Dear Joyce: My son-in-law is 57 and lost his job. A manager, he has contacted a company that says if he pays them $4,000 plus, they will market him through special connections bypassing the personnel departments in corporations. What do you think? -- V.L.

Dear V.L.: Here we go again: When the economy declines, scams become a growth industry.

School Posing as Employer
In its Jan. 8 edition, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported a reprise of the training school dodge. The Missouri attorney general has filed a lawsuit alleging deceptive trade practices by two men in St. Louis who set up a computer-services company supposedly to provide technical support to other companies.

The company advertised jobs paying $45,000 a year. The catch was that commission salespeople posing as human resource employees told job applicants they couldn't be hired until they paid up to $3,150 for training.

Career-Marketing
Another variety of schemes -- the so called "executive marketing firms" or "career-marketing firms" -- run alluring ads promising amazing but phony benefits. Their false promises are built around "insider" claims and selectivity. A few examples:

"We will market you through our special channels and get you in front of hiring managers."

"We will give you access to unpublished job openings in the hidden job market."

"We will give you a list of 70 exclusive names you can call to get top jobs."

"We will see to it that you get the right job and will continue at your side until that happens."

Bad Pennies
Unscrupulous career-marketing firms have existed for decades, preying on people who are unemployed or in going-nowhere jobs.

The most recent example was described last week in the San Diego Union Tribune as a firm that has dropped from sight, leaving employees in limbo and customers enraged.

The firm collected $4,000 and $5,000 fees for advice on how to get jobs paying from $60,000 to $600,000.

Their written contract stated, "No verbal or written promises or guarantee of any job or employment is made or implied." But that's not the way sales reps talked, according to numerous ex-customers.

"I was promised upper echelon jobs, but they put me in a few classes," said a dissatisfied customer, who noted he could have obtained the same thing from a book. Another angry customer said he paid thousands for a résumé that he found to be uselessly out of sync with the industries they were supposed to target.

More Skinny
A detailed account of how con artists rip off bright, experienced managers - "The Executive Marketing Racket: How I dropped ten grand down a hole" -- is found on the Ask the Headhunter Web site.

Tips
In the meantime, here are several pointers on how to tell the bad guys from the good guys.