Executive Top Gun Search

I wish I could save everyone from being as foolish as we were when we hired this firm. You would think, as an experienced recruiter, I’d know better… alas, we can all be fooled at times. My husband hired this company to help him get in front of some private equity firms. They performed a decent sales pitch and convinced us to give them $ 1500 upfront to market his resume for 3 weeks. And another $ 10,000 upon placement. The guarantee is 1 interview (which you find out later… includes a brief phone screen.) We were smart enough at least to write in a little more detail to determine what «qualifies» an inteview, e.g. an actual opportunity, in his field, etc. After paying the money he heard from the recruiter 2 times (once was a response to my husband that [the recruiter] was too busy to talk.) 1 day before the 3 week guarantee was set to expire my husband received a mysterious call from a PE agent. After a 20 minute conversation with this «talent broker» — with no details provided on the position, he wouldn’t even provide a contact number — my husband gets a call from Wes, the Top Gun recruiter, congratulating him on a phone interview and asking if he wants to pay for more services. No time for him otherwise, but just enough time to see if he could persuade us to give him more money. Being a little suspicious about the «talent broker» we elect to wait to see where this one goes. Not surprisingly the «position» is put on hold for 4 months. When we asked for a refund we were told this qualified as an interview. To shorten the story… I discovered this company has an F rating on the BBB. After doing more research I found several others who were duped — we contacted our credit card company with this information and were refunded our $ 1500. We didn’t hear from the company for a couple of months until out of the blue we hear from the talent broker saying the position has opened up and they’d like to fly my husband to New York. Literally within minutes my husband gets a call from the recruiter saying «congratulations.» And then calls back shortly after hanging up to say «whoops… you need to clear up the payment.» This all just sounded so fradulent to us that my husband emailed the broker to say we’re not interested. There’s more that ensued, providing definition to this obvious scam but I’ll skip to my background research on the PE «talent broker» (who’s name I won’t mention since I can’t get firm proof on his involvement in the scam) but in researching his name… there is no one in the country with the same, unique, spelling and middle intial that comes up in any background search except for an 80 year old man in NY. The call was from someone MUCH younger. His website provides no location or contact details… not likely for a professional working with equity investors.
Bottom Line: Save your money! This firm, and its owner Craig Chrest, is a scam. He preys on people who are already trying to navigate the job search in a challenging economy. There are reputable head hunters and recruiting firms out there who will work hard to market you and probably won’t charge you for it either.