Hi all. I don't know if this is the right place to post this, but it needs to be seen IMHO. I recently applied for an SEO job and got what I believe to be a major "scam" reply.

This was the job ad: http://losangeles.craigslist.org/wst...013105224.html

I emailed, and got this response (screenshot to an image file): http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/5116/optawisewc9.png

Sorry again if this is the wrong place, but I figured the SEO experts here would know if this is a legitimate thing someone looking for a job should expect.

thx in advance

Seems like a lot of free work for a job interview..

Agreed. There better be a really good job waiting to go through all that for an interview. Given the ad came from Craig's List I doubt it's worth going through all the hoops. I've seen people on Craig's List asking for the equivalent of 30 years experience in skills and then offering the wonderful salary of $10/hr.

It doesn't look like a scam, but rather a very unrealistic employer. It could also be given the economy they're getting so many resumes they're looking to find the cream of the crop. At the moment it's a seller's market when it comes to jobs and they can be demanding since a few people will likely do everything they request for an interview

Well I dunno Steve, sure looks like a way to get some links... if it was really for a job interview... would the right answer be "go screw yerself"?

I was looking at his link profile and it's full of some crappy attempts at 3/4 way linking, of the most obvious kind....

A legitimate situation would be more of WHAT types of links would U build to our site and WHY - by asking them to actually CREATE links, well, seems nothing more than a cheap way to generate some links ....

you need to be wary of those kinds of ads... lots of scam coming.

My bad Dave. I hadn't noticed them asking for links back to their site. I thought they were trying to see if you could rank the site you created. That's what I get for scanning instead of reading.

In that case then yeah it's spam.

It's worse than that - I did a little digging - David helped

http://bad-seo.com/bad-seo-companies/optawise-really/

That's really sad. It's another company giving us all a bad name.

Wow! That was freakin' pathetic for that company!!! What a loser! lol

Can't they do it for themselves?

Thank you all for replying. At first I thought they were just wanting me to jump through hoops, but then I realized they want free backlinks to their own site. It was a red flag and I'm glad I came here and verified. What a bunch of scumbags. I'm sorry that there's probably people who do this for them in the hopes of getting hired. If my name/info hadn't been on my resume, I'd give them a piece of my mind

Maybe we should all follow their instructions, but link to them with the anchor text "pathetic losers"

Why don't you reply and ask them if it's ok to ad rel="nofollow" to all the links.

I was actually strongly considering following their steps with "seo scam" as the keywords. But like I said, they have my name, address, phone number, job history, etc.. and seeing how shady they are makes me think I better leave well enough alone. They suck.
I wish there was a way to report them to Google and get their site banned.

There is.. And it might have been already..

I'm just sayin'

Originally Posted by Feydakin

There is.. And it might have been already..

I'm just sayin'

Somehow it would not surprise me in the least if someone had already done it

Love the bad-seo post guys

Thanks for this guys, I just set up an interview with this company and thought something seemed fishy about them; 35k a yr plus for an intern just seemed too good to be true. The job search continues it seems...