long so called interview I was selected to go to the next level and meet directly with a hiring manager one on one. Still leary about this whole process I figured I would see what this next step was like since I had already invested my valuable time prior to the one on one. The one on one was interesting, it leaned 99% into the sales agent position, basically selling life insurance. I informed the so called hiring manager that I was interested in the MIT position and that although I am confident I can be a great sales person that was not what I was applying for. She informed me that I had to learn the product first and that I had to put my time in doing the sales gig before I would be able to move on to the MIT position. Turns out you have to pay to be licensed and spend a week of unpaid time getting your license as well as spend a week or two of unpaid time memorizing a script. When I asked about pay or the position I had originally bid I was given vague answers. It did not appear there was any pay involved for the first 2-3 weeks and then the pay question was never really clarified. The next step was to set up a call for the final step of hiring, so of course since I had spent my valuable time already I agreed to a phone call later that day. I had planned on getting more solid answers during this final step but no phone call came in. The next morning I recieved a text saying they were sorry for not calling and that they gotten busy making final decisions and did not want to reach out too late. They wanted to set up a phone call that second day, I agreed because at this point I am irritated with the time they have wasted. I was hoping to dig into the unaswered questions I had. I emailed the original person who emailed me to set up the first email.....no response. I texted the person I had the one on one interview with and who was the person I was setting up the phone call with.......no response.  I am worried that they have done this to multiple other people as well. This company had 2 days of these interviews set up so I am sure they wasted a lot of people's valuable time. On the second scheduled day of interviews and the day they had rescheduled my phone call I saw that the job had been pulled from UpWork and that my proposal had been archived. 

I am new to UpWork and I am excited to find a new avenue to use for my job searches but I am concerned about this encounter I had right out of the gates. How do I explore the company I met with to find out more details on their ligitimacy? My main concern is privacy although the amount of time they wasted is another concern. Please let me know how you would explore this incident. Was this a ligit company? Is this how a lot of job interviews go on UpWork? What should I do to avoid these encounters? What does Upwork do to weed out companies that are not what they seem? 

Thank you for your time and consideration on this issue. 

---

This is definitely a new one, but your spidey sense was right. Thank you for spending the time to actually sit through so this scam could be identified. And thank you for giving a detailed description here.  We only know about new scams when people share about them.  Sorry you had to waste your time though, but you dodged a bullet for sure. 

[wescowley]

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Debbie M wrote:

I am new to UpWork and I am excited to find a new avenue to use for my job searches but I am concerned about this encounter I had right out of the gates. How do I explore the company I met with to find out more details on their ligitimacy? My main concern is privacy although the amount of time they wasted is another concern. Please let me know how you would explore this incident. Was this a ligit company? Is this how a lot of job interviews go on UpWork? What should I do to avoid these encounters? What does Upwork do to weed out companies that are not what they seem? 

Thank you for your time and consideration on this issue. 

---

I'm going to ignore most of your post because others have addressed the fact that this is clearly a scam. But unlike a couple of others who have posted, I do take a few minutes to vet a client before accepting a contract: I do a quick check on Google and LinkedIn to see if they look legit and if there's anything that jumps out at me as a potential problem. It's not foolproof: there are scammers who pretend to be real people from legitimate companies, but you can usually get the sense that something's not right. But, I want to know who I'm working with. I've walked away from a couple of interviews based on that quick check. I can also think of one case where I skipped that vetting, took the job, and regretted it. When I googled later, I saw something in the first few hits that would have made me say no had I seen it beforehand.

Whether you vet your clients ahead of time is up to you—but no one else is going to do it for you, and even if they did, they may not have the same criteria as you.