While starting a career is exciting, it’s much too easy to get caught up in jobs that promise the world—but fail to deliver. And that’s especially true for the young & inexperienced! Sadly, they often work in positions that offer little beyond frustration & these jobs often rely on young people’s eagerness & inexperience of young workers. Here are ten career opportunities that’ll only ever try to exploit you. Reality often falls short as you find yourself underpaid, overworked—or just plain undervalued.
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Unpaid Internships
Unpaid internships are never fun as they pull you in with the promise of valuable experience & industry connections. However, what often happens is that you do the same work as paid employees but without seeing a dime for it. You’re essentially giving away your hard work for free. And it’s all under the guise of “gaining experience”—which doesn’t pay the bills.
Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) Roles
Getting involved in multi-level marketing seems like a great way to make money & be your own boss. Yet these jobs usually start with you buying a bunch of the company’s products first. You then have to sell these to make any money back and many people end up out of pocket because they can’t sell enough products. MLMs are almost always a scam.
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Commission-Only Sales Jobs
While jobs that offer pay based solely on commission sound tempting because they have unlimited earning potential, there’s a catch. If you’re not making sales, you’re not earning money and that’s rather challenging for someone just starting out. As you learn the ropes, you have no salary and no guaranteed income. Naturally, this causes a lot of stress and it really doesn’t seem worth the hassle.
“Brand Ambassador” Positions
On college campuses, brand ambassador gigs are popular because they give you the chance to work with well-known brands. Sadly, most of the job involves handing out free stuff or promoting products—the pay isn’t usually anything to write home about, either. You have to spend many hours standing at events or in busy public places, usually without breaks. You won’t exactly get a lot of good work experience either since you can’t put “handed out free things” onto your resume!
Entry-Level Content Mills
For any writers looking to fill up their portfolios, content mills seem like a good starting point. But the drawback is that these platforms often pay peanuts for articles. It really doesn’t matter how much time & effort you put in—you’ll do lots of work for very little reward. Additionally, feedback from editors can be minimal or non-existent. This doesn’t help you improve as a writer.
Startup Equity Offers
Startups lure tech enthusiasts with offers of equity instead of a high salary. Yet that depends solely on whether the startup succeeds. The truth is, the worth of your shares might never amount to much and you’ve missed out on years of earning a proper salary. Instead, you’ll be left with nothing tangible for your efforts.
Freelance Gig Platforms
Freelance gig platforms help you find quick work doing everything from graphic design to programming. Of course, there’s a flip side—after platform fees & bidding wars, you might end up earning much less than you expected for your hard work. Worse still, the inconsistency of gigs means income can be unpredictable. Many freelancers are stuck in a cycle of hunting for the next job without ever achieving financial stability or career growth.
Reality TV Participation
Yes, participating in a reality TV show is a fast track to fame yet it’s also not that easy. You might not be paid for your time and the exposure you get might not help your career in the way you hope. Plus, how you’re portrayed is out of your hands. TV shows edit their programs to distort reality and you could appear in a way that you don’t agree with. It’ll affect you long after the show ends.
Volunteer Tourism
Through volunteer tours, you’ll have the chance to travel & make a difference—for a huge price tag. You’ll have to pay thousands to help out and the benefits to the local community are sometimes minimal. Where is all that money going? Additionally, many projects aren’t sustainable in the long-term so they may do more harm than good.
Social Media “Influencer” Contracts
Becoming a social media influencer seems glamorous since companies send free products or give you paid contracts. But sometimes, these contracts give you very little money for the amount of work you have to put into creating content & maintaining your follower base. You’re also expected to maintain a certain image or lifestyle. It gets rather exhausting after a while.
Disclaimer: This list is solely the author’s opinion based on research and publicly available information.
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