Summary
How did I get a job offer in the first place that didn’t turn into a job?
I wanted to start searching for specific job offers and registering on the appropriate sites in January. However, my to-do list included reading an article about changing my lifestyle. This article had a link to a job site, and I didn’t remember if this specific site was on my to-do list. That’s why I looked at this site. This site was remoteok.com.
Coincidentally, this site had an offer that immediately piqued my interest. I wanted to see the details of the job, but I couldn’t do that until I registered. So I started. As I expected based on my experience, logging into such a system is not a 5-minute task. But with the data at my disposal, such as my updated CV, skill assessment lists, etc., I finished introducing myself in about twenty minutes and was able to view the offer.
I’m applying for my first digital nomad job
The offer was so attractive that – following the principle of what can I lose – I pressed the application button on 27.12.2024. The system immediately informed me that there were already 2600+ applicants for this one job. The job was a content writing job, and along with the application I had to specify where I would publish, and if my site was not available, I had the option to upload a sample writing. Since online-dentist.hu was not yet available to the world, I submitted one of the longest blog posts, The Decision, in English. After experiencing the flow, I hoped that there would be feedback at some point.
The first positive feedback
At dawn on the last day of the year, we were having fun with my friends at the Depeche Mode club, when I received an email at 1:57. We were in a good mood anyway, but listening to the tunes of Everything Counts and reading the lines, the experience almost turned into ecstasy.
The letter was simple and to the point:
Dear Istvan,
Thank you for submitting your application. Upon further review, we have determined that your sample meets our quality standards and are pleased to inform you that your application has been accepted.
We will ask you to also accept an invitation to our freelancer portal where we will assign writing and editing tasks.
All payments are made through Freelancer, which is a widely-used freelancing platform that is free to join. This will also help you gain experience and positive feedback on your freelancer profile, which will help you in getting hired by other clients on the platform as well.
You may also be interested in our membership. We offer several different membership options, including a free option, that provides lots of helpful resources for our writers and editors. Please keep in mind that we have open enrollment for new members intermittently throughout the year. This opening will be available until the end of this week.
We have not had many openings as of late so we do not know when we will be accepting new members again.
To get started, please go to https://iapwe.org/register.
Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions about anything.
Hurray! My sample was right. It felt so good. Not to mention the fact that this job offered about twice my current annual income. After the New Year’s Eve party, I was already thinking about accepting this offer and doing it alongside my current full-time job, so I could try it out without any risk. I wouldn’t sleep for two or three months at most.
I couldn’t wait to get home and have the opportunity to register for the first job that would start my new life on the first day of the year.
The well-deserved experience
I started the year on the IAPWE website. I found myself facing a rather old-school website, but that never deters me, although it can be taken as a warning sign.
After providing the usual personal information, there were two questions, one of which was, of course, what kind of content I would like to write, and the other was a drop-down list where I had to choose how I found out about this organization.
This is where the interesting things started. After I told how I found out about the website (which is an own goal in itself, since I had never heard of this organization until I was informed in the above letter that we could work together), a block related to membership in the organization appeared.
I had to think about it and felt like I had to turn on Google search. What were the red flags that indicated something was wrong?
- Why should I buy a membership when I don’t even know what this organization can offer me?
- Why do I have to provide PayPal details?
- With the Basic (free) membership, I don’t even see the job board, it’s only available at the Professional level.
- If they give you a 75% discount on the price of the packages when you apply, but only during the application process, then it has a pretty compelling effect, it really creates the FOMO feeling that dishonest sites like to use. Almost all of them, by the way.
- By purchasing the Supporter membership, I can now call myself an official IAPWE writer, even though I haven’t even written a single line.
- The fact that you can only cancel your membership through the organization’s contact page, and not under your own account, is another warning sign.
I won’t even go into details. I started searching for the organization. Within moments, I read the word SCAM dozens of times. I also read a few interesting articles and watched a video about this organization.
In the end, it quickly becomes clear that
- it would be quite difficult to get rid of the membership,
- the jobs offered can be found on almost every major job portal,
- the writing tools offered are not really useful.
I could have been disappointed, since I managed to choose a scraping system right away, but of course I didn’t get disappointed.
I learned from this lesson before it even happened. If I join the next system, I will search the Internet before visiting the system. I will pay attention to the red flags.