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Finding Alternative Work In The Downturn How To Tell Between Good And Bad Opportunities

22nd August, 2010 - Posted by health news - No Comments

Today’s global recession is reminiscent of conditions in the 1980s, a time of the same elevated levels of joblessness as at the current time. In the early 80s recession the country experienced a severe reduction in our industrial base, so that a huge swathe of engineering and related jobs disappeared or were very hard to find. It is fascinating to notice the similarities between the early 80s, and today, in terms of the various bogus opportunities that I saw on offer, and are reappearing again today, many them in door to door sales jobs, which nobody would dream of applying for, if jobs were more plentiful.

And yet, there are also differences between the two periods, because of the appearance of Internet business and an increasing number of legitimate online jobs in existence today, that had no parallel in the eighties. Although the the suggestion that people can work from home has not only just emerged, the World Wide Web has greatly widened the potential for doing this.

I do not doubt that you can find lucrative jobs in sales and similar positions, however it is vital to tell such positions apart from frankly exploitative roles, and avoid jobs promoting a fairly dubious product. In 1984 I attended an interview with a business purportedly setting up a new commercial directory. They were looking for salesmen to go to companies asking them to purchase an entry in this. I suspected that the directory itself did not really exist and never would, and did not pursue the vacancy. In fact, the directory never saw the light of day.

In another example I applied for a vacancy marketing a financial scheme, and was invited to go to a hotel for an interview. It is quite usual for employers to rent hotel space for the purposes of interviews. However, when I got there, I discovered this outfit actually had an office in the hotel. Before they agreed to hire me, I was required to sell five of their plans, to friends and relatives. To put it another way, the whole thing was essentially a scam to get my list of contacts. Needless to say I decided not to take that up.

Then I tried my hand as a door-to-door salesman. A lot of people find doorstep salemen annoying, and it turned out to be a profoundly discouraging experience. Residents will find a variety of unpleasant ways to tell you they are not interested. So then I tried out selling by phone, which was better in once sense since I was able to work from home, but this if anything was worse. It’s a lot easier to hang up on a cold caller than to slam the front door against them.

The door-to-door job adverts are less plentiful today as many neighbourhoods have signs up saying they are ‘no cold calling’ zones, and most of the telephone selling jobs have gone to India. Nevertheless, this year I went for a position in market research, which I assumed would be better as I would not be required to sell anything. Regrettably, I found that very few people were interesting in taking part in the survey, and some just put down the phone right away. I gave that up after a day.

But given that normal jobs are still extremely scarce, are there any alternatives that are genuine opportunities? After I tried out various dud jobs I finally took a look at Internet business opportunities. You will find some publicized on the online jobs sites, but you can also find websites focussing on the field of Internet business itself. Such positions enable you to work from home, therefore you will not need to relocate. Some jobs might require a small investment, but I know from personal experience that online jobs are infinitely preferable to selling something on the doorstep or phone. Since I entered this field myself, I have never personally looked back.