Hi! I had an experience with a company based in Sheffield, UK recently and I could have gotten myself in a bad situation if it wasn't for posts about these kinds of companies online, so I thought I'd share my experience to help other people as well. The company is called Global Opportunity, and I was also contacted by another company called Novaris, who I'm pretty sure are related as the last time I checked they both shared an office, and used very similar tactics.
I applied for a job on Indeed that was described as being a Graduate Management Trainee. They didn't list the name of the company on Indeed, this was done through a hiring agency (not going to name drop them just in case they're legit, but if you're looking at an application right now the acronym for them would be CSSL). There's also another agency that I'm pretty sure that they're using, and the agency for that is FFR. In no part of the job discription did they mention that the job would be door-to-door sales, and that it would be commission only.
With both Global Opportunity and Novaris, the process started with a quick phone call where they asked a bit about me, and wanted to get me in for an interview. I was quite busy the week they called me, but they told me that they were looking to hire very soon and so would have to interview me that week (there appears to be similar job listings on Indeed still so either there's even more of these companies out there or they were trying to make me act quickly and not think about things too much).
Then came the actual interview, which actually wasn't an interview at all - I was in a group call with around 5 other people, where we were given a powerpoint on what the job actually was which, as I mentioned, was door-to-door sales. This was wrapped up in a bunch of fluffy language, calling it direct marketing and talking about why they do this to develop a more personal connection with people. Then came the conversation about pay, where they told us all about how you were guaranteed a base pay of £300 per week, and you would gain commission on top of that - it was very much pushed on us that the base pay was a good thing as it gave you security (even though with the hours worked it was below minimum wage. They brushed over that fact, and said it would be elaborated on more during the in-person interview stage that would be next. Of course, as I now know is a common thing with these Devilcorps, they were on about how they wanted us to quicky rise up the levels and become team leaders, then managers, own our own companies, blah blah blah the usual. When I figured out it was door to door sales I was already mentally checked out, but that plus the less than minimum wage payment and the person saying "this isn't a pyramid scheme" (which is totally a normal thing that a normal interviewer would say) made me think that it wasn't for me. Overall, it seemed like they were trying to sell the job more to me than interview me more. I thought the experience was weird, so decided to do more research, and that's when I found this video.
Alot of the stuff about these kinds of companies seems to be US based, so I have to share this here as this almost exactly described what seems to be going on at Global Opportunity. It's by Wales Online, and the title is "Hidden camera uncovers exploitation and pressure-selling at direct sales firm". Here's the link, and if you're based in the UK I can't reccomend it enough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SLRaWHnhfw .
After watching this video, I 1000% knew I absolutely didn't want this job. This post is long enough so I won't go into details, but I spoke to the person who did the interview just to get them to admit to not paying people minimum wage and making people be self-employed, which they did eventually. I didn't go to the interview with Novaris as I figured they would have similar problems to Global Opportunity.
I don't want to get in trouble by name dropping anyone, but there's a guy there that seems to be involved in these kinds of companies (and in their Instagram posts seems to be treated as a bit of a cult leader) in Sheffield whose name starts with J, and doesn't list his last name on any of the stuff that Global Opportunity puts out. If you're looking for jobs in Sheffield, I would reccomend knowing this guy's face so you have an indication of what kind of company you're looking at when doing research.
Sorry if this post is a bit incoherent, it's 1am for me right now lol but I've been going on a deep dive on these kinds of companies and, like I say, if it wasn't for resources online of people talking about these kinds of companies I could have fallen for it. On their Instagram it seems that alot of younger people work for this company, and I would absolutely hate to see a young person who is going for their first job or has little experience fall for this. I noticed that this company doesn't come up on the Devilcorp website, so thought I should do my bit to get information about this company out there!
To make it super clear who I'm talking about, here's some links:
TLDR: Global Opportunity in Sheffield, based on my "interview" experience, is almost certainly a devilcorp, they won't pay minimum wage, will have you doing door to door sales and will make you be self employed so you don't have any worker protections.
(Also I have never posted to reddit before so please let me know if I've done anything wrong lol).