Beware of Aggressive Recruiters

Greetings from Debbie Kaylor, Career Center Director:


I wanted to draw your attention to "a relatively new way of recruiting" students into business opportunities that is happening on our campus as well as campuses across the nation.

As you may be aware, there are a lot of companies that recruit students to sell their products door to door. These products range from books to house painting jobs, security systems to pesticides, or cutlery to name a few. The "job opportunity" is NOT a job opportunity at all, but rather a business opportunity where you are not an employee of the company, but rather an independent contractor who is responsible for your own taxes, your own profit (and loss), and often times you have to make an "investment" in order to get started.

While I certainly see the value in business opportunities, they also come with a lot of risk that you may not be prepared to take. The end result of these business opportunities can be money earned and experience gained; however, the end result can also be students who owe the company money, student who feel the company did not treat them fairly, and students who didn't set money aside for taxes. For these reasons, the Career Center has taken a stance that we do not allow these types of companies to use any of our services or attend any of our events.

I want to make you aware that these companies are, once again, actively on our campus because while we can set a policy for the Career Center, we cannot keep them off of a public campus. In order to get in front of you, they watch class schedules. Once they figure out class schedules, representatives from these companies go into full classrooms prior to faculty arriving and tell you about their opportunities encouraging you to attend informational sessions or complete a form with your contact information. They also toss out statements like "we are working with your Career Center" or ".... my job is to get you a great summer internship!" insinuating that they are affiliated with the university. Please be aware that they are in no way affiliated or supported by Boise State University.

I would encourage you to approach these opportunities with caution and make sure you understand exactly what the opportunity is, what is expected of you, and what you can expect from the company! I want to reiterate that I do not think these business opportunities are necessarily "bad" experiences. You just need a lot more information than these companies tend to give you before embarking on one. Our experience has been that most of these company representatives make the opportunity sound really great and do not give you all the details that you need. Our job is to lay out the whole story so you can make an informed decision.

If you have any questions about these recruiters, you have experienced their recruiting efforts, or you have participated in one of these business opportunities, we would love to hear from you. You can call us at 426-1747 or email us at career@boisestate.edu

Finally, our Fall Career Fair is coming up on October 6th and Graduate and Professional School Day is October 12, both are in the Jordan Ballroom. We look forward to seeing you there!