LinkedIn scams 2013 – Global executive associates

LinkedIn scams 2013– Global executive associates

Lately I’ve been flashed with ads from LinkedIn with some quite attractive jobs from a certain recruitment agency. There is a company named ‘Global Executives Associates’ who is looking to hire a ‘project consultant’. The title in the advertisement headlines: ‘project consultant $165K + 20% PRB’ – Even friends and colleagues sent the job to me and said I should look in to this. I must admit, it’s a good salary for the Amsterdam market right now and I went and had a look if this could be something for me. You can have a look on the job-ad below:

http://www.linkedin.com/jobs2/view/9144880?trk=rj_jshp

Here is a screenshot of the fake advertisement:

I always had the idea that if something looks too good to be true, it’s usually not true. So, before applying for a job I always do my homework. Now, let’s check this company a bit further.

Global executives associates – I found their homepage and started reading about them. They present themselves as ‘..a firm of professional recruitment specialists operating from London but with Recruitment Directors located within most major cities worldwide’. You can check it yourself at:

http://www.globalexecutiveassociates.com/

I must admit I had some laughs.

What is wrong here? Let’s play the find 10 mistakes game:

1)   Their webpage looks like it’s created by a 13 year old. And, to be honest I probably insult a great deal of 13 year olds here. It’s terrible!

2)   Wouldn’t a serious recruitment agency have a logo? Heck, even I got a logo as freelancer. No logo here. And this company has been in the game for twenty years and got offices in over forty world-wide locations! You would think having a logo should be covered in their brand management strategy. They do have highlights of their name though. Impressive! 😉

3)   There are no phone numbers listed for contacting Global Executives Associates on the website. Only email addresses. So, wait. Clients and candidates would have to use email only. Right!

4)   I did check some of their executives listed on their homepage. JK Collingwood for instance. There is no mention about this person on Linkedin. I then randomly checked 5-6 other names of people who supposedly works there. And guess what. None of these recruiters or employees are on LinkedIn. In 2013 I seriously doubt there are recruiters NOT on LinkedIn. At least not many of them. There is no ‘Klein Zimmer’ in Zurich or ‘Lian Altun’ in Amsterdam. Fishy? Yes!

5)   They list 43 worldwide locations. All their branch offices are listed with no address and a quick Google search of the Amsterdam office doesn’t give any hits. Neither are there any hits at the Dutch Chamber of commerce. (KVK). So, where’s that Amsterdam office? And, how do they actually do business from Amsterdam without being registered at KVK?

6)   Their main office is located in London. The address is 29^th Floor, One Canada Square, Canary Wharf, London. This building is rented (owned?) by Regus. I am curious to call Regus and check about the company, but can almost guarantee they will reply that Global executives is not one of their clients. http://www.regus.co.uk/locations/office-space/london-canary-wharf

7)   The domain name globalexecutiveassociates.com is registered in 2009 for the first time. (Do a ‘who is’ lookup). No direct admin contact listed, but admin listed through Entanet. Most likely they actually have paid extra for having a network provider listed as admin contact and not a contact person at their company directly. And for a firm that has ‘been established for 20 years’ it’s kinda odd that they first registered their domain in 2009. Don’t you think? Also, which recruitment-company in the UK that has been operating for over 20 years’ do not have a ‘co.uk’ address? The domain globalexecutiveassociates.co.uk is still free and you can pick it up for less than 10 euros 😉

8)   Jean Collingwood is listed as founder. But, I only find two Jean Collingwood on Linkedin and they are both unrelated to Global executive associates. A search on the other founder, Paul Lynch is also unsuccessful. For the LinkedIn hits I find for good old Paul Lynch none of them are associated with ‘global executive associates’. What a shocker…

9)   Their privacy policy on their homepage redirects to a subdomain listed under wordpress.com – namely http://globalexecutiveassociates.wordpress.com – It’s nothing wrong with WordPress – as a matter of  fact – WordPress is a fantastic tool, but listing your subdomain on an official webpage for a firm that’s been around for 20 years is a major mistake.

10)  All available jobs are posted October 17^th. No jobs are posted before that date. Have a look yourself. http://www.linkedin.com/job/c-global-executive-associates-jobs – Isn’t that funny?

In other words. A big SCAM. For potential candidates that might apply for their jobs the purpose is probably to collect their CV’s and maybe resell these to other agencies. Or they might trick the candiate in to pay some kind of ‘admin fee’ to proceed with the application before setting up an interview etc. It wouldn’t surprise me if Western Union would be the preferred payment method as well.

For clients it’s probably a up-front ‘search fee’ or something similar.

You would think that LinkedIn do some quality research before they let anyone advertise, but it looks like revenue is the driving factor here. We can add this to the list of Linkedin scams 2013.

So you have been warned. Not everything that glitters is gold…

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