Beware?
careers.minneapolis@gmail.com
mwexpansion@executivehrdepartment.com
Midwest Expansion Group (reply from careers@accentinc.info)
MK Acquisitions (careers@mkaquisitions.com)
3131 Fernbrook Lane North
STE 121
Plymouth, MN 55447
763-432-2377
Craigslist, at least you haven't gotten me killed. Yet. Pending a bit of investigation, things didn't seem to add up for tomorrow's job interview after a reply to one of many posts sent out by Midwest Expansion Group.
Full disclaimer = I'm only speculating on the suspicious nature of all of this from a vantage point of other internet users complaining to scam sites (but adding my personal investigative experience to the mix in dealing with this place). Instinctively I've been turned off from it. Typos in any sort of job posting immediately are a red flag. Capricious CAPLOCK and "!!!" are also unprofessional.
Read on.
Tomorrow I was scheduled for an interview with the Midwest Expansion Group as per the bike phone call last week.
I receive a followup email.
Within the email is the contact person JT Schultz. So, naturally, I want to find out more about the guy. If employers can look up employees, I see no harm in doing the reverse. Nothing relevant for JT Schultz (though I guess he's a romance writer?)
"schultz midwest expansion group" reveals an interesting bit.
Here it shows Midwest Expansion Group synonymous with Metropolitan Marketing Concepts.
The next hit shows some Chaska, MN city council minutes.
So I confirm that there is some sort of connection. Next, LinkedIn. Johnathan Schultz appears on search results under "president, metropolitan marketing concepts" so I'm three for three. I conclude that JT is quite likely Johnathan - listed as the operations manager or hiring manager for Midwest Expansion. Feel free to disagree. So then I continue my searching. Things continue to become more suspicious with each executed search. Metropolitan Marketing Concepts - MK Acquisitions Review | Rip-off Report comes up in the search. Peruse it a bit.
Back and forth to Craigslist posts, CareerBuilder.com, HotJobs.com to try and get some sense of the operation. The physical address on Google Street View ...
3131 Fernbrook Lane North
STE 121
Plymouth, MN 55447
... and phone number associated with their website: (763)-432-2377 (http://www.midwestexpansiongroup.com) brings up a few different searches. Blame it on the Internet or poor digital name management.
Google that number and this pops up in the top search results: http://www.girlmeetsgeek.com/2009/12/23/mk-acquisitions-pyramid-scheme-or-flat-out-lie/ pops up. Another red flag, doing a similar blog portrayal of the firm.
Yikes. More number verification. Lindsay's number in the email returns from a Phoenix (520) area code. Believable, but then again, not really as further searching reports it to be a cell phone.
I check my BlackBerry to see the number that called me while on the bike ride. (954) 978 1550. A search into that confirms that I could call Molly or Susan with LVM Group, Inc. (Disclosure: I'm not a phone systems expert, and I did what anyone does to look up that number. Search a bit more and the trail widens ... not completely conclusive as I could expect someone in a globalized market to call me from all over but it seems so ... suspicious. I almost wish I hadn't been riding down Glenwood so I would have caught the callers name and asked where she was calling from).
More digging on Midwest Expansion Group. Cathi Romaniello comes up across the board for these searches. I can't seem to trace her down completely however.
A monster.com job search returns a careers.minneapolis@gmail.com address ... a subsequent search of that email brings up another craigslist post.
Stable: http://bit.ly/dpgJ1x
And one more trackback to an email address they use : mwexpansion@executivehrdepartment.com
Gist of the bit of blogging is that I won't be showing up to the interview. Now, where's my Pulitzer?
Follow the ol' intuition if something isn't right (which means waking up at 5:00 am to drive to the job interview ... so instead scheme of another spot to crash the night before ... and finally with hours to go actually begin investigating the company.
Procrastination does seem beneficial.
