Years ago I went to a IT training company, where I was told I'd need to attend an interview first before they could consider me for one of their courses.
The receptionist at the training company told me, I would need to come back for an interview and one of the managers would interview me to see if I was suitable to do their courses. I asked her surprisingly,
"Interview for a IT training course? Really?"
She snapped back,
"Not everyone is up to standard required to complete our course!"
So I reluctantly agreed to undergo the interview, as I was out of work at the time and believed in not dismissing any opportunity. May be this was now becoming standard practice I thought, so why not.
The receptionist then supposedly checked the diary on her computer to find me an available slot and told me,
"We've got a slot for next Thursday at 11am..."
I asked if there were any other times available. The receptionist was adamant, there were no other slots available in the near future. She replied,
"Hmmm... We've got a lot of people who are interested in our training and we just don't have the training places available. So it's up to you, as someone else will take that interview slot, if you don't! Unless of course you want to remain unemployed?"
Talk about reverse psychology, trying to sort of make me feel bad for missing out by upping the importance of their training. I reluctantly accepted the slot offered and was advised by the receptionist,
"This is an important interview with one of our senior managers, so you must be smartly dressed. He won't look to favourably on you if you're not dressed smartly. Wear a suit, as this will create the right impression with the manager."
The status of the interview is exaggerated, to make it sound incredibly important. So having a ploy of having to dress up smartly for the interview because the interviewer won't look favourably on the person being interviewed is absolute hogwash!
This is used to make the person being interviewed, that is the victim, believe that the training on offer is so special, only select individuals can take the training. When in reality they will take anyone on, as long as they can pay for their overpriced training.
So I went along to the interview, wearing a smart suit. The manager who interviewed me was very smartly dressed and initially quite warming.
He asked me some questions on why I was interested in IT, which I clearly noted was designed for him to gee me up into a state of belief it was all possible with their training.
He then showed me an internet website, which was a job board for IT jobs and told me,
"Our training can help get these types of jobs... You can see there are hundreds of these jobs when I type this in!".
When he then had me at a point where he believed I could be manipulated into signing up on one of their courses, the hard selling began.
To cut a long story short, I managed to get out of the place without signing up for any of the courses. I was annoyed that he hardly mentioned the courses in any detail, which made my 'spidey senses' tingle, that something was not quite right.
What he failed to tell me was,
- their training won't be good enough to get you the hundreds of jobs the job boards have on show,
- a lot of the jobs which appear on job boards are the same job, advertised by different recruitment agencies,
- their courses are very average and don't give you any special skills to complete with the world at large.
Never believe anyone who goes on about how many jobs there are on the job boards, without first investigating it yourself. As I've said a lot of jobs are duplicates.
This makes the opportunities on the job boards more limiting because more people find out about them, from the multiple agencies trying to find candidates for the same job. This in turn increases the competition for the jobs, leading to only the best candidates getting the job.
This whole interview charade undertaken by these rogue training companies is designed to make you believe that you are special. So special, that there are hundreds of jobs to choose from waiting for them.
With this charade what would be the hard part of these companies, that is, extracting money out of their victim for their courses becomes so much easier.
Victims feel at ease and thus become vulnerable to their hardened sales tactics. They simply turn cold sales prospects into hot potatoes who are eager to pay for their courses.
I would seriously avoid any IT training organisation which asks to interview first. You should ideally be interviewing them and asking deep questions into how they're training can help you.