After spending three days at the 'Academy' at XLN Telecom I soon came suspicious of the whole thing and after reading many blogs on the internet everything fell into place. XLN Telecom is nothing more than a scam that plays on people's dreams, promising them a salary of 30, 000 when in reality no one is ever going to get there.
I received a call from Steve at SP Marketing explaining he had found my CV on Totaljobs.com and that I very much fitted this Sales Manager Position. As a recent graduate with no relevant experience whatsoever I did find it a bit odd. Not only that my CV hadn't even been uploaded onto the site, I merely had a profile which was very much incomplete. However like everyone else who is job hunting at the moment I wasn't having much luck so I thought I might as well give it a go.
Arriving at the interview I entered a room with about thirty other candidates. We were then given a presentation by a manager called Steve which was more like a sales pitch telling us how much we wanted this job! He then proceeded to tell us how he made his first million by the time he was only 27 and owns about ten houses, a Mercedes sports car and dines out in only the finest restaurants in London. After the presentation he fired out questions to each of us in front of everybody which I found a very obscure and intimidating way to interview. I made friends with another one of the candidates who was there because his friend received a call however as he had already got a job he recommended his friend and without knowing anything about him was invited to the interview. I had to call back at a certain time to find out whether I had got the job and I was told I had been successful. I was in two minds whether to go or not but it was a job after all and I didn't exactly have any other options.
So on Monday (bank holiday Monday!!) I went in and the guy I made friends with on the Friday was there too. We were now in the Academy, an 8 week training programme which if we completed we would then become managers starting on a salary of 30, 000 with a lot of room for progression. In our first week we would have to take a few simple tests about the company and then on the 3rd 4th and 5th day we would have to go out selling contracts to small businesses across London. If we didn't reach our targets we wouldn't get through to the next week. We had to sell at least two contracts in the first week and then in the 2nd week it got harder and most people would fail. Most candidates would sell a lot of contracts for XLN however by the end of the two weeks they are told they haven't met their targets. And as they don't start paying you till the third week you won't receive a penny.
The whole system is like a pyramid system. You are trained by someone in the week above you and they were trained by someone in the week above them and so on. So everyone does all the hard work apart from the guy at the top, Steve. Who by the way in currently in Marbella!
On the Tuesday we all got back from lunch to find that half the group had been sacked for talking against the company. We were told by Steve they were negative and he couldn't trust them unlike the rest of us who he very much liked.
The guy I befriended found me on Facebook warning me to quit right away. They all told Steve they thought it was a scam and didn't want to stay any longer anyway. The next day one of the guys came back to confront Steve. Steve admitted the whole thing was a scam and told him they had put a mole in in order to get rid of the people that sussed him out. This mole had informed Steve of the bad mouthing at lunch. Steve even gave him 40 quid to keep his mouth shut.
I really hope after reading this you'll think twice about going for that interview. I don't want anyone else to waste their time like I did. The whole thing is a big scam which I can't believe in this day and age anyone can actually get away with. With the economy in such a bad way and so many people out of jobs it makes it far easier for them to use and manipulate people in this way. I am just so glad that I found out only a couple of days in and not weeks down the line. So please if your reading this do not get sucked in by XLN it is a massive con. They are great actors and have fooled a lot of people but please don't make yourself be the next victim.
Anonymous
london
United Kingdom
0 comments