Sonny Gujral came to Canada with big dreams. In his forties, he left a high paying job as a turnaround manager – the person who rescues failing companies -- because he wanted to raise his children here. But with 20 years of management experience in the U.K. and India and an MBA under his belt, he believed he’d be able to find a position that matched his qualifications in no time.

“I was working with a group, headquartered in London, in the U.K., and this is a transnational group with business interests in Africa, in the Middle East, in Europe and in the Mediterranean. And I was looking after the Mediterranean business interest, which was about $15 million U.S.,” he says of his previous position.

While he certainly didn’t lack the qualifications, Gujral found his lack of contacts to be a major obstacle to landing the type of job he wanted here in Canada. “Especially for a person like me, where I know that I haven’t come here with something in the pipeline, where I’ve come here as an immigrant and I’m setting myself up all over again, I’ve come with a lot of transferable skills and a lot of credentials, with a whole lot of references with the organizations that I’ve worked for -- what I basically need is … to talk on a one-on-one basis with somebody who is a key decision maker in an organization of repute.”

After posting a resume online, he received an unsolicited email from Bernard Haldane Associates, a career counseling company offering exactly what he needed to land the kind of position he had overseas.

“The pitch that they make primarily focuses on their ability to give us relevant, one-on-one interactions with people of like mind and similar positions,” says Gujral.

He and others who signed on with Haldane say they were promised access to the “hidden job market,” high-level positions that don’t get posted on external job boards and employment search engines.

“That’s what they keep putting in all their presentations and all the dialogues,” Gujral says. “They keep telling us that 75 per cent of the job market is the hidden job market, that’s the one-on-one interactions and networking that we’re going to open up for you.”

Part of Haldane’s sell involves telling potential clients they are part of an exclusive group, with only about one out of every eight people accepted to the service. The fees can range anywhere from $4,000 to $10,000 per person and prospective clients are led to believe they are buying a service they can’t get anywhere else.

But once clients sign on, they are given a thick binder full of material and worksheets, including resume building tips and suggestions about what to wear to job interviews – the kind of thing executives like Gurjal don’t need feel they any coaching on.

“For the first few months, they bog you down with so much homework … that you’re willing to go through it just to allow them the opportunity to deliver their promise to you,” says Gujral. But as time went on, there was still no sign of the coveted networking opportunities.

“I actually asked my counselor three months down the line as to when are we going to stop talking resume and profile? … Is there somebody … who has my resume who’s actually professionally trying to figure out networking opportunities for me?”

Gujral wasn’t the only one who was unsatisfied. “In my case, I was told that there were no jobs in my field anymore – companies nowadays do not hire executive assistants anymore,” says Michelle Morra, another Haldane client. “I said, ‘Well, I find that totally ludicrous because, first of all, when I came in, the sales person here told me I’d have no problem. Secondly … I’ve been interviewing [using independent contacts] all this time for positions out there in this field.’”

Others discovered Haldane’s secret list of contacts didn’t exist and they were supposed to do the networking for themselves. “[The career counselor] said, ‘You know, Jacob, you have to do the networking.’ I said, ‘No, you are supposed to do the networking.’ He said no,” says Jacob Mammen, another client.

When they pressed for contact lists, the clients W-FIVE spoke with said they were given names of people in HR departments, but no direct references. “If I needed to do cold calling, I don’t need [Haldane] for $5,000 for that,” says Gujral. “I can just surf the ‘Net. You have ‘Who’s Hiring 2003’ and ‘Who’s Hiring 2004’ – you can get that on a CD Rom and you’re good to go.”

But when they tried to get their money back, the unsatisfied customers W-FIVE interviewed were only offered 25 per cent of the fees that had paid out. Haldane officials told them that was because the fee structure is 75 per cent towards resume and profile building, and 25 per cent towards the referral process. “If they had told us in their marketing pitch that we are going to be helping you build your resume and we’re going to be profile mapping and after you’ve done all that and determined your strengths and weaknesses, then we will help you network, I don’t imagine any of us would have paid $5,000,” Gujral says.

Jody Fireman, who briefly worked in Haldane’s sales department, says the company’s pitch was carefully scripted to make executive types like Gujral do just that. “A lot of the time, they believe that [Haldane is] an employment placement agency,” Fireman told W-FIVE. “I could be the very thing that they need in order to be able to get a job. I might even be able to get the job for them.”

But a former career advisor for Haldane told W-FIVE what the company says and what it means are often different things.

He says clients are led to believe they are paying for “proprietary information about the hidden job market” and other inside information. But the counselor says he never once personally contacted any employers on behalf of his clients, and he also disputed Haldane’s claims that clients were hand-picked and only a select few were accepted, saying “that would be like a used-car salesman turning away 90 per cent of the customers who came on his lot – that is absolutely ridiculous.”

All those false claims have landed Haldane in hot water in both Canada and the U.S. on several occasions. Dating back to 1981, W-FIVE found at least five cases of Haldane being investigated by government consumer ministries. In all the cases Haldane settled out of court but still wound up paying restitution and fines and agreeing not to mislead clients. And in Chicago, the Attorney General of Illinois has charged Haldane with numerous counts of fraud and deception based on 113 complaints.

“It’s about deception,” says Patricia Kelly, who is prosecuting the case for the state. “We filed our case under the Illinois Consumer Fraud Act and what it prohibits is unfair and deceptive practices. This is what our complaint alleges – that the course of conduct by Haldane and Associates and various individuals adds up to unfair and deceptive practices.”

But if Haldane’s procedures following the previous decisions against it are any indication, the Illinois charges may have little impact. Time and again the company has agreed in court settlements not to misrepresent its services. But here’s what W-FIVE was told when we met with Haldane undercover, posing as a potential client: “The biggest jobs are never advertised, it’s as simple as that. You get it through networks, like the one we have;” “There is an 80 per cent strong hidden market, which is what we basically tap into – we are part of that. We have accounts with major corporations;” and “We are very selective on who we take on as clients. … We have a 100 per cent success rate and therefore we want to do justice to our clients.”

The sales associate we met with even went as far as to say if the W-FIVE “client” didn’t land a $90,000 job within six months of signing up with Haldane they “would be the first one in 57 years.”

But when W-FIVE showed hidden video footage of the meeting to Lance Hurley, Haldane’s director of client services, he said repeatedly that such claims were “against company policy.”

“If the salesman is saying that, he is not following company policy and we will address the issue with that salesman,” Hurley said.

But Jody Fireman, who says he was ultimately fired for promising one client satisfaction or his money back, says it’s all part of the script sales people are expected to adhere to strictly. “It was absolutely adamant – you have to do it word for word,” he says.

Fireman says he felt terrible when he realized Haldane wasn’t following through on the claims he was selling. “You start thinking about it and you realize, oh my God … I’ve just taken $4,500 plus GST out of their account that they’re going to have to pay. And I’m telling you, I felt sick. … I still have difficulty with that even today.”

So does Sonny Gujral. “I’ve rarely ever been taken,” he says. “They catch people (when they are) very vulnerable, you know? They saw me, they saw a guy who’s got a lot of credentials, a lot of transferable skills, itching to develop a network. If we hone in on ‘network, network, network,’ he’s going to part with the money.”