The worst career decision I made was about 10 years ago when I was in the process of starting to look for a new job, had convinced myself that I needed a career change, and was also convinced I didn’t know what to do next in my career and could use some professional help. This was a few years before I got into recruitment incidentally.

The worst career decision I made was to fork over a few thousand dollars to a well-known and well-established “career counseling” firm who have been around for decades and who used to advertise in the newspaper classifieds. This was where I first heard about them. I don’t even think they’re in business anymore although they may have just changed their name and rebranded.

They used a very old school hard sell approach with a breathtaking inability to actually deliver what they promised once you had signed up. They constantly spoke about the so-called “hidden job market” and although they convinced me that they would help me locate said hidden job market, it appeared that these jobs were so well hidden that even this firm couldn’t find any.

This company in a word was a joke. The office that I signed up with has since changed affiliations and now carries a different name than the one they used when I was a client. Clearly I wasn’t the only one who found them useless because they have since been investigated and referred to in various print and tv exposes.

They assigned a counselor to me, a nice guy who was otherwise not helpful other than being a guy I could discuss stuff with. I ran various things past him regarding my career but as I always scheduled my meetings with him at the end of the day, our meetings always had to occur in a way so he wouldn’t miss the first train home. Nice customer service.

Last month I made reference to the crappy resume that this company wrote for me. I stopped using the resume they created for me right away because even I could figure out it looked like crap.

Beyond that, there really wasn’t a lot offered in the way of help or advice. Their systems and processes were literally decades old and so outdated that it wasn’t even funny.

When I first started working with this company, I actually thought they’d be able to help me and I didn’t believe much of the sales hype I was told so I did go in with both eyes open.

I had decided to go with them because I felt I needed a kick in the pants to get my career moving in the right direction. Instead the only thing that got a kick was my bank account.