Those who want to stand out from competitors in career advancement sometimes choose to pay others thinking that doing so will be a wise financial investment. Unfortunately, just because you pay for something does not mean you get value from it, especially when it comes to career advancement.
I read a consumer law blog post this week about an investigation into one of the online companies that I paid to help me with my career advancement. The post concerned possible fraud and deception. These are words that you do not ever want to see associated with an online company that you have paid to help you with your career advancement. Just saying.
So, perhaps I was taken advantage of. Perhaps not. I don’t have enough information yet to make this determination.
But, there is a major lesson I want to share with you: Please be extremely careful before you pay anybody to help you with career advancement–especially online companies that you have only encountered on your computer screen or hand-held device. In my opinion, you really should only choose to pay someone who has been recommended to you by someone that you can trust.
My recommendation (as someone that you can trust) is to only go with career advancement companies (online or brick and mortar) that get you at least three job interviews. You can try out career advancement companies and pay them for a very short period of time. However, if you do not get at least three job interviews that you can attribute directly to the particular career advancement company, you need to drop that company quickly. Don’t spend another dime with any career advancement company that fails to get you at least three job interviews.
I have written several times here in this blog that I pay for the services of LinkedIn.com and they happen to be a career advancement company that has gotten me more than three job interviews. I would never make a recommendation to you unless I had tested it out in real life for myself.
There are many, many other career advancement companies out there. My humble opinion is that it is better to be super cautious and not pay for career advancement online with most companies. You may be risking your money on something that may be worth very little in return.
This post also appears on Ned Lundquist’s Job of the Week website.