Strategic Five Marketing - Again

I have been reflecting on why I am so angered by Strategic Five's apparently dishonest approach to recruitment, and also doing a little more digging.  This post is a summary of where I am up to. For the background, see my previous post, here, if you have not already read it.

I am angry because it seems to me both wrong in principle and cruel in practice to behave in the way that they seem to do. Cruel is a strong word, and I do not imply that is their intention, but I do not think it overstates the impact of their tactics.

Here's the story of the graduate whom I know best who was fooled by them. He graduated a couple of years ago, started doing a PGCE and then realised that teaching really wasn't for him. So he quit that after a year, and started looking for other jobs. He has found some filler jobs, as it were, to keep the wolf from the door, but is still searching for a reasonable graduate job. 

He has sent in many application forms and CVs and typically heard nothing back: that is a dispiriting process. Then he got an interview for a Graduate Management Programme - and the interview went well. He liked them, and they liked him. So his hopes were raised, his confidence, which had been flagging, was boosted. Over the weekend he told a few friends and got the response: 'I hope it's not Strategic Five...' As I recounted before, he tried to ascertain if he were being led up the garden path, Strategic Five denied it, and then, with tragic inevitability, on the Monday, it was confirmed: he'd been conned. Needless to say, that did nothing for his confidence.

What makes me angry is not just the impact on him, but the fact that Strategic Five seem to have been doing this repeatedly. 

A look at Twitter reveals comments like:

It is interesting that Strategic Five have not responded to these tweets, though they must be aware of them as their Twitter handle was quoted, which draws it to their attention: and their feed is not very busy with notifications, as far as I can see.

Likewise, I took a quick look at The Student Room website and found these. The first is quite recent, but the second is from 2013 - so this has been going on for some time.

Note in both the Twitter comments and the fuller comments on The Student Room how frustrating the experience was for these duped graduates: and then remember that two of Strategic Five's four professed values are Honesty and Respect.

I have emailed Strategic Five, and tweeted at them, but had no reply: again for a marketing organisation, that seems strange. Likewise, I find it strange that they boast about their client base including 'the Nation's biggest brands' but do not name a single client on their wwwsite.

One last thing I dug up: Strategic Five are advertising a range of jobs with a range of salaries on recruitment websites. These are almost certainly bogus, given that their Linked-In site says they have 1-10 employees - recruiting 15 'marketing' jobs would more than double their size in one go.

Strategic Five Marketing: A Scam?

Has anyone come across the organisation Strategic Five Marketing ?

It seems to me that they are conning graduates. I know of three, now, who were enticed with prospects of Graduate Management Schemes, only to discover it is commission-only door-to-door selling.

Here’s the spec for the role:

Graduate Management Program 

Graduate Progression Opportunity - No Working Experience Required
Strategic Five Marketing are an ever growing outsource sales and promotions company specialising in face-to-face customer acquisition, branding and management - and affiliated with the Nations biggest blue chip brands within the industries of telecoms, beauty, charity, electronics and entertainment, and fresh produce. 

With graduation looming, we are now looking for the next generation of ambitious and career driven candidates excited to embrace a graduate opportunity, with full training provided, to kick start their careers.

Graduate Management Candidates must be:
Customer focused and confident to build rapports with our customer and client portfolio.Be coachable to embrace creative marketing and branding methods.Career driven and competitive to progress towards team leader, campaign co-ordinator, and marketing management positions.Enthusiastic to learn business sectors including finance, recruitment and HRProfessional and articulate to work alongside the Nations biggest brandsPrevious candidates of the Graduate Management Program 2014 have come from backgrounds of business management, art and design, sports and leisure/ coaching, and also applied backgrounds such as sciences, law and performing arts. 

Successful Candidates will be Offered:
Full training and on-going mentoringInvite to National and local social and corporate eventsInternational and National travel opportunitiesCareer progression and business developmentCareer stability and full time positions

For a graduate looking for work in a tough market, that sounds quite appealing. 

The third of the three I know of was pleased to be invited to an interview, and even more pleased when invited back for the following Monday. Initially he thought it was for a second interview, but then found it was for a day of working with them to see what it’s like. However, over the weekend a friend told him that it was a scam to lure people in to unpaid door-to-door selling.

A mutual friend takes up the story:

So they refused to admit that it was commission based door to door sales right up until the last minute! He phoned ahead to ask what he'd be doing and was told he'd be with someone from accounts. Peter from accounts took him to meet the clients in Sunderland and said that he wouldn't describe it as door to door sales, when asked, although the clients were in their houses and he was knocking on their doors trying to sell them stuff!! In what sense he was from accounts it never emerged, because his job was selling not accounting. Very nutty!  

Another friend has pointed me at these organisations, which, while apparently unrelated, seem to have similar feel: DS-MAX and The Cobra Group. 

I would particularly urge my academic friends and colleagues to let their graduates and their career services know about this. If people want to go into commission-only door-to-door selling, that’s fine by me (I suppose, grudgingly) but not under false pretences.

Oh, and I notice that Strategic Five has four corporate values, of which the first is Honesty, and the third, Respect. I’ve already dropped them a line, and will, of course, report back their response, if any… I did enter a 'visitor post' on their Facebook page, politely asking about this. It has not been posted. In fact, no visitor posts have been posted. I wonder why?

The Vagaries of Freelance Life...

Occasionally people ask me about the way I run the business. Often, it is because they are vaguely considering cutting loose from organisational life and going freelance. So here are some reflections which may (or may not) be of help.

Running one’s own small  business is an interesting experience, and perhaps requires a certain approach which it is not easy to articulate.  I came across a phrase in C S Lewis some time ago, which seemed to sum it up perfectly: Divine uncertainty.

Things change, and they are hard to predict.

A few years ago, a lot of my work came in at relatively short notice: if the diary was fairly busy about 3 months out, that was good.  

But more recently, far more work is being booked as part of an annual planning process.  So, for example, last year looked as though it was going to be a very good year, both in terms of volume of work and the inherent interest of that work.  

There were lots of forward bookings, and plenty of leads and prospects for other things too.  Then with a change of leadership at one of my client organisations, a major programme was postponed; another project which looked promising got off to a relatively poor start and  much of the potential work never materialised; and moreover, very little work came in at shorter notice: suddenly from being a good year, it was just a year.

At the beginning of this (financial) year, June and July, the diary was relatively empty: so I invested a little time in marketing and re-connecting with the network as one does.  And then, suddenly a lot of work came in at short notice and the year was off to a flying start.  But here’s the funny thing: none of that was a result of the marketing and networking conversations I had had.  

By the same token, I sometimes get involved in tendering for work. More often than not, I fail to win work for which I am (in my humble opinion) really well-suited, but instead win work which is rather tangential to my core skills and experience.  But I have blogged before on the tendering process...

All this is worth mentioning, because it is something of a pattern.  If I neglect that side of the business, eventually things go quiet; if I spend time on it, things pick up - yet the causality is far from obvious. Maybe it’s just confirmation bias: but it really looks as though there is something in it.  

And not only did short term work come in, lots of it, and for the first time in months, but also the forward bookings were starting to come in.  Jane and I sat down for a forecasting meeting yesterday morning, and it was looking quite solid: lots of things in the diary, and quite a few prospective pieces of work, too.  If only some of those would firm up.  I made a list of some people to talk to about that.

But before I could do so, in fact that very day, five of those clients were in touch, confirming, and in one case radically expanding, that prospective work.  So this year (13/14) is looking very good indeed: lots of very interesting work, with a larger range of clients.

And the moral of this story?  I am not quite sure, but suspect it is something about requisites for running a small business including hope, patience and persistence.

Defeated by the snow...

The closure of the A 66 meant I couldn't get across to Durham for a morning meeting, and so I also cancelled another couple in Newcastle in the afternoon, as it seemed too much to try to battle through the weather (and risk not getting home again).  But I hate that: I guess it's pride...

However, it did mean I had an unexpected day at home, and I was able to use it to develop some ideas for another bid I'm going for - including workshops on Manager as Coach, Leadership, Change Management, Presentation Skills, Negotiating and Influencing: interesting seeing how my interest in narrative approaches feeds in to all of these.

I also refreshed a lot of my materials for an outplacement support workshop on Friday - not least because I suspect there may be more of these to come in the current (economic) climate.  I think I'll travel on Thursday evening to make sure I'm there for the workshop...

Targetted marketing

I logged on to Amazon (because I should have been working...) and found:

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New Business and Potential New Business

One of those weeks when a lot of new and interesting stuff emerges from almost nowhere (this is why it's tempting to be lazy about marketing!)

Cleveland Police want me to do a series of awaydays for teams embarking on major changes: to celebrate success and plan for the journey ahead.

Another client has asked me to sketch out ideas for a very interesting project which they wish to keep confidential, as they don't want their competitors to get wind of it until it's delivered sensational competitive advantage.

Someone else who I coached a while back is now 18 months into a new leadership role in a complex environment and wants me to undertake a 360 feedback exercise for her.

And I see St Andrews has issued an invitation to tender for some interesting coaching work. See my previous rants about the bidding process: this one includes words to the effect that only those with a good understanding of the culture of ancient universities need apply. Does that mean if you have not worked with them, Oxford or Cambridge you are wasting your time, I wonder. Will probably give it a shot with a couple of colleagues (we all have extensive University experience - but maybe not ancient enough....)