NT INFORMATION

[taxit]

Does anyone know how or where to check a company to see if they are legit, or if people have had problems with them? My daughter graduated from college this year and like most other graduates can't find a job. She went to a seminar yesterday given by "Career Development" located at 1163 Gibbsboro Rd , Voorhees , NJ. For $695 paid at the seminar they will teach you to take & pass the civil service test & help you get a government job. Anytime I hear someone say you have to buy it now I have a tendency to walk away. Its sounds like quite a few young people signed up & paid while at this seminar. Any information would be appreciated.

[Edward]

I'd call the local Civil Service for an evaluation. Didn't Civil Service make some type announcement on a"hiring

freeze"? If not, they no doubt are hurting just like everyone else due to the current economic situation!!

[Jack from Ohio]

Does anyone know how or where to check a company to see if they are legit, or if people have had problems with them? My daughter graduated from college this year and like most other graduates can't find a job. She went to a seminar yesterday given by "Career Development" located at 1163 Gibbsboro Rd , Voorhees , NJ. For $695 paid at the seminar they will teach you to take & pass the civil service test & help you get a government job. Anytime I hear someone say you have to buy it now I have a tendency to walk away. Its sounds like quite a few young people signed up & paid while at this seminar. Any information would be appreciated.

The only people who truly benefit from this kind of seminar, are the people selling and putting on the seminar. Tell her to save her money. There are study materials for the Civil Service exam at the local library. If she just graduated college, she doesn't need to pay anyone to show her how to study a book.

Heard some survey results about these kind of seminars. The percentage of people who take the courses and get hired, is almost identical to the percentage of people who don't take the course and get hired.

[taxit]

Thanks Ed & Jack. This is the way I felt. These young adults are feeling desperate. My son graduated three years ago and had a two good job offers within a month. My daughter is meassuring herself to her brother. Now I need to tactfully convince her to try to cancel the deal, within two days.

[jainen]

>>can't find a job<<

Probably the best lesson she can get from them is that she can make up her own job just like they did. These seminars are generally legit, whatever that means. Sometimes they don't bother to get licensed to operate in every state.

The quality might not be very good; $700 doesn't buy much education these days. Although they usually claim to have some insider knowledge ("37 years as head of personnel in Washington"), all their information is public domain and available from other sources. They bring it all together in a usable package and put it in perspective. That can be very valuable, but only if she follows through on everything they say. For example, she should take her new job hunt skills back to her alumni services office to get some genuine referrals. And she has to take a volunteer position in her field, this weekend.

She must recognize that public sector job openings are rare these days. Even in good times she would just get on a whole lot of lists and wait up to a year to be called. She should hammer the instructors for information about state and local applications. They often have special issues to pursue (or avoid) such as bi-lingual or on-call requirements.

[Lion EA]

Better Business Bureau and Chamber of Commerce and state's Attorney General and Consumer Protection Agency. Google their name to find mentions, good and bad, by others on blogs and such. I stumbled onto a site once called something like "Rip Offs" that collected complaints.

[taxit]

Thanks for all of the replies. My daughter called me 10 minutes ago. She sent the company a certified letter per their instructions to cancel the deal.

[pcmcpa]

This is probably the site mentioned in one of the above posts: http://www.ripoffreport.com/

You may want to refer her to this site for job search tools:

http://www.ramseylibrary.org/Job_Seekers.htm