Essential Snobbery 101: Between an escort and a chaperone

An industry getting worse

Much as I would hate to observe that recruitment agents have become lazier and more unprofessional, even with the benefits of AI they do not seem to care what they do. It is like they sling shit in every direction with the hope that something sticks somewhere and out of that comes the reward commission for placing a hapless recruit.

For instance, I have had more than a decade-long interaction with this major recruitment agency, they would at least have an old CV of mine that anyone would hope provides some background and history to inform of whether I should be contacted by anyone from the said agency about an opportunity.

That is if the recruitment agent concerned had done any research before using my email address for their scatter-gun activity. I am even surprised I was addressed by name; these emails are usually discourteously impersonal.

Subject: Escort Needed! Apply now [I was first shocked by the email header as the resolved email identity was unfamiliar, that was besides wondering why I would be contacted for any lewd activity as a sex worker which is work that I would hardly qualify for, at this age and not after my prostate gland had been zapped by radioactivity to rid it of cancer. On reading the detail of role, would chaperone have been a better word?]

The email I received yesterday afternoon

[The emphases in the email are as contained in the original with nowt taken out.]

Dear Akin,

Your new company

An exciting and challenging opportunity has become available to join HMP [His Majesty’s Prison nearby] as a contractor escort working as part of a third-party company. This company looks after all maintenance work within this prison.

Your new role

Your new role as a Contractor Escort at HMP [nearby] will consist of 39 hours working Monday – Friday and will involve escorting a variety of contractors and visitors around site, ensuring the strict policies in place are followed. You will be responsible for the protection of inmates, staff and visitors by ensuring these policies are adhered to. Other aspects of the job involve booking in contractor’s tools and supervising them once escorted to their designated working area. This is an ongoing temporary position.

What you'll need to succeed

In order to be successful in this role you will need to pass an enhanced background check conducted by the prison service. This is something we will facilitate upon registration. You will also need to be level-headed, well organised and hardworking person. A security background is beneficial but in not essential for the role.

What you'll get in return

For this job you will receive a competitive hourly rate of £13.68 with 33 days holiday a year. All uniform will be provided. There is a chance for permanent offer. [On the rate alone, I have resisted paying any attention to the derisory offer. The holidays seem generous for the role though.]

Kind regards,

[Recruitment agent name removed]

Recruitment expert in Construction & Property [Their expertise is questionable, at best.]

In all consideration

I could not get this out of my mind, the much I tried as I was both irritated and annoyed, it deserved some sort of response as I did not want my mailbox to be cluttered with such nonsense ever again.

I did consider a very curt reply with a clear rebuke expressing the depth of my indignation, but it probably would have been binned, and though I do not expect a response because such recruitment agents would never have been schooled in the kind of decorum that should make their communication a sign of their professionalism, I tried a different tack in my response, this morning.

With gratitude for the thought

Dear [Name withheld],

I am totally at a loss how any information you might have of me might have inspired my receipt of this job opportunity.

I have a 36-year career in IT, your explanation of how this role relates to my experience would be welcome and helpful.

Otherwise, it is better to first acquire some knowledge of a person's background before filling their mailboxes with irrelevant prospects. That would be the least professional course to take. 

However, thank you for having me in mind for this role, I regret it is unsuitable as I have no appreciation of how useful it is for me.

With kind regards,

[Signed]

The less said beyond this response, the better. However, if the agent does respond, I might update this blog.

Running the gauntlet of lazy recruitment agents

Anything but able

I want to believe that my LinkedIn profile is good enough and I would be the first to say any profile can be improved upon, but there is no perfect profile, we are just trying to project our best selves.

However, I get barraged with lots of emails from recruitment and talent acquisition specialists, though I am left wondering what the specialism is, as it is becoming obvious to me that they neither read nor assess my profile before proposing totally unsuitable roles that do not fit my experience, expertise, location, or remuneration requirements.

It would seem their professional acumen is vying for a world record in some sort of whack-a-mole exercise of flooding prospects in the hope that one or a few might be hit hard enough to be responsive.

Interest me, engage me

Too many times, I am asked to forward my CV on scant job information, they, thinking I would be interested when they have neither interested nor engaged me.

If you are contacting me, I would hope you have first read my profile and the embedded CV, your specialism coming to the fore by treating me as a professional, through reviewing my experience, roles, responsibilities, and broader profile, rather than as a mercenary for hire.

Then, interest me with a useful job profile along with the associated remuneration range - cut to the chase with the view that we do not want to waste each other's time.

If I am interested, you will get a response and we can have a discussion about the role and the prospects. Recruiters need to get better, the slap-dash approach is becoming an annoyance, hence this post.

And another recruitment agent called

What you can do with knowledge

I can imagine that not many recruitment consultants would have the time to go through my curriculum vitae (CV) in a professional quest to know their candidate, it makes me wonder if they devote any time to knowing their client too. Maybe, it would take time for the recruitment industry to adopt the due diligence activities of the financial institutions to ‘know your customer’ (KYC) as part of anti-money laundering (AML) requirements and regulations.

Now, I raise this because, if the recruitment consultant that called me this morning had bothered to KYC by reading my CV and before that, KYC by fully appreciating what their customer requirements along with details of the opportunity being offered, we might have had a different conversation along with my offering some grudging respect to a professional cohort that rarely works hard enough to earn it.

Know the location

It transpired that this recruitment called me about a job in Marburg in Germany, I asked there exactly Marburg was, she didn’t know (KYC) and eventually found it was near Frankfurt, between Bonn and Frankfurt, she said, but it has no relation to the former.

I know a bit of German geography and places, it is indeed near Frankfurt am Main to be differentiated from Frankfurt an der Oder on the Polish border, for there are many same name towns in Germany that need to be qualified by their regions, else you might end up hundreds of kilometres away from your intended destination.

One must make that point; if you are a recruitment consultant seeking to place a candidate abroad, do the research, find out about the place, the history, the cost of living, the interesting things. Sell the place as you sell the opportunity. Don’t appear stupid, it is annoying.

A chilling discovery

The offer was not exciting though, you don’t take me from an exciting English city and plonk me in the middle of a provincial German town for a pittance, though it does have centuries of interesting history and recent notoriety. It did not occur to me in these Coronavirus times until I checked that Marburg is an eponym for the Marburg virus which was first described in 1967 when German workers were exposed to tissues of infected grivet monkeys. The Marburg virus is in the class of the Ebola virus, they are both haemorrhagic fever viruses.

Obviously, I found myself going down this rabbit hole, in search of why grivet monkeys that are native to a region of East Africa were leaving infected tissue in provincial Germany. Then for the grace of absolution, the entry for the hapless grivet monkey does not cross-reference to the virus. They must have edited their Wikipedia entry to remove the stigma.

Going from my reaction, I began to understand why for posterity reasons, the new Coronavirus, first identified in Wuhan, China, ended up with the name COVID-19 rather than the Wuhan virus, for a sudden irrational thought somewhere in the future, might unwittingly taint any desire to be anywhere near Wuhan for anything. Much as we somewhat identify many other diseases that are eponymously named. [List of eponymously named diseases – Wikipedia][Science Magazine – WHO rules for Naming Diseases]

Don’t waste my time

Then, back to the crux of this blog, I wrote two blogs yesterday, one about recruitment agents and the other about the Coronavirus, there are links to my blogs from within my CV if it looks interesting enough to the reader.

In the case of the recruitment agent who had not done her homework and was completely out of her depth matching my profile to the requirements, if she understood either, a little more attention to detail rather than shuffling papers and manning a phonebank to earn commission might have achieved more for her, probably not with me, but with someone who might have seen the Marburg role as an opportunity.

Finally, if you are recruiting for an architect, don’t suggest the remuneration of a technician, it is a waste of time for both parties. It is not arrogance, just a bit of self-respect, many candidates are not hungry dogs jumping at any bone tossed at them and recruitment agents need to begin to earn their commissions by really putting in the work.

Through the prism of landing a new role

A market of bits

We are a churning marketplace that shifts through bit parts of being customer, seller, or product, we could even be a shop or shop window.

Like in a bazaar, we are flipped like fresh fish, then poked, and prodded to determine if we are of the quality to be served for dinner at home or in a restaurant. Nowhere is this of particular import than where you are on the job market seeking an opportunity for which you are first qualified and able to deploy your expertise and experience whilst at the same time you try to discern whether that prospect sets you up for the new when the project ends.

Don’t recruit like a brute

The engagement with recruitment agencies is at times a battle of wits, some of whom have just passed your profile through an ineffective and crude mangler without paying any attention to the detail therein.

There are times I have suggested I am a technical prostitute on the market for punters and patrons that take my fancy as much as they might be interested. Yet, it is not for anyone who comes or anything that goes. Discernment and discrimination are paramount, for there must be a good fit with the recruiter than engages you to represent your interests for which they will earn a fee if you accept the opportunity as even as they work to meet the requirements of their client.

Work for your keep

What irks me most is those who don’t do their homework at all, getting the basics of what we are about before calling and setting out to useful detail what the prospect portends. For instance, if you bring me an opportunity on mainland Europe, have answers for the concerns about Brexit and if relocation issues might be constrained for all sorts of reason. Then, already do an analysis on comparative cost of living to remuneration for taking someone out of their comfort zone abroad.

It is an insult to call me to match or offer than the same rate I am on in the UK where I have my comforts, accommodation, life, and friends as if you are doing me a favour. Much as I like adventure, I will not be fulfilling a role at a cost to myself just because you are persuasive or enthusiastic. I have been dealing with recruitment agents for decades, you are probably new to this game.

The market trumps all

I guess the funniest question I have had to answer is whether I have other offers I am considering. Let this be understood without any equivocation, I am on the market until contracts and agreements have been signed and delivered. Unless you are paying to keep me off the market, I have no obligation or allegiance. There are times I have gullibly trusted the word of a stranger and lost time and opportunity when the supposed arrangement fell through.

As a free agent, the decision for what I will do and where I will go is ultimately mine to make, if your sales patter does not sell, it would not be bought. It is not for me to become sentimental for what I have not obtained a binding and legally enforceable contract for.

In the end, I also must believe in myself, my reticence to apply for certain roles where I am well qualified and can grow to fill the opportunity is a battle of self-assurance and growing self-esteem. In my doubts, I hope a little voice of faith just urges me to do step out, step up, like someone I love would say, step on it. I will rise to the occasion.

Thought Picnic: As Runner-Up Miss Congeniality, I Didn't Quite Make It

For beauty for desire

The modelling agency called to say they found my portfolio online and they were interested in entering me for a contest since I had the figure, the charm and the statistics that will suit the collection that was soon to be shown.

At first, a viewing and photo-shoot was to take place in a few days, but the agent who made the original arrangement had gone on a scouting mission, leaving me in the hands of another who did not seem to know the difference between a bustier and a corset, I was quite patient as we arranged another photo-shoot two days hence.

Looking good on the catwalk

Regaling myself in a shimmering evening gown having spent hours waxing, making-up, having my manicure and pedicure done, with a change of apparel to do a swimsuit, casual and formal showing, I arrived at the catwalk a good half an hour early.

Somehow, the couturier could not be found as messages were left for him to come to receive his guest.

With hardly a minute to the appointed time, he appeared with the director in charge of design and fashion procurement and we got down to the session and the changes.

Somehow, it was a half fitting contest and a half beauty contest, with the other contestant in the running doing her own thing too.

Tearing my hair out

I was to hear soon whether I had been selected but this decision did not come for a week, meanwhile, the modelling agent and the other were displaying levels of unprofessionalism that beggared belief even though I made no point of highlighting that fact, I tried to be less concerned about it, the session with the couturier was very good, I did feel confident.

So, finally with my patience running out, I made a last enquiry for two reasons, to get an assessment of the session and hopefully to also get a nod about having won the contest.

Congratulations! You’re the runner-up

It was then that I heard that the couturier was quite impressed with my showing but with regrets that it was difficult for him to decide and in the end the decision came down to this, ‘the other model was slightly more suitable from a personality perspective.’

In a two-person beauty contest I was runner-up for Miss Congeniality, I guess I do need a makeover, now where do I start?

Nigeria: MegaNet Resource Limited isn't getting better at this

Address the improper tithe

The MegaNet Resource Limited (MRL) saga continues as changes are made to their website and more emails come into my possession with atrocious grammar and excuses that still do not address some of the fundamental questions I asked in my first blog.

For all that MegaNet Resource Limited has written to date; they have not touched on this particular portion of their original letter.

“Note that, there will be a reduction of 10% of your salary for the first month which will be in a written agreement between you and MegaNet Resource Limited, after that you will have no business with us.”

A justification cannot be found

I am yet to understand the reason and justification for filching the tithe of the applicant’s first month’s salary and whether the clients that have presumably engaged MRL are aware of this arrangement made as part of the contractual process of engaging new employees.

This arrangement is not only improper, it is reprehensible and no organisation should be party to having recruitment agents dip into the salaries of new recruits as the compensation for recruitment services.

A strange medical

I am still not happy with the idea that applicants need to pay up front for a medical before consideration when what should happen is that applicants first get a provisional offer subject to passing a medical examination wherein the offer becomes substantive leading to a probationary period of work that might include inductions and training.

As for the latest letter to come into my possession I will suggest MegaNet Resource Limited find another language for business in which they can be grammatically correct and plausibly coherent, this is a shame.

An “English” letter?

From: MegaNet Resource Ltd

Date: Sat, 2 Mar 2013 06:50:55 +0100

To:

Subject: Chat Rescheduleing

Dear Applicant,

Your recent chat invitation with the HRM of MegaNet Resources Limited has been rescheduled to 5th March 2013 (Tuesday) as a result of the questions and answers that arouse from the invited applicants that was were selected for a CHAT with the HRM in other order to verify the credibility of the company/job due to the FACT that a N2, 200 (Medical Fee) was imposed on them.

We are a Human Resources Consulting Organization with RC 1523321. Our head office is located at 26, Church Rd [Which I note is once again different from 26, Alagomeji Street, Church Rd. And different from the address that was there yesterday – can these people get anything right?], Ikorodu Lagos State. We recruits for banks and Industries Nation Wide, but right now we are recruiting for Unilever Nigeria Plc.

A questionable ploy, still

The reason why the N2, 200 Medical fee was imposed on you is for a Medical Test that is compulsory we carried out on every qualified Applicant we are to post to Unilever Nigeria Plc. and the money can’t be paid at the venue because Unilever does send an investigative panel to monitor the recruitment exercise and we wouldn't like a situation whereby they will think we are extorting money from applicants. The purpose of this chat is to screen the original copyies of your credentials before being posted.

Under normal circumstances, you are supposed to be given a written test then an interview follows, but due to the urgency of the request of for staff from Unilever Nigeria Plc we couldn’t achieve this that is why your CV/NYSC certificate was randomly screen regionally and an invitation was sent to 40 qualified 40 applicant Nation Wide knowing full well that as a Nigerian Graduate you will be able to cope with since an in house training that will be giving given to you.

Therefore, if you are one of those that was selected I will advise you to pay your medical fee and follow all instructions been giving being given to you oin the previous invitation letter to enable us to complete the recruitment process. It’s for your good and ours.

Yours Faithfully,

Dorcas Bode

Sec. [Now the secretary has upended the Human Resources Manager?]

Phew!

Bunglers beyond belief

After all the blogs I have written about MegaNet Resource Limited and the actions they have taken to-date, we can safely say they are bunglers of the first order, unprofessional to a fault and incapable of paying attention to meticulous and essential detail.

We met here with a situation where a company that may well be genuine has operated on the fringes of legality that it is almost impossible not to consider their speciality scamming.

When I compare they are doing to the activities of a similar but better organised recruitment activity by TrippleLink Global Solutions Limited who are organisers of the National Recruitment Fair 2013, MegaNet Resource Limited plays charlatan without dispute.

Pages, charges and videos

That is not to say I do not have some issues with the TrippleLink enterprise considering they have a website that has no detail of their business especially no indication of their Upcoming Events.

If you are going to put a webpage up as a business, make sure it promotes what you do rather than show your business practices as sloppy, uninspired and amateurish.

They will also be charging N3000 for applicants to attend, however, that would be for conference materials and other needs at the fair.

Then as we pay tribute to the inferiority complex that so easily impresses us of foreign things, they published a YouTube video that includes a Text-to-Speech voiceover with an American accent. Shame on them.

The MegaNet Blogs

Nigeria: MegaNet Resource Limited has all the trappings of a scam outfit

Nigeria: They Came to Bury MegaNet Resource Limited

Nigeria: MegaNet Resource Limited and Flights of Fancy

Nigeria: MegaNet Resource Limited and Flights of Fancy

If...

If what we end up doing with regards to MegaNet Resources Ltd (MRL) is force it to stop operating like a scam outfit that it polishes up its act to start operating like a professional recruitment services company, then we would have achieved something for the business landscape in Nigeria.

Besides that, it will become a greater benefit for MRL in the long run and we who have scrutinised, criticised and excoriated their practices can come to a point where we might deign to praise it as the most improved Nigerian recruitment firm by reason of social media activism, but we are a long, long way from that prospect.

What I find interesting is that since we published our misgivings about MRL, they have begun to put up a web presence and started to answer some questions, many of which I say are quite unsatisfactory, but these are early days yet. I have time for this matter and I will devote time to it.

Meganet Resource(s) Limited

In the 3^rd of March 2013, a week after my blog, they launched a website, a blog where they have attempted to present a professional front that looks like props of a desperate outfit fighting for some respectability.

Apparently, as they claim, they have been in business since 2009 and are involved in Staff Management, Professional Resourcing, Talent Management and Fleet Management services.

Herein is my confusion, is it MegaNet Resource Limited (singular) which appeared 4 times in the original email that brought on my first blog about this outfit being a scam or MegaNet Resources Limited (plural) which now appears on the website and it makes you wonder how the Human Resources Manager (HRM) could have gotten the name of his company wrong 4 times in addressing applicants.

Threats?

Then, I only had two comments to my original blog which were addressed in a following blog, however, agents and/or clients of MRL have been more active on this blog, claiming MRL is a genuine business concern and threatening the writer of that blog for making them lose an opportunity for a job prospect.

Address to no place

My second problem is with the Contact Details – They claim to have this address –

MegaNet Resources Limited.
Church Rd. Alagomeji Street,
Ikorodu, Lagos.
P.O Box 67430,
Lagos State.

According to comments in the other blog, MRL is based in Ikorodu town which is to the East of the Lagos metropolis but I have a problem getting my head round “Church Road, Alagomeji Street”, a road on a street, anyway, let us not belabour a point, I can only find Church Street, Ikorodu on Google Maps, all the other permutations of Church, Alagomeji, Road and Street do not seem to have been documented by Google Maps for Ikorodu town.

Then they claim to have a Post Office Box, but no letter will arrive here because a letter has to arrive at a post office box at a particular locality, the way that address is written, it is not referring to a post office box in Ikorodu town or in the sprawling metropolis of Lagos but in Lagos State.

You have to ask if they hired idiots to do this. How can a business not be able to present its visiting address and postal address in a sensible coherent fashion that does not make it look suspicious? These are charlatans whose every attempt at gaining respectability exposes them as worse, they should have kept their peace.

Who is touching you up?

Next, they provide a reason for why they are charging for the medical examination which they say is compulsory. Their words: “The N2,200 is for a Medical Examination that is compulsory we carried out on every qualified Applicant we are to post to our client company and the money can’t be paid at the venue because some of our client company do send an investigative panel to monitor the recruitment exercise and we wouldn't want a situation whereby they will think we are extorting money from applicant. The purpose of this chat is to screen the original copy of your credentials before being posted.”

I will not bother myself with grammatical corrections but if their client checks to ensure they are not extorting money from the applicant, does the client known that the applicant signs away 10% of their first month’s salary as part of the chat where original copies of credentials are examined? Whose account is that 10% paid into?

MD, we need you now

The moneys are paid into the HRM’s account because, “Is for easy access of fund to pay our medical expert because the MD is not around at the moment to sign a cheque for withdrawal of fund from the company's A/C and the request of staff from our client company is very urgent.”

This is interesting because it makes you wonder of the medical expert who might well not be a qualified medical doctor will be touching up people as if to give them a clean bill of health or even fail them and still walk away handsomely rewarded.

This should be a business to business transaction; the reputation of MRL should be such that the medical expert knows they will get their money from the company because whenever the Managing Director returns, all bills will be made good.

Charlatans

The more I look at it; even charlatans running an outfit on a shoestring will probably do a better job. Should there not be signatories to the company account and why does it not involve the accountant? Too many questions arise as to how MRL is run and by whom.

Again, from what I said at the beginning, Meganet Resources Limited has a long way to go for its activities to be viewed as professional, their rather limp effort leaves much to be desired. I am not out to get MRL but an organisation that fails to get its house in order will be a subject of public ridicule.

Do I think MegaNet Resource(s) Limited is a scam? – It looks like one, it operates like one and I have not been convinced it isn’t one. 

Nigeria: They Came to Bury MegaNet Resource Limited

Speaking up for MegaNet Resource Limited

Within 5 minutes of each other today I received comments pertaining to the blog I wrote four days ago about MegaNet Nigeria Limited.

I had good reason to think and suggest that the outfit was a scam and I laid out my case as to why it had all the appearances of a confidence trickster’s front to fleece people of their meagre means in return for an unconfirmed and improbable posting with Unilever Nigeria Plc.

Chinedu wrote: “Meganet Resource Limited are not scammers, my brother got a job through them. According to him he said the job was a contracted one been given to Meganet Resources Limited from an insider in the said company. Investigate properly before writing.”

Tosin then wrote: “Is it every job that requires you to pay that is a scam. Though I know it is improper but with the type of world "Nigeria" we find our self many things do happen. Well I have heard of Meganet Resources Limited and they are for real, I don't know the reason why people will be calling them 419.”

Act local but always think global

I will answer each of the claims made here because the issues need to be addressed as clearly as possible to raise the standard of business activity especially in Nigeria.

Now, MegaNet Resource Limited might have thought the sphere of their business is within a local community of people they could access via email whose interest in whatever they claim to be selling or offering a service for will be central to just Lagos.

Nothing could be further from the truth, much as any organisation can seem to act locally, they must think globally, no act that can be communicated in this world is local anymore, it risks at all times global scrutiny and those acts will be measured by the standards the scrutiniser deems are reasonable, fair, just and above reproach, regardless of where they reside, it is not a cultural or regional thing, anymore.

A fish rode a horse

Chinedu claims his brother got a job through them, I cannot vouch to either Chinedu or his brother and MegaNet Resource Limited (MRL) which is most affected by this matter has not put out a disclaimer with regards to the seemingly questionable practices I highlighted in my orginal blog. Chinedu will have to realise that I require a greater burden of proof than a flippant comment.

The provenance of the job supposedly contracted appears to have breached the transparent and somewhat professional channels one would expect both firms to have adopted. In fact, the lack of process and procedure would mean that MRL was most likely doing their own thing with the even greater possibility of prospective employees being sent on the wild goose chase for jobs which may or may not be existent since there was no clear official procedure involved.

Appear professional or else

I did enough investigation and if MRL were an organisation worth its salt, it would have a website, the protagonist will have a proper email address rather than a gmail.com email address and the email sent out will have an office address for MRL. This kind of activity is not meant for tyros and MRL’s activity in this regard was so amateurish, it had all the trappings of a scam.

You are either professional or not and when you are not professional, others cannot be responsible to giving you an image you do not possess.

Advance Fee Fraud?

Answering Tosin’s question, the answer in my humble opinion is Yes. If you have to pay for your medical examination and forfeit 10% of your first month’s salary one has to ask if MRL was indeed engaged by Unilever Nigeria Plc in the first instance and whether Unilever will want their global brand to be associated with what is evidently, suspect, underhand and to put a finer point on it, atrocious.

Now, Tosin does agree that the demand for money is improper and then tries to justify it to the situation, circumstance and location. Well, what is improper is improper and any organisation engaged in improper activity is unprofessional, probably fraudulent and needs to be excoriated in Nigeria and anywhere else their activities come to light.

Another point I must mention is why the money is paid into a personal account rather than the company accounts of MegaNet Resource Limited.

An abuse of position

We cannot continue to tolerate a society where those who have information and access use it to gain additional undue advantage of others to unfairly enrich themselves at the expense of the desperate and the vulnerable.

If Unilever Nigeria Plc did engage MRL, I do believe MRL would have had a contractual engagement for their services and that service would have been fully paid for by Unilever.

If MRL in producing they contract failed to fully account for the costs of recruitment with the view of pilfering and tithing the first month’s salary of the successful applicants, they should not be in the recruitment business.

They came to bury MegaNet

In my view, the comments posted by Chinedu and Tosin have literally buried MegaNet Resource Limited in ignominy and exposed the charlatans who have run a haphazard unprofessional outfit that has gotten by on the lean and the questionable for so long until it came under my purview.

MegaNet Resource Limited might well be a going concern, as to its viability conducting business with questionable practices; it does not have much of a future.

With regards to my original blog, I have not be persuaded that the MegaNet Resource Limited for all that is know about them is not the healthy front for an unhealthy scam activity – they have got their work cut out and I am not backing down from the impression formed by reading their original email to a prospect.

Finally, I reviewed the comment source and found both comments came from the same IP Address: 41.203.67.54, even though it appears the comments are from 2 different people with different email addresses. See the graphic below.

Nigeria: MegaNet Resource Limited has all the trappings of a scam outfit

An atrocity of conmanship

I just received this link in a DM (Direct Message) on Twitter and it exemplifies that atrocity of conmanship that bedevils vulnerable and desperate job-seeking Nigerians who some have found heartless schemes to exploit without conscience.

It is bad enough that the quality of English leaves much to be desired but I really do worry about how many schemes like this have had people go on a wild goose chase after jobs that don’t exist dangled as treasures within reach to relieve people of the very little they have.

The malevolent deviousness of this matter beggars belief and it is incumbent on every well-meaning person to expose all the miscreants involved in what I also believe is a scam – if it is not a scam, then the people involved will have to repudiate this so publicly with a media publication or else, we should all take it as given – A Rotten SCAM!!!

A scam, if I ever saw one

The body of the letter sent out as an email appears below. My comments are in italics or parentheses.

With reference to your application sent to MegaNet Resource Limited, after much analyses [shouldn’t this be singular?] of your CV, we are pleased to inform you that, you have been invited for a brief discussion with the HRM of MegaNet Resource Limited for immediate posting to Unilever Nigeria Plc.

[There is a great likelihood that no CV was sent; MegaNet Resource Limited is a front and Unilever Nigeria Plc. did not engage this company as a recruitment agent. Besides, no indication is given of the role applied for.

There is however a Meganet Nigeria Limited, it is NOT MegaNet Resource Limited.]

You have to ask, why?

Note that, there will be a reduction of 10% of your salary for the first month which will be in a written agreement between you and MegaNet Resource Limited, after that you will have no business with us.

[This is no doubt the piece de resistance, it gives the impression that a job has been secured and it has to be illegal and fraudulent for a recruitment agency to charge both the customer and applicant for the same service, if they were genuinely engaged by Unilever Nigeria Plc. The idea that there is a contractual agreement to fleece the applicant of 10% of their first month’s salary and then abandon the applicant is almost convincing in its intent that it looks like the a work of genius. If Unilever engaged MegaNet, I will like to know what they think of this.]

Meanwhile, you are hereby invited for a brief discussion with the HRM of MegaNet Resource Limited.

This is a requirement to meet you in person and review your credentials.

A gathering of the fleeced

Please find details of your invite below:

Date: 27th February 2013

Time: 9:30am

Venue: University of Lagos Multi-Purpose Hall (Main Campus) Akoka.

[An open venue with no links to either Unilever or MegaNet, they might be expecting a crowd but really, this beggars belief. Now, where is MegaNet based? Don’t Ask.

You can be sure that many will be gathering here and suddenly find kindred with many others who have been parted with their cash with no respite, recourse or succour but a stark slap of reality on the bare cheek and curses that will go no further than the strength of the breaths of their mouths.]

Required Materials: You should come along with 2 passports [passport sized photographs, I think this means], original copy of your credentials and the invitation letter for security check point.

[To really show that you’ve been had. I feel so sorry already.]

What will I pay to see you caught?

Note: You are to pay the sum of N2,200 Naira for [a] Medical [examination], as [an] external doctor will be at the venue and a file will be opened for you that will comprise your entire document including the medical result that will be taking to the place of your posting.

[What humiliation, a doctor will examine applicants in a multi-purpose hall in the presence of other applicants? What kind of medical tests will be conducted there? Why can’t Unilever or MegaNet foot this bill? Why do applicants have to pay out of their own meagre resources with no guarantee of compensation to apply and qualify for a job?

Is this not a variant of the Advance Fee Fraud scheme? You pay up for a service you are not guaranteed to get from a stranger who is more persuasive than the serpent in Adam's Eden.]

Find details of the account number below:

Bank Name: Ecobank

A/C Number: 0803043511

A/C Name: Adesanya Kayode

The culpable banks

[As usual the essential collection bucket of the scammer is a bank account especially where banks are usually derelict in monitoring nefarious activities of confidence tricksters who clear out the accounts long before the conned comes to and launches a complaint with the bank.

I dare say, banks by reason of their lack of vigilance, carelessness and negligence inadvertently aid and abet money laundering and fraudulent schemes granting anonymity to crooks who find the intermediary services of the bank a good front for a bad scheme.]

Please, come with the Teller to the venue, we don't accept money at the venue. This is for security reasons due to previous experience.

[One can only wonder what previous experience apart from someone coming to the realisation of this atrocity and demanding their money back on the spot – money in the bank is literally impossible to reclaim without extraneous means.]

Yours Faithfully,

[Faithful to his scheme and insincere to your plight.]

Adesanya Kayode

HRM

This, my friends, is a SCAM

I am at pains to find the professional import of this enterprise apart from it being a well-crafted scheme to fleece the vulnerable and desperate of their meagre resources.

It is my intention to expose such machinations which on scrutiny look too good to be true, cajoling and inveigling like a slithering venomous snake looking for easy prey.

As I happen to be involved in contractual engagements with Unilever in the UK, I will be asking their management of the veracity of this subject, because even if MegaNet Resource Limited has been engaged by Unilever Nigeria Plc for a recruitment drive, how they are going about it is reprehensible, wrong, atrocious, audacious and scandalous.

Tell Mr. Adesanya to take a hike

I can see no reason why MegaNet Resource Limited should not be put out of business forthwith and Mr. Kayode Adesanya exposed as a scamming fraud.

Thanks to TheWordSmith on Twitter for intimating me of this scam, there are no two words to it, it looks like a scam, it reads like a scam, it is crafted like a scam and it lacks the trust elements that would make us think otherwise – a scam, is a scam, is a scam and this my friends is what it is – A SCAM!!! I have responded to the comments to this blog here.

Do you have a job for me?

A call I received - Introduction

Yesterday morning, I got a call from a very enthusiastic recruitment consultant who found my CV on a jobs board and thought my experience and skills-set would be useful and suitable to his client.

This consultant had placed 37 out of a 100 technical staff with his client, so he probably had a good idea of who and what his client needs.

An hour later, he called me deflated stating some technical person had seen my CV and somewhat “trivialised” the context of it.

However, this consultant was not about to give up on my prospect, he asked me to write an email to him explaining how and why my wealth of experience should not fall into the pigeon-hole I had been placed in.

I have reformatted that email into my blog format and here it is.

What I am about

Below, you will find my cause and purpose, my views and drive, what makes my work-life exciting and in the end, it is a simple expression to any organisation to give me a job that can change your organisation for the better.

There are things in here, specific to my CV that I have left in place, parts of it might be a bit technical, but the thrust of it is that I try to put a fully human dimension on the use of information technology for the benefit of that organisation.

If you do have an interest as regards my being employed by your organisation, please leave a comment or send an email to forakin at gmail dot com.

Meeting that challenge

Dear Recruiter,

Thank you for our conversation yesterday and the enthusiasm you showed in my skills which unfortunately were not appreciated by the people who reviewed them. I have decided to take up the challenge of explaining why it is myopic to consider my activities in "Desktop Deployment" trivial and why it should be seen as beyond just the desktop or just deployment.

It is a bit of a long email, but it is difficult to put this kind of thinking in a CV or relate this easily without the convenience of an interview, I hope you will have the patience to read it through and let me know your views either by reply or a phone call. Thank you very much for your time and the challenge.

My experience

Now, it is quite easy with simplification to look at a person's career in terms of the tools the person uses to perform a job, but anyone can use tools, but it is a talented artisan that can produce objects of amazing value, worthy of commendation and admiration.

Indeed, for more than 13 years, I have used Microsoft SMS 1.2/2.0/2003 and now Microsoft Systems Center Configuration Manager 2007 to manage environments, the smallest being BT/Infonet with just about 1,500 users and the largest being over 40,000 users in ING Bank.

Seeing things from different ends

Whilst the Mission Critical vision appears to view things from the backend to the user and mission critical pertains to what keeps a business running from day-to-day, I have extended the vision of how I use my tools to understand how 1 user or 40,000 users can connect seamlessly to their organisation and access the mission critical applications they need to perform their duties to make the organisation competitive, profitable and leader in whatever field they are in.

Critical to this observation is that SMS (I will use this broadly to encompass all tools to do with software control & deployment) is used to deploy software, applications, utilities, tweaks, patches & updates to user's systems which might be online, offline, in-house or some remote place.

For this software to deploy consistently to achieve close to 100% success rates, you need uniformly configured systems, this boils down to understanding the range of hardware (desktops, laptops & devices) in your organisation, deploying a basic common framework of the operating system, handling the common and different software requirements of the user, streamlining your application pool and being able to manage that from the centre whilst touching each and every system in that organisation.

The power of position and responsibility

Just as downtime in the mission critical application systems can shutdown a business, I appreciate even more that as an SMS administrator; I can shutdown the business if a poorly packaged application is deployed to user systems which can be up to 40,000 users.

Hence, suddenly, my responsibility is not just being a plain postmaster of deploying applications, I need to know what those applications contain, who is repackaging those applications, what operating systems we have out there and if they are manageable - if not, find a consistent approach to the management of these systems.

Influencing the chance for good change

I cannot allow changes to take place in the back-end systems in the weekend that might affect the way users access those back-end systems on a Monday morning because the back-office people thought their change was minor, but we have a major situation because it is easy for the back-end engineer to think locally to their big-expensive systems (mainframes, enterprise databases), when I have to think globally about the effect on 40,000 employees who need critical access to these back-end systems.

You begin to realise the kind of planning that needs to go into serious enterprise desktop deployment or rather, management, if it is work consistently and produce results that do really reduce the cost of ownership at the desktop and reduce the overall cost of IT from service calls and management costs and so on.

What I am about - again

That is the value of my 22 years in IT and my 13 years in enterprise desktop deployment, I am not just a technician, I am a facilitator, a collaborator, an enabler and an unquantifiable benefit to any organisation that entrusts that kind of job to me.

I was employed to do a quick and dirty job of desktop deployment in Canon in August 2006, I left after 2 years having changed that organisation in ways that no one realised till I pointed it out; in the process a whole new department was created to handle the issue of the "user experience" of connecting to the organisation with minimal issues.

The structures I put in place allowed for one of those weekend backend changes halting the business to be redeemed with SMS because we could deploy consistently, verifiably and successfully an essential patch that got everyone reconnected before noon on Monday.

Engaging all communities

In that two years, everyone began to realise any change was global; it affects something, if not everyone; communication is essential because people need to know how changes might affect them; technicians have to be customer friendly because the user satisfaction helps company productivity; architects need to liaise with administrators but user feedback is the best knowledge resource to determine if your solutions are really working; if not, seek advice and change the situation to a working situation.

In short, to be blind-sided by the simple concept of desktop or deployment is to miss the whole point that users are key to keeping an organisation running and whilst the mission critical team is critical, without users being able to connect to the mission critical systems [through their globally deployed but individually configured desktops, laptops, devices with the adequately distributed software] you have no mission critical solution.

Seeing things from different ends - again

I look up the organisation from the eyes and hands of the user, 40,000 of them in some cases to affect and effect change because I touch each and every system with my tools, others look at their servers and if they are up, they think everything is OK - welcome to a new perspective of what the desktop really should mean - managing the user experience with whatever tools, skills and abilities you might have.

If you have read this far, thank you for hearing me out, I do however wonder if this makes me suitable for your organisation, I'll say any organisation that wants the mission critical environment to be consistently accessible to the user environment should consider having me on board.

Thank you.

Connect to my LinkedIn Summary (PDF)

Apes Obey! Lacks the power of organisation

A stampede amongst humans

A stampede is an unfortunate situation which might be natural in the animal kingdom but is completely inexcusable within the human race.

It can only arise where organisation and order has broken down and those in charge have failed to govern their responsibilities with any anticipation.

Lacking the power of organisation

My second instalment of the Apes Obey! Series touches more on lacking the power of organisation than on loving the display of power but failing to realise its responsibility, however, they are closely related.

In a situation where experienced people are losing their jobs and very qualified people are entering the marketplace but not getting job offers, one can imagine that any news of recruitment opportunities would bring in hordes.

Taking advantage of the vulnerable

With that knowledge alone, any organisation offering employment must first plan and then execute a process that allows them to cherry-pick the best people on the market without creating a chaotic situation that could endanger the lives of the prospects.

Besides, one knows that recruiters in a saturated jobless market can afford to exploit the situation and take advantage of the seemingly desperate-for-a-job crowd and in the process forget their duty to be responsible.

In other words, we have people who have jobs to fill but lack every organisational skill to fill those jobs efficiently.

The hundred-for-one-job market

In this case [Source: BBC NEWS | Africa | Nigerian stampede survivor's ordeal], there were 100 openings in the Nigerian Immigration Service which attracted 11,000 applicants; this could become logistical nightmare, but can be a simple manageable scenario.

Unfortunately, it appears the recruiters were completely oblivious of their market and ignored the fact that the desperate situation people face would not make them the most decorous crowd to manage.

Having not anticipated the over-subscription the applicants were instructed to run from the government secretariat to a college where they were to sit an examination in 20 minutes – such power but no inkling of responsibility for its use.

You can imagine the mayhem when the first batch arrived and a second batch were barred from entering the compound only to be trumped by those who arrived by bus a lot later.

Twice treacherous

It is one thing to treat the people like animals, but then to heap an injustice upon them is twice treacherous and most unfair.

People got knocked unconscious and some ended up in hospital, all because some civil service apparatchik could not organise a recruitment process and control the crowds that have dignified their advertisements with their presence.

Unfortunately, this lack of organisation is endemic, because at the weekend about a dozen people lost their lives vying for 1,260 placements from a pool of 130,000 applicants.

How it could be that fitness tests were conducted during the hottest part of the day that people expired with exhaustion beggars belief.

Some jobs might require the survival of the fittest but surely not to the death.

Culpable homicide at least

In all, the mishaps are not solely the fault of the vulnerable desperate applicants who are clawing at any slight opportunity but that of outrageous buffoons who do not seem to know their hands from their elbows.

The lack organisational skills even though there are tripped by the power to control but fail to realise the responsibility of bringing together crowds of people and conducting risky recruitment and fitness tests.

At the least, the heads of the departments that displayed such rank incompetence should face charges of culpable homicide because there is no way others would realise their duty to care leading to better organisation and understanding the responsibility of holding power if an example is not made of these organisations.

This is a sorry case of people being abused in an Apes Obey! Dynamic just as Lord Lugard’s words ring in our ears again – “He lacks the power of organisation, and is conspicuously deficient in the management and control alike of men or business; he loves the display of power, but fails to realise its responsibility”. Oh! So true