3 Reasons Why Network Marketing Isn’t for Fresh Grads

Network marketing, popularly known as “networking” in the Philippines, is a common term heard by fresh graduates around the country. It seems as if every second network marketer calls graduating or just-out-of-college students and offers them “an opportunity to do business”. Here are three reasons why network marketing simply isn’t for fresh grads.

Network marketing has a big problem – they approach fresh grads who are both hungry for a source of income and seemingly ready to tackle anything in life. Having just finished college, having work (any kind of work) is simply the ‘grown up’ thing to do. Unfortunately, network marketing companies gain nothing but bad rep by approaching this group because…

#3. Fresh grads have little to no experience in owning any sort of business.

Network marketing, with its buy-in memberships, lends an air of exclusivity to the business. It is, for simplicity’s sake, a franchise. While they may capitalize on the fresh grad’s hunger for an income source, offering them ‘ownership’ on a company by making sales is almost certainly doomed to fail. With no prior experience to making large sales and meeting certain quotas, they may resort to buying their own products and give the illusion of ‘making sales’ – when in reality, they are spending more than they are earning.

#2. Fresh grads are likely ill-equipped to discuss business.

How many stories has one heard of “the annoying call from a network marketer“? Plenty, I bet. Many fresh grads new in network marketing end up sounding desperate, foolishly discussing (in very vague terms, no less) ‘business opportunities’ to friends and family. What happens is that the network marketing company and its staff/employees end up looking deceptive, dishonest, and lacking in transparency. This is especially true with statements like “I just got into X company a year after graduation and now I’m making Y amount of money – visit our office to learn more.”

#1. Fresh grads over-sell.

When I was a fresh grad, I shamelessly over-sold my academic qualifications and experiences. Not lied about them, mind you (your resume MUST pass background checks and must have paper proof!) but told them repeatedly – enough so that in the end, no one cared. In the end, what mattered was how well I could do a job given to me, PERIOD. This is the ‘harsh reality’ of The First Job, and it gets easier to swallow with experience. Network marketing companies tend to play by this rule – allowing their student/fresh grad recruits to post pictures of cash earnings online, endlessly talk about the virtues of their companies, and preach the wonders of their products. In the end, there is rarely any mention of problems such as price fixing and massive failure rates, only ‘success stories’.

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