Into Motivation

The existing economic crisis brings to mind the situation in the early eighties, a time of the same elevated unemployment statistics as today. From 1980 onwards Britain experienced a severe downturn in our manufacturing base, so that a high number of traditional jobs went abroad or were very hard to find. It is instructive to note the similarities between the early 80s, and current conditions, looking at the various spurious jobs that were offered, and are resurfacing once more today, a high proportion of these being commission only sales jobs, that nobody would have any interest in, if employment opportunities were more plentiful.

Even so, there are also dissimilarities between the two downturns, because of the existence of Internet business and a wide range of worthwhile online jobs in existence at the current time, which did not exist 25 years ago. While the the suggestion that people can work from home is not new, the World Wide Web greatly widens the possibilities for doing this.

I do not doubt that there are legitimate opportunities selling things or working for yourself, but it is important to distinguish these from dubious positions, and avoid positions selling something dubious. In 1984 I was invited for interview with an employer trying to establish a new commercial directory. My job would be to go to businesses asking them to pay for an entry in this. I suspected that the directory itself was something of a sham, and decided not to take up the position. I was right: the directory was never published.

In another example I applied for a vacancy marketing financial investments, and was asked to attend an interview at a hotel. It is standard practice for employers to hire hotel space for the purposes of interviews. However, when I arrived there, it turned out that this company actually used the hotel as an office. Before I could even sign a contract with them, I would have to

sell five policies, to people in my circle of friends. In other words, the whole thing was essentially a scam to get my list of contacts. It goes without saying that I gave that one a miss.

Then I tried a couple of doorstep sales roles. A lot of people find door-to-door salesmen annoying, and it turned out to be a deeply dispiriting experience. Residents will find numerous disagreeable ways of informing you to go away. So then I tried out telesales, which had the advantage that I could work from home, yet this was possibly even worse. It’s a lot easier to put the phone down on a salesman than to shut a front door against them.

Perhaps such jobs are less common these days because a lot of neighbourhoods have been designated as ‘no cold calling’ districts, and most of the telesales jobs have been exported to India. Nevertheless, recently I applied for a position in telephone research, which I predicted would be better because I would not be required to sell anything. However, I found that very few people were willing to spare time for a few questions, and some simply put down the phone immediately. I threw in the towel after just one day.

So, with normal jobs in critically short supply, are there any alternatives that are genuine opportunities? After I tried out a lot of non-starters I finally considered Internet business opportunities. Some of these are promoted on the online jobs boards, but there are also websites focussing on the field of Internet business itself. Positions like these allow people to work from home, so there is no requirement to relocate. Some opportunities may involve a reasonable investment, but I can speak from personal experience that online jobs are definitely preferable to selling products by cold calling. Since I started in this area myself, I have never personally regretted it.