Like a Young God

I've been looking for a new job since August now and I think the most frustrating thing to come across are these, apparently abundant, pyramid schemes. I've even interviewed with one of these "companies". Coming up; I'm almost recruited to be a cog in an incredibly well oiled machine and how I almost become the next Willy Loman. Stay Tuned. 

First of all, what is a pyramid scheme? According to Dave Roos, a contributing writer at How Stuff Works, there are two kinds of schemes. The first is a product scheme, this operates by getting people to buy a package of products from the distributor to turn around and try to sell. These usually don't work because the product won't sell, or doesn't sell very well. Those of you who watched Hey Arnold might remember the episode where Gerald tries to sell watches. The other is a naked scheme, in which no product is sold, but people are tricked into investing money into a company. On the other, other hand, there are these Multi-Level Marketing companies as well. MLM companies might seem more legitimate because they don't require an up front cost like training or starter kits, they focus more on selling product for money than recruiting people and they allegedly work you on commission without stealing your money. Many believe that, although the MLM and the pyramid scheme share very similar structures, the MLM is far more legitimate. This is how I got roped into applying at Detroit Business Consulting.

Detroit Business Consulting (warning, website will play bad music at you), is a multi-level marketing company located in Troy, Michigan. Basically their job is to sell companies to other companies. What was explained to me is that I would be traveling around selling AT&T or Resteraunt.com to businesses. Each sale I would make a certain percent back on commission. Once I was with the company for so long, I could have my own team of sales personnel make money for me, then when they got their own sales team, I would take a chunk of their profit as well as the team's profit after that. You can literally see the pyramid being built. But let me back up. 

I just graduated college and I'm trying desperately to get a job. I started applying for jobs via Linkedin, when all of a sudden a recruiter messages me that a position has opened up at Detroit Business Consulting. I hit their website and do some looking around. The engineers behind the site did a good job keeping exactly what the company does extremely vague as well as plastering the Better Business Bureau's seal of accreditation. So of course I accept an interview. Basically there were two interviews, I show up to the first one and talk myself up to the "Independent Business Owner" whose job it is to hire new recruits to make him and his boss's boss "rich". I make it to the second interview. This time I meet with a sales executive, the guy I'll be working Making money for. He takes me out to coffee and explains to me exactly how this works. 

While all of this goes down, the interviews, the phone calls with the recruiter, the coffee, all I saw was sadness. I had coffee with Trevor, according to the website it doesn't seem like he's with that company anymore. Trevor wanted me to be a part of his team. We talked about music and being young looking for a job. I could tell he really enjoyed talking about this stuff too. He excitedly told me how fast I could move up, how he saw traits in me that he saw in himself, that I could have my own sales team in no time. Then we started talking about music some more...and coffee. I realized Trevor just kind of like talking to people, Trevor was a cool guy, but Trevor needed me to be part of his team so he could make money, so Trevor had a crazy look in his eye. I can't look at the website without getting bummed out, it seems so sleazy and so desperate, but that's kind of how I feel when I'm looking for jobs. No wonder why they appeal to young, vulnerable college students, it's operated by young vulnerable college students with agendas. We both had a desperation in us and I think that's kind of sad.

I turned the job down and went to work for Quicken Loans for a short time. While I was working at Quicken I met a lot of people who had applied at DBC before too. They seemed to be utterly disgusted with what it wanted them to do; traveling sales, making money for other people, using other people to make money for yourself. They all had the same story, they had just graduated college and this company sought them out. The Multi-Level Marketing company seems like it is a pyramid scheme; it dilutes the market forcing you to hire other people to sell to their circles for you, it seems that only people at the top make money (1% of the company according to Roos) and they are a recruiting machine. Ultimately though, I think we were so mad at them because they tried to find this fear in us, this fear of being unemployed, of going no where in life and tried to use that fear to work us into their system. While I agree that it is frustrating, I can also see that these people were in the same position as me some time ago, people who broke down and took the job because it made them feel good enough, now they're just trying to make ends meet too. I can't be mad at that, I can't even blame them.

WILLY: Biff Loman is lost. In the greatest country in the world a young man with such—personal attractiveness, gets lost. And such a hard worker. There’s one thing about Biff— he’s not lazy.

LINDA: Never.

WILLY: [with pity and resolve]: I’ll see him in the morning; I’ll have a nice talk with him. I’ll get him a job selling. He could be big in no time. (Act 1)

Thanks for Listening,

Kyle