Career Management Services My husband was lied to about what they would do to help him find a job. Costa Mesa California

My husband recently lost his senior management job because his company was bought out and reorganized. He started looking for another job right away and one of the things he did was to put his resume on several employment web sites. To keep some money coming in he started working for a friend of ours for less than he had been making.

He got a call from a woman at Career Management Services saying she had seen his resume on line and thought they could help him find something to fit his skills and pay level. He went to an appointment to meet her and she told him they would help him search for a management job while he kept working at what he was doing, because he told the woman that one of his problems was that he needed to keep working while he searched.

After thinking it over for a few days, he talked to the woman again and went over his situation about needing to keep working and wanting their help to do things that it was hard for him to do. The woman assured him that they would "manage his search" for him, that they had a lot of people who were in his same situation that they worked with.

He signed up with them and paid them a few thousand dollars. He went for a "briefing" with a man who told him about what they do. It sounded different from what the woman had told him, but at first it looked like they had some things that would help, like looking up information about companies, recruiters, jobs posted on their web site, contacts with companies that were hiring. The man was very courteous and professional and gave my husband a book that described their process.

My husband sent out the letters they instructed him to, to companies and recruiters and got a lot of them returned for bad addresses and people no longer there, at least a third of them.

After a short while it became clear that they would not do what the woman had promised about helping him find work, that he had to do all the work himself. He could have done this from the start but we thought he was paying someone to help because he needed to keep working.

My husband is still working with the advisor he met, who seems to be doing all he can personally to help him, but he thinks the sales woman, whose card says she is an Executive Vice President in the company, lied to him and misled him about what they would do.

Be careful with this company and make sure you know what you are getting into. They do some things that would be helpful, but do not "manage your search" like their sales people say.

Chandra in oc
Orange, California
U.S.A.