Executive Career Counselors, Inc. are not who they represent themselves to be. Hold on to your money CFO, COO, and CEO candidates. They have no un-advertised jobs or access to hiring authorities at the executive level. Are they part of an HR scam? You be the judge. I'm a CFO, and this is my story.

It started with my phone call. After a few minutes of questions they still couldn't tell me if they were a retained search firm or employee-paid counseling firm. The lady who answered my call said, "It sounds like you don't know what you really want to do and need assistance," thereby setting the hook to an enormously costly and disappointing experience with Executive Career Counselors, Inc. (ECC).

Since their regional office was approximately two miles from my house, I visited with them there. During the course of our initial consultation, I was provided with a binder of recommendation letters of "satisfied customers", handed a news article about a recently hired CEO for a local company (not placed by ECC) and was told, "You could be their CFO". I found it amusing that what should have been a 30 minute meeting dragged over several hours -- they wanted me to spend time in the conference room reading "thank you letters" from those satisfied customers. I felt like I was back in my college frat days, being "hot-boxed" into pledging a particular fraternity.

Why did I do it? Sign with them? Because they promised me connections to CFO hiring authorities. Naturally, I asked them to provide me with two or three telephone numbers of satisfied clients at my compensation level, but they never responded to my request. They said they would provide the information at a later date.

At the end of this month, my contract with ECC is at its one year anniversary. I have mailed out over 6,000 resumes, had a dozen or so interviews (none of which were sourced by ECC), and had a few other meetings with ECC (where I had to initiate the contact and ask "What's going on with my search?").

During these telephone conferences with ECC, I heard the story for the third time from the same counselor about a fellow who went to a convention in the Northeast and hired two college students to slide his resume under the door of each hotel room at the convention site. I was also encouraged for the fourth time to join organizations and "network", attend industry conferences (at $1,200 a pop, plus travel and hotel), and to list my resume wherever I could on the Internet because it appeared that corporate HR departments were increasingly relying on online recruitment. Of course, I had already done this Internet thing nearly a year before and determined that such an approach is largely worthless.

What I found interesting is that about a month ago ECC changed its advertising. At the time I retained them, they promoted their expertise in positions in the $75,000 - $500,000 range. According to the new advertising campaign, now they're experts in the $75,000 - $750,000 range. That's a nice new carrot.

So, I called the office I met with originally and asked how many CFO's, COO's, or CEO's they placed since I retained their services. They said they didn't have the information available at the time. I asked them to get back to me with it so I could determine whether there was a problem with me or with their program. Obviously, if they had placed 30 CFO's during the last 12 months, then I would be first to acknowledge that perhaps my skill set was the problem. Alternately, if they placed two CFO's during the last 12 months, then ECC's representations and their business model were likely at fault.

"Mr. X., I enjoyed receiving your resume. You are a splendid advertisement for our firm -- we are a personal career marketing company serving senior level executive clients who routinely experience what you have gone through with the Internet. We've successfully marketed more than 9,000 of them into significantly higher levels of income and responsibility. I circulated your resume to the senior management staff and, after a good laugh, they asked me to contact you to arrange a mutually agreeable time for you to come in for a preliminary discussion. It would be approximately 1 1/2 hours long, dealing with appraising your experience, assessing your goals, and exploring whether ECC, Inc. can successfully assist in your career search. I look forward to hearing from you shortly."

I thought it hilariously funny that individuals at their local office, where they originally signed me up, didn't know I was already a client.

This is my reply, sent the same day I received their new pitch:

"I'm glad you enjoyed the bit of gallows humor. The irony of this entire process is that I have been an ECC client since last year and am nearly 11 months into my CFO search. In a few days, my 'Executive Marketing Program' with ECC will be having its one-year birthday! And THAT should probably be an embarrassment to your firm."

It's been a severe disappointment dealing with them. Never in my life have I spent so much time with so little in the way of results. I've probably put in 800-900 man hours this past year in my job search and, frankly, if they've put in more than 2% of that time on my behalf, I would be surprised. Their office is totally geared to selling resume writing services under the guise of "un-advertised jobs", "our connections", "career counseling services", "executive marketing programs", and other blather designed to lead you to believe that they can get you the executive level job you're looking for.

I often wonder what a summary of their placements would look like if the compensation values were plotted on a graph during the last 12 months. Although they advertise a $75,000 - $750,000 salary range, my guess is that the vast majority of placements are under $100,000, at the lower end of the scale. But, if you just looked at the range they advertise, you'd think the middle of their placements was at $375,000 or thereabouts. Shame on me.

In the next few days, my $10,800 contract is having its one year anniversary and I'm not one iota closer to getting the job for which I'm searching. Approximately three weeks ago, I asked them for specific names of individuals who had hiring authority at the CFO level, and I haven't received a thing. However, they did ask for ten copies of my resume so they could "pass them around" their other office and get some feedback from their counselors. I also received a print-out of a job ad to which I had already applied several months earlier.

I have a three-inch thick file on ECC. I also have a five-foot high stack of resumes and emails to various jobs using the ECC approach. The stack would be nearly twice as high if I followed their recent advice of paying to have my resume broadcast (spammed) to several thousand email addresses. I didn't agree to the strategy because I believe the practice of spamming resumes is one of the things that has so clogged up HR departments that your resume is just another file in an in-box.

Please don't make the same mistake that I did. I guess I was vulnerable and prone to giving the other party the benefit of the doubt. I'd like to discourage you from stepping off the edge of the abyss into such an "executive marketing program." My experience has led me to believe that they do absolutely nothing for a job hunter.

This is just my opinion on the matter. Thank you for taking the time to read it.

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To learn more about the counseling rackets, please see Career Counselors Are Not Headhunters and this expose article from The Kansas City Star.