New employer wants me to pay for ISO 9001 accreditation before employment begins - is this a scam?

Question

I recently went for an interview for a new job, the interview took place in the restaurant of a hotel in Euston, UK.

They called 2 days later to inform me I got the job of a customer service advisor with salary £20k+ and would like me to sign a contract. Then they informed me I would have to pay £180 for an ISO 9001 accreditation before employment commences. The signing of contract took place in a rented office in Moorgate.

Alarm bells are ringing. I told them about my concerns and I needed more time to think about it. Is this a legitimate offer?

I have only spoken to one person during this whole encounter and the website seems dubious with the following information.

If we employ you directly, it will be under our employment and career development (ECD) program. Because we are an ISO 9001 affiliate network company, you will be required to become an accredited member of the Institute of Quality Management Excellence and to follow an accredited career development plan created for you to the level of your role with us.

You will be required to make full payment for your accreditation as a condition of employment but we will refund any amounts paid out by you after you have been employed with us for a period of (26) weeks.

Answer 1

It's a scam. ISO 9000/9001 accreditation is about quality in a company, not individuals (I've worked in an ISO 9000 company).

To be accredited, the company needs to define their quality system for all aspects of their business. It is then audited to ensure that it is acceptable and that they follow it.

Making you pay up for accreditation is likely part of an advanced fee fraud, where there will always be "just one more" thing to pay for before starting the non-existent job.

Just imagine the guy asking you is emailing from Lagos, Nigeria, and how you'd react to that; it's the same scam.

Answer 2

As someone who is a ISO 9001 certified auditor, I can tell you that:

1. This is a scam. You cannot get an ISO/9001 certification (it's not possible); you can only be certified as an auditor and even then it doesn't cost 180 GBP (its way more).

2. Your "sixth sense" is right on this one. This is a ruse. I can almost guarantee that if you pasted some paragraph from your contract into Google you'll find that it's either a template or common sample contracts available online.

3. Even if you ignore everything else, if there is a requirement for a job to get certified (and a candidate is not), the company pays for the certification in lieu of a work bond or other such undertaking. They most definitely don't ask for money upfront.

In fact, in general if you are asked for money upfront during the hiring process it is almost always a scam.

Answer 3

It's definitely not normal practice here in London for an employer to require an employee to pay anything at all before starting a new job.

This is so unusual that you have either come across a remarkably stingy employer, or (more likely) this is a scam.

Also, the thing they're asking you to pay for sounds like a load of nonsense: ISO 9001 is an accreditation which applies to organisations, not individual employees:

The ISO 9000 family of quality management systems standards is designed to help organizations ensure that they meet the needs of customers and other stakeholders while meeting statutory and regulatory requirements related to a product. ISO 9000 deals with the fundamentals of quality management systems, including the eight management principles upon which the family of standards is based. ISO 9001 deals with the requirements that organizations wishing to meet the standard must fulfill.

Action Fraud has a page about employment/recruitment scams:

When you pay one fee (eg: a visa administration fee), the agency will tell you about another fee that has to be paid (eg: a deposit on accommodation). In reality, the fraudulent agency makes none of these arrangements.

What’s more, the fraudsters may also ask for your bank account details to set up salary payments. They will use these details to steal money from your account.

Some employment fraudsters ask the applicant to pay a fee in order to apply for a job.

In reality, there is no job and any fees paid go straight to the fraudsters.

In summary: run a mile.

Answer 4

Further to all the answers about why asking to pay for ISO-9001 accreditation is a sign of a scam, something which hasn't been touched on.

If I'm going for a job with a company, I expect to have at least one interview at the place I'm going to work. Remember that YOU are interviewing THEM as well, and you're going to be spending a lot of time there over the next few years. Do the facilities look OK? (But also be suspicious of vastly over-expensive crap if the company is not making a honking great profit, as per all those famous failed internet startups.) Do the people look OK? How's the parking? Do you need to allow an extra hour for traffic?

There are three exceptions to this. One is if the company is so big that it's worth them hiring an entire hotel for a new-intake event. In that case you'd be in a large group of other potential hires. The second is if I'm a contractor, in which case I have a signed contract before I start and either I'm working through an agency or (if going direct) I get paid weekly so I'm not left out of pocket if things go south. And the third is if your skill-set is so specialised and you're such a star player that it's worth their while to headhunt you and take you out to a fine-dining restaurant to try to persuade you to join their team. You don't fit any of those categories.

Oh, and if they say it's a new startup, that's fine. You then decide whether you can take that risk though. And as a ground-level employee, you want some shares.

Answer 5

You might be dealing with the alleged scammer in this video.

Explanation

By googling for the term

"If we employ you directly, it will be under our employment and career development (ECD) program."

I found that a similar scam had also been run using the website www.staffinder.co.uk.

Further googling for staffinder uk scam lead to this website, where a number of people describe similar scans and one person links to the video mentioned above.

Please note that I have no means to independently verify that the man in the video is indeed a scammer, but if OP recognizes that man, it might help in identifying and reporting him.