Main Street

Preying on the Jobless

It really does seem to be the case that there are an almost infinite number of scumbags willing to victimize people trying desperately to make ends meet through hard work in a tough economy. Following up on this morning’s post on wage theft, we learn about the “job search” companies that exploit the anxieties of jobless workers, exaggerating wildly to get them to pay large amounts for services that amount to…well, pretty much nothing.

Edward Bockman, 44, who managed the technology center of an Illinois college before losing his job during a restructuring, paid a career management company $5,000 in late 2007 after responding to what he thought was a job posting for professionals looking to earn $100,000 a year.

Instead, he got a sales pitch from Benchmark Professional Careers in Chicago. He said he was told that a search for someone his age would normally take 13 months but that the company would cut that in half. Mr. Bockman said he believed that the company was a high-end recruiter, with access to a vast “hidden job market,” as he said company officials put it, that gave it connections to positions unavailable to regular job seekers.

Only later, after he began working with the company, did he realize it did not have any special pathways to job openings.

Officials in some states have worked to ban these shady business practices, but with little oversight ability beyond customer complaints, it’s difficult—and they just keep coming back. Sometimes literally—job search companies run by Robert J. Gerberg, Sr. in the 1980s were found guilty of violating New Jersey consumer fraud laws. Today, he’s a senior consultant to a company featured in this article, and run by his son.