May 29, 2003: I posted my resume on Monster.ca and a few days later I got a call from BHA. When I heard the message on my machine I first thought it was for a job interview.
The next day I searched for them on the web and discovered they were a career management firm. I called them and made an appointment to meet with them. They are located within a very upscale building in downtown Vancouver. Very impressive. At this first meeting I was told how they meet with many people a week but only select a few to actually take on as clients.
I was told about the hidden job market and how they could help me crack it. I was also told how they have lots of experience working with senior manaagement and exectutives. This made me wonder why they would be talking to me, who only has a couple of years of management experience under my belt.
The person I was talking to wouldn't discuss a price with me as he stated that it would have to be figured out later when they develop a custom made program with me. He told me how it looked like I would be an ideal candidate and all he would need to do is meet with the senior advisors to discuss my case. He then scheduled another meeting and wanted my wife to come so that he could talk to the both of us.
Well I went to that meeting without my wife to which the guy seemed quite disappointed. Anyway, I was told that the senior advisor team were very excited about me and couldn't wait to get started and that they so no reason why I shouldn't be able to get a job in management that paid $50 - $60 thousand dollars a year. All I had to do was pay an up front fee of over $5500.00 with a final fee of $2000.00 once I secure a job at my market value. I was told how I would marketed as a product, not a person and how they would teach me how to get an interview with the decision makers and skip the screeners.
After that meeting I spoke to a few friends and decided to do some research of my own and discovered there are other career management firms who don't charge the client a penny. I also discovered this site which really helped me decide to not become a client of BNA. The worst thing of all is that I am an employment counsellor in the public sector and I almost fell for it. If they could almost convince me to fork over that much money, they could do it to anyone. Anybody reading this report, please be very cautious. You could be making a very expensive mistake.
John
Surrey, British Columbia
Canada
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