Dangers of Tattoos

Have you ever been stopped on the street and told that you look like a model? Well, if you have, you know it can be flattering. To be a model is practically every girl’s dream. A lot of model management companies prey on these dreams in order to SCAM vulnerable people out of their hard earned money. I worked for one of these companies and after doing research I discovered that most of them are structured in the exact same way. First, I will inform you about how they hire and manipulate talent scouts to recruit “models”. Next, I will discuss how they scam models. Last, I will inform you of some procedures you may want to take if you are considering becoming a model and how not to get scammed.

One day last year I decided to post my resume on Hotjobs.com. Two weeks later I received an email from Millennium Model Management promising me a dream job as a talent scout. The letter states that if chosen I would make a base salary plus commission that totals $60 to $90 thousand per year, benefits, and tuition reimbursement. This sounded too good to be true to me too, but all I saw were dollar signs flashing in my head. I decided to go on the interview, and after only five minutes I was told that I was hired without any prior experience in the entertainment industry. Sounds a little fishy doesn’t it? Well the next week, myself and about 30 other scouts were roaming the streets of New Jersey looking for potential models to invite to one of our open calls. It wasn’t until then that we found out that we wouldn’t be receiving a base pay or any benefits. We would only be receiving between $20 and $100 for each person we got to sign with the company. Signing means that they pay at least $595 for pictures and also agree to pay $30 a month to keep their pictures in the company’s database. In my first two weeks I convinced ten people to sign up. But when it came time for them to pay me my $1000, they tried to flake on me. They told me that I didn’t have any sign ups, that they all were pending. They told everyone else the same thing. However, I was at least smart enough to keep the names of the people that I brought in. Finally, after posing many threats I managed to get my money out of them. After witnessing the many scandals that were going on and realizing that I was selling a scam, I just stopped showing up at the office. It’s a funny thing, I never formally quit. You would think that, if you didn’t show up anymore, they’d call and ask what’s up. What legitimate company does something like that? The turnover is so high in these types of companies that every week they have to hold mass job interviews. During a four-month period in 2004, the director of Millennium reported that he hired 300 scouts “because so many did not take advantage of their dream job”. Now that I have informed you how they scam their workers, I will tell you how these companies mislead and deceive their talent.

Model management companies have about six open calls per week. It is here where the models that have been scouted are evaluated by the executives. They are asked to walk down the aisle, as if it were a runway while a song such as “I’m Too Sexy”