<p>I am looking for an internship this summer, and came across InfoScroll, a company that lets you work online from home and apparently requires only 10 hours a week to possibly make $5,000 a month. Sounds incredibly fishy. </p>
<p>Glassdoor.com, which is usually a good indicator, has only 1 review. It’s negative, but it just says there is a lack of communication in the company, nothing about scams or anything. The jist I get from their website is that they want you to cold call restaurants and enter their info onto the system which can be searched - sort of a poor man’s Yelp or Google Maps. Here is the link to the website, career page and internship page:</p>
<p>What sounds fishy about it?
You’re paid on commission and this commission is capped at $5,000 for the 10 week period. </p>
<p>Sounds like a terrible deal to me, but I wouldn’t call it a scam.
If you’re looking for a dead end job as a telemarketer, this is a fantastic opportunity.
Unless you have to pay money to get it, the only thing you have to lose is your time.</p>
<p>Yeah it doesn’t look like you have much to lose out of it, but I would always be wary of a company that uses salary as a recruiting tool. It would appear that they are looking for a LOT of new people and will choose from that group who advances, but with hard caps on earnings it seems like a very strange business model. I would venture to guess that only about 5% of new hires come anywhere near the $5,000 cap, that you would be more likely to earn somewhere around $1,200-$1,800 per month, assuming you work in the ballpark of 20 hours per week.</p>
<p>Immediate risks I can see: They talk about “opportunity,” which appears to mean that your payout is entirely dependent on performance; there is no constant salary, which means that if you have a rough month, you may not earn anything. Also, any time you see a hard cap, you can tell it is one of two things - a very low cap or a completely unrealistic goal… this appears to be the latter. Lastly, it seems like “THIS IS NOT A SALES JOB” is only true because you are not actually selling anything in the sense of exchanging goods for currency; you would absolutely be a salesperson, and if that is not of interest to you, I would be careful!</p>
<p>Upside potential: If it turns out that the cap is legitimate and attainable, $5,000 per month is a healthy starting salary, provided you have opportunities to advance further within the company. Also, it is a new company, meaning that it is probably fast paced and young; you may wind up with some great people if you stick with it.</p>
<p>All told, there is no harm in applying and interviewing. If you get the sense that you are being heavily recruited as soon as you walk in the door (i.e. if they start talking compensation structure within fifteen minutes of the start of your interview), run for the hills since that is the hallmark of a desperate, shifty or otherwise unhealthy company.</p>