1. Free Labor:
After starting your work, they will ask you to review hundreds of pages of SOPs and take quizzes to prepare for consulting. They do pay you for this, BUT the pay is not at all comparable to the amount of time you spend reviewing the SOPs. For example, you get around $60 for 8 hours of your time, which works out to about $7.50 per hour. When you tell them the compensation is unfair, their response is that your reviewing speed is slow, and since you're new, that's why it takes you that long. Remember, the minimum wage in Canada is more than $17.30 per hour. After many years of schooling and earning a PhD, are you sure you want to do such free labor?
2. Defensive, Intransigent, Gaslighting:
During the learning process, you will go through hundreds of SOPs and videos, and you will find discrepancies between them and between what their coaches tell you. This causes confusion, especially since all the material you are reviewing lacks a clear quantitative method for measurement—everything is qualitative. For example, one coach might mark a student's work in a way that differs from what you learned in a video. When you point out the discrepancy, they won't accept it at all and will respond as though the problem is with you, not their lack of clarity. As a result, you’ll find yourself in a company where they refuse to accept any of their mistakes and instead gaslight you.
3. Terrible Work-life Balance:
Yes, you choose your hours to work, BUT you never know how many sessions they will assign for the hours you've chosen to work. So, you can never truly schedule your life because, as I mentioned before, they give you tasks that take much more time than what they've allocated for them. As a result, you end up spending much more time , and you usually have to work even after the hours you've set as your working hours. Each task has a deadline, and if you don't deliver the work before the deadline, they will fine you! When you tell them the tasks need more time, they will reply, "You need to be faster, and the time we've considered is correct." As a result, not only can you not schedule your life and need to be constantly ready to overwork, but you also get underpaid for the hours they refuse to acknowledge should be compensated.
4. No Future, Wasting Your Life:
Your title is "Academic Consultant," BUT you are actually a "Sales Associate"! Why? Because they have a rating system where students and coaches rate your work. You are constantly stressed about your rating, because if it's lower than what they want, they will fire you!
Don't be tricked by what they say in the contract—they can easily fire you by just sending you an email and blocking your access to their system.
So, you will always be worried about your rating, because in a sales-driven environment, whoever performs better (higher rating) stays, and whoever performs worse (lower rating) gets fired. Is this what you want after many years of studying and earning a PhD, or becoming a doctor or lawyer?
I know the job market isn't great, but don't make the mistake I made by joining this company. You will undersell your time and energy. You are worth much, much more than working for a company like this.
Just go to LinkedIn and search for the names of their previous consultants (you can find some of their names in their teaching videos) and see where they are now after leaving BeMo. After a few years of working for BeMo, they all ended up back on the path they were on before joining BeMo. Because, in the end, there is no future at BeMo for you.
5. You Are Never Their Priority—Students Are:
They don’t care about you at all. Why? Because the money comes from students, so their priority is always the students. This means you are constantly stressed about your performance, because if, for any reason, a student is unhappy with your service, BeMo will fire you. It doesn’t matter if the comment comes from an angry student who is super stressed because this is their last chance to get admission. The student is always right, so you are always under stress, wondering, what if the student doesn’t like my service? You can see this stress and fear in the eyes of even their coaches when they are coaching a student. So, be ready to work in a company where, at any moment, you can get fired because of a negative comment from a student.
6. You Won’t Feel Like You Are Part of a Warm Team at All:
From time to time, you’ll see them post pictures of gatherings at restaurants—always with certain people, like the owner and some of the consultants. But you won’t be invited, even though it’s in your city. Why? Because they don’t consider you part of the group. They always have an inner circle who invite themselves, yet at other times, they say, “We are a family!” This is a big contradiction. As you can see, they are not clear or honest with their team.
Overall, I’m saying this because I care about you and because they won’t tell you these things. You’ve done so much schooling and you really deserve a good job. I know you might be tired of job hunting, but don’t lose hope and don’t settle for jobs in companies like BeMo.
