Monday, July 09, 2018

"Unique opportunity"

I got this in the mail:
Offer from XxxxXxxxx  
Xxxx from XxxxXxxxx says Hi!  
Dear Sir/Madam, 
I am a project manager at XxxxXxxxx, and I am very pleased to send you this email, offering you a unique opportunity. Let me tell you about my company's point of view in some detail. Due to the crazy, competitive market we face, our company has established its method, which is based on filling the gap between translators and the translation projects that are most appropriate for them. To do that, we make some tiny changes to the translators' CVs before sending them to our clients. These changes might include removing their contact details and replacing it with ours. This is done so that they don't need to bother themselves with loads of emails. We are going to be the one to contact the client, discuss the project, and then send it to our translator who will definitely be able to make much more money through this saved time. To accept the offer, have a look at our authorization template (attached), have it signed, and then send it back to me along with your resume and cover letter.Finally, I would like you to know that we at XxxxXxxxx have got a highly qualified team of project managers, all of whom work in harmony with a great number of competent translators. And we would be thrilled to welcome you to our team, and to help you reach your full potential through this job!If you have any questions, feel free to reply to this email. 
Thanks for your time and consideration.  
Sincerely yours, 
Xxxx Xxxxxxx 
Project Manager /XxxxXxxxx  team
(I redacted the name of the sender and his company, since I'm not interested in offering them free advertising.)

There is no need to say that accepting their "unique opportunity" would be foolish in the extreme: you would in effect authorize them to use your résumé for their own purposes, and nothing would then prevent them from sending any translation job received thank to your résumé to some cheaper translator or even to a free machine translation engine.

Stay away from this: they are not offering a service: it cannot be anything other than a new scam.