A private company that purportedly aims to help people find work is under fire for the hefty fees it charges and the services that clients say it fails to deliver.
Toronto Pathways is billed as a job-search marketing firm, which promotes its ability to help people find new jobs, whether they are currently employed or not.
Serdar Feyzioglu of Brampton, Ont., received a call from someone at Toronto Pathways, advising him that he had a resume that caught their attention.
"She called me and she said my resume was picked out of many and she also said that they have a client that is looking for an engineer," Feyzioglu told CBC's Marketplace.
When he got the call, Feyzioglu had been out of work for months, his wife had been laid off and the couple had been forced to live with her parents.
The prospect of landing a job prompted Feyzioglu to attend two meetings at Pathways and to pay more than $5,000 in fees.
But in the end he did not get a job, only training on how to write a resume and how to conduct himself in an interview.
Feyzioglu and his wife believed he was being offered a job and that Toronto Pathways was like a headhunting firm.
Marketplace sent in a staffer with a hidden camera to a meeting with Toronto Pathways, in which a Pathways career director promised the CBC staffer that she would be "absolutely" certain to get a job.
Nick Corcodilos, a corporate headhunter who provides free advice to job seekers, said that he has seen similar operations to Pathways before.
"No one, no one can guarantee anyone else a job, except an employer after it makes the decision to hire someone," he told Marketplace.
"Anyone who is charging you, and telling you that they're going to guarantee you a job, is probably lying to you."
What's worse, many of the services a client gets from Toronto Pathways are available for free, or for much less. Marketplace also discovered that the “satisfied, valued employers” listed on the company’s website have no affiliation with Pathways.
The company’s president faces a trail of small claims cases and online complaints from angry job hunters. But it’s not just Toronto Pathways people are complaining about. Marketplace discovered that Pathways changed its name five times in seven years.
When asked about the name changing, company president Dale Smith said "brand marketing just allows a fresh market approach."
"We can't be responsible for their perception," Smith told Marketplace.
"They're obviously searching and they're eager."
Pathways has also been criticized by Canada's privacy commissioner.
In a recent investigation the commissioner found that Pathways used tactics that included misleading a client into believing the company was "securing" a job for them and also failed to be "plain and clear" with potential clients about the services being offered.
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