A few weeks ago I received an e-mail from a national called Syntechs. Synergy Technical Solutions Corporation, also known as Syntechs, was established in 1994 and is based in Boca Raton, Florida. The company offers contract work to techs in the area of onsite flat panel TV repair and some point-of-sale devices.
Dear Rick Savoia,
Thank you for visiting www.Syntechs.com and submitting your resume. I am the recruiter responsible for your region. I have reviewed your resume and would like to discuss with you the field engineer position available in your area.
Syntechs is an onsite national solutions provider that has relationships with various manufacturer’s and warranty companies.
Please respond via email at VendorRelations@Syntechs.com, or contact me at [phone number] so that we may discuss with you in more detail what the position entails.
You may also update your profile by visiting [link to secure login page]. Your Resume ID is [id number] and the zip code on file is 32701.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Regards,
Michael Credidio
Vendor Recruiting
If you’re a tech who has been in business for awhile and has worked for a few nationals and service platforms, you probably receive recruitment e-mails and solicitations for work from such companies from time to time. I’ve received many solicitations for contract work from nationals in my day, so I wasn’t particularly surprised to find this sitting in my inbox. What I did find interesting, though, was the seemingly disingenuous and spammy nature of this one, particularly because it was allegedly sent from a company that is fairly well known by technicians in the industry. Their reputation precedes them, and it is a questionable one at that.
In the e-mail, Michael Credidio claims that I visited Syntechs.com and submitted a resume, which supposedly they have on file. I took issue with it for a several of reasons. For starters, I don’t usually send my professional resume to national contractors. The zip code they had on file was another clue, as it would not be used as contact information on a current resume. It was the zip code of my computer store, which at the time was a retail location in Altamonte Springs, Florida. I moved my business out of that area nearly nine years ago, so if I ever did contact them or send them a resume, which I doubt, they sure took a long time to get back to me.
The third reason was because I couldn’t log into their site to verify any of this.
If they had my resume for nine years and were just now contacting me “for an interview”, I wanted to investigate and find out why. I followed the link, which went to a recruitment form page. I had to click another link on that page to access the ‘Resume Login” page. The ID and zip code they provided in the e-mail were invalid.
So, now comes the big question. If the ID and zip code were not valid login credentials as advertised, what was the point of the e-mail?
To find out, I called Syntechs and spoke directly to Mr. Credidio. As it turns out, he really didn’t have my resume. Apparently I filled out an online application to join Syntechs and he was working off the information I provided in the online form. Ironically, the date of submission was the same day I joined Onforce in May 2004.
So, why was he contacting me just now, nearly nine years after I submitted it? According to Mr. Credidio, Syntechs already had a “field engineer” assigned to that area at the time, which is why they never even responded to the application when it was first submitted (how cordial of them). Apparently they recently parted ways with this individual and were now seeking a replacement. They attempted to contact me using the phone number on file but the number was no longer working, so they sent me an e-mail instead.
I told him that when I attempted to access the web site to view my “profile”, the ID and zip code came back as invalid. He explained that after two to three weeks of the e-mail solicitation my profile was placed on “inactive” status. When I told him that I attempted to log in several times within 48 hours after receiving the e-mail, he dodged the question entirely.
After speaking with Mr. Credidio, the e-mail didn’t seem quite so spammy, but it still didn’t sound like such a great opportunity. If they were searching for a replacement for my area, why go all the way back for leads using information that was nearly a decade old? Why not start fresh from the top of the stack? After all, an old phone number that was no longer working with no forwarding number is a fairly reliable indicator that the business may no longer be around, at least not in the area they allegedly needed to cover.
The only reason it would make any sense to go that far back in time to find a new tech is if they had no other current leads and exhausted all possible options to find one. In other words, perhaps no one within reasonable driving distance to Altamonte Springs is willingly signing up to join Syntechs anymore.
This scenario actually makes sense, given the current reputation of this company within the field tech community. Syntechs is fairly well known among service technicians for their restrictive non-disclosure agreements, unreasonably low rates and a notorious propensity for not paying for the job after work is completed. Numerous discussions on tech discussion boards, forums including The Force Field Forums and consumer complaint sites have well documented their antics. The company has a very low rating in the National Contractor Directory and the comments from techs are overwhelmingly negative.
Would I work for this company? No, but I’ve retired from IT field service since my initial application and no longer perform contract work for any of these nationals, so the question is no longer at issue.
The question is, would you? Given the ratings and reviews of this company and the recent attempt to recruit someone based on an application submitted nearly a decade ago, would you work for Syntechs? Why or why not?
