Thinking I had nothing to lose, I applied to Beta Soft via indeed.com and within a couple of days, I had received a response. Yet from the very beginning of my interactions with them, I had misgivings about the company and finally refused to continue, convinced it was a scam—or at the very least, a company unethical in its business practices.

Why do I think this? Here is my evidence:

1. Too Eager to Represent

The first time the recruiter called, I was out of the house. And the second time. And the third. Each day, the recruiter called back trying to get in touch with me. Although initially gratifying, this raised a red flag: the recruiter was a little too eager to talk with me. After all, an applicant is lucky if a recruiter responds to them at all—once they do, it’s up to the applicant to return the call. Why was this company so keen to talk to me when my resume lacked much of the ideal experience?

2. Unprofessional Phone Service

I did try to call the recruiter back using the phone number he gave me. The number led to an automated option system which invited me to dial the person’s extension. However, as soon as I hit the first digit of the three-digit extension, I was told that the entry was invalid. Instead, I was given a list of digits (1 = … department, etc.) with the last digit being the operator. However, only the first few choices actually proved valid! When I tried to punch the digit for “Operator,” I was told my entry was invalid and to try again.

Finally, I chose the option for recruiting and was transferred to a woman with a very strong Indian accent. Since Beta Soft is an American-Indian company, I did not think too much of this. I told her I was returning the recruiter’s call (and gave her his name). She sounded confused and told me the recruiter was unavailable and what was my name? However, she didn’t ask me how to spell it or even to repeat it (nor did she ask me for my phone number) and quickly hung up.

3. No Response to Email

In light of such a lackluster phone response, I decided to email the recruiter to let him know I had returned his call. However, when he called again (twice actually over the next couple days), it was evident he did not know I had called back or even that I had emailed him.

4. Misrepresentation of Entry Level Job Posting

The job I applied for was an Entry Level Quality Analyst. The minimum qualification was a preferred Bachelors degree in CS or IT. The only “must have” skills were a basic understanding of any programming language (i.e. C, C++, Java, SQL, HTML, CSS).

I had all that, so I applied. However, when I finally did get in touch with the recruiter over the phone, he listed eight pieces of software I needed to be proficient at in order to do the job — none of which I had encountered before. The experience he was asking for did not match market expectations for an entry-level job.

This was reinforced later in our conversation when he mentioned that the clients they hired workers out to expected 3–4 years of experience. I’ll get back to their unethical “solution” to that later, but just know that 3–4 years of experience in anything is not entry level!

5. Offer to Train You … If You Pay

The recruiter told me that I did not have the experience needed for this (entry-level) job, so I would have to take a five-week training course offered by Beta Soft in order to gain the necessary skills. He said the course would require a $1000 deposit ($750 if I took it online) in order to ensure I did not just use Beta Soft to get training and then leave them for another company once the course was complete. If I stuck with the program, I would get my deposit back after three months.

This was the biggest red flag that Beta Soft was likely a scam company. Although their logic made sense, it made me nervous to hear I would have to pay for any sort of training…especially once I was told that the instructor could kick me out of the program if he thought I wasn’t learning fast enough (or for any other reason, valid or not). The recruiter said that in that case, I would get my deposit back. However, according to the Terms on the company’s website, they would first subtract any money I had earned while I was with their company. So essentially, they would be keeping my deposit whether or not my departure from the program had been justified.

Differences in Deposit Size

Yelp reviews from other people recruited by Beta Soft indicate that the amount Beta Soft charges for this course actually varies from $300 to $1000—seemingly without reason. People in the same course group often will have paid different amounts to take it.

The way they pay is online via Beta Soft’s website. There is not any mention of a training course or payment needed on the site, just a single “Pay Online” link at the foot of their website. Upon clicking the link, you are taken to a page where you have to type in the amount you owe—substantiating the claim that different candidates are charged different amounts.

The recruiter further said that though Beta Soft usually offered three “free” classes, since classes had already started, I would have to begin tomorrow (Friday) or else be too far behind to catch up. I wanted to ask whether or not it would be better to just wait for the next round of classes, but I didn’t. Instead, I was told that I would need to register that night in order to start attending classes the next day. Registering meant paying the $1000.

The recruiter wanted me to register right then while I was on the phone (another sign of a scam), but I insisted on having the night to think about it. After all, I wouldn’t buy a $1000 computer without researching its specs first! Furthermore, he was asking for a big commitment. The on-site location was 6-hours round trip for me, which meant I would have to find a place to rent if I wanted to attend. The class was Monday to Friday, but only three hours in duration each day, so online would have been an easier option (though the recruiter kept pushing for on-site training: “It would be easy for you to attend”—Easy? What part of six hour round-trip did you not understand?), but the classes went from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm, which meant I would have to give up my current job in order to take them, since they could only be taken live. He further told me I would have to register by 8:00 am in order to attend the class the next day.

6. Unethical Resume Padding

Upon completion of the training course, the recruiter said I would receive 1 week of resume padding and 1 week of interview practice. I asked him to explain what resume padding meant. He said that the companies they contracted employees out to (Google, Microsoft, etc.) expected 3–4 years of professional experience (again, not entry level!) so they would “add” experience based on the projects we’d complete during our five-week training course.

Now, this could have been legitimate. After all, I had done Teach for America, which was an alternative certification program for teachers which taught in six weeks what one would otherwise require a year of college coursework and assistant teaching experience to achieve. Beta Soft’s legitimacy would depend on whether or not its clients had agreed to accept projects in lieu of professional experience. So I did some research.

According to Yelp reviews of people who had actually gone through the whole program, that’s not the case. Instead, Beta Soft pads resumes by falsifying work experience. They claim you worked for fictitious companies for various years in order to give you the experience needed to get a job. Many employees get fired when their background checks don’t hold up.

7. Impossible Statistics

Even before our conversation was at an end, I knew resume padding was a deal-breaker for me. The recruiter tried to reassure me by saying they had “never failed” to place an applicant in a job. Never failed? For a company that’s been in existence for nearly a decade, that’s impossible. After all, even the best colleges don’t have a graduation rate that high!

8. One-Year Contract

In order to work with Beta Soft, you have to sign a one-year contract tying you to the company. They pay you $32.50 an hour with a 10% increase after 6 months. After a year, you can leave, or stay on at an 80%–20% rate (they keep 20% of your salary, you get 80%).

This aspect is not necessarily scammish, but it is below market rate for a job like this.

9. Hidden Meaning of Relocation

Beta Soft asks if you’re open to relocation. They imply that they mean relocating to Fremont, CA. However, according to Yelp reviews, they actually mean relocating anywhere in the country. This was substantiated by my recruiter, who said travel costs would only be reimbursed if you had an interview out of state. If you had to move out of state, you’d supposedly get $750 to help you.

10. Won’t Take No For an Answer

Upon further researching this company, I knew Beta Soft was not worth the risk. I wrote an email to my recruiter (I knew I had his email address right because he’d emailed me the link to pay for the course) and said I’d decided not to pursue a career with Beta Soft.

In the morning, instead of him calling me to ask about my decision (or better yet, simply accepting it), he referred me to a higher-up in order to try to convince me otherwise. This tells me Beta Soft is only concerned about getting my tuition money and not getting good candidates for their job. After all, what company wants to hire someone who doesn’t want to work there and who doesn’t fit the qualifications for the job in the first place?

11. H1B Blacklist

Beta Soft claims in its job descriptions that it provides “H1-B Visa sponsorship to candidates who are on F1 visa status & also TN Visa sponsorship for Canadian citizens.” However, according to Yelp, Beta Soft is actually blacklisted by the government for its unethical practices and allowing them to sponsor you will actually sabotage your candidacy.

Conclusion

The recruiter was very well trained. He appeared able to answer all my questions with seemingly-legitimate responses. The company had a phone number whose area code matched its physical location in a city I was very familiar with. However, when taken as a whole, it seems clear that something is seriously wrong with Beta Soft. Unethical practices? Yes. A scam company? Probably. Either way, Beta Soft is a place it would be wiser to avoid.

When Amazon first rolled out its author payment system for Kindle Unlimited, I was ecstatic. Kindle Unlimited lets readers borrow books for free, sort of like a digital library. As an author, any book I had signed up through Kindle Select (a special program for self-publishers) would automatically be made available for borrows through Kindle Unlimited. True, I would not be receiving any sales profit from people who read my books via KU, but that was alright because Amazon was paying me for each borrow instead—and what they were paying per book was actually more than the royalties I would have received from a sale.

At least, it was. I’ve been tracking all my sales data ever since 2012, and I’ve noticed a definite trend. KU sales are going up (to the point where they outnumber my “real” sales by a factor of six) whereas Amazon’s payments for borrows are going down . . . way down.

If your book is priced really low, this probably won’t affect you, but for authors with books priced $2.99 or more, the impact from this is huge. Essentially, we’re losing at least half of our royalty payment for each borrow (the amount we lose increases dramatically as our book’s non-KU price increases), and because KU borrows are beginning to outnumber non-KU sales, an author can’t just leave the Kindle Select program without losing all those sales (even if they wanted to leave, they would still to finish out their 90-day exclusive membership term).

Wouldn’t readers just buy books instead of borrowing them if a book wasn’t made available through KU? Not necessarily. Many KU borrows are “impulse purchases,” and a reader is much less likely to impulsively buy a book they have to pay for than one they can get for free through KU. As a result, an author leaving Kindle Select would have to let go of their KU sales while receiving only a marginal increase in paid sales in return.

So congratulations, Amazon, you’ve figured it out. Authors cannot leave your program without losing the KU income that makes up most of our royalties, and you’re getting away with paying us far less for each borrow than you would for a corresponding sale.

Authors, if you are as frustrated with this as I am, let me know! If you have a different experience, tell me that as well. I’d love to hear any suggestions you might have as to what other writers should do!

Note: These instructions are for Windows, not Mac OS.

Step 1: Save (Don’t Print)

Go to File->Save As and choose the destination where you want to save your file. Name your file. Do not click “save” yet!

Note: Although you can click Print and then choose to output a PDF, doing so will not result in a file with clickable links (even though they’ll still look blue as if they are).

Step 2: Set File Type

Under File Name, you’ll see a drop down menu labeled Save As Type. Click on PDF.

Step 3: Set Options

You can choose either option under Optimize For, although I recommend Standard (Publishing Online and Printing).

Then click Options. A window will pop up.

Under PDF Options (near the bottom), unselect ISO 19005-1 Compliant (PDF/A). Forcing compliance is what disables hyperlinks. By unchecking the box, your links will become clickable again. Click Okay.

Step 4: Click Save

You’re done!

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• How to Convert Word to PDF and Keep Page Size the Same

Note: The following solution was tested for Windows 7. It should also work for Windows XP.

To covert a Microsoft Word document to a PDF document while retaining a custom page size, go to your Start Menu and click on Devices and Printers.

Double-click on the printer “Adobe PDF.”

Go to Printer, then Properties.

A window will pop up with lots of tabs. You should be on the General tab. There, you’ll see a box with the header “Paper Available.” It’ll usually say “Letter” inside. Below the box, you’ll see a button called “Preferences.” Click on that.

You’ll see a list of options pop up, and the fourth one will say “Adobe PDF Page Size.” Click “Add.”

In the box that pops up, you’ll see options for width and height. Tell it what size you want. Be sure to give name your setting before you hit “Add/Modify” (I recommend you call your new setting by the size you’re imputing: e.g. “5 x 8”). Click “Add/Modify” when you’re done.

Now, where it says “Letter” next to Adobe PDF Page Size, click on it. A list of options will pop up. Depending on what you named your page size, you might have to scroll a bit to find it. Click on the setting you just created, then hit Apply.

You’re now ready to convert! Go to the location of your Microsoft Word file, right click on the file name, and click “Convert to Adobe PDF.”

Don’t forget to change the Adobe PDF printer setting back to Letter when you’re done.

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Because it is.

Consider the following:

* If you’re a guy, simply switch the genders.

** For simplicity’s sake, let’s assume we would only date people we’d consider marrying.

Religion is important to me, so I would want to marry someone who shares and supports my faith. In my case, that’s Christianity. About 1/3 of the world’s 7 billion population is Christian. To keep things simple, let’s round that number to 2 billion people.

Of those 2 billion, half are men. So that leaves me 1 billion guys to choose from. Quite a selection pool, no? We’ll see.

Most of us would want to marry people fairly close to ourselves in age — let’s say, plus or minus five years. That gives us a 10-year span to work with. The average life span in the US is 79 years. Again, for simplicity’s sake, we’ll round that number to 80 years. That means that only 1/8 of the male population fits into my age parameter (80 ÷ 10). That reduces my available selection to approximately 125 million (1 billion x 1/8) men.

Okay, well, that still seems like a lot, doesn’t it? But wait! Chances are extremely good that the person we want to marry will need to come from our own country. In my case, that’s the good old USA. Well, America is home to about 300 million people, while the Earth holds about 7 billion. That means that America is home to about 1/25 of the Earth’s population.

Our 125 million selection pool was a global number, so since only 1/25 of that will be located in my home country, my possible choices are reduced to only 5 million men.

(Wow, he really is one in a million!)

Okay, so far we’ve looked at gender, age, and country. But most of us have “types” we’re attracted to and types we are not (aspects like body build, hair color, race, etc. influence us all). I’ll be generous and say that for every 7* guys in our admittedly diminished pool, only one of them will fit our style.

* If you’re not that picky, 1 in 5 is probably a better estimate. If you’re highly preferenced, perhaps 1 in 10. Therefore, 1 in 7 is a good median for this post.

5 million x 1/7 leaves us with approximately 700,000 fellows.

It doesn’t stop there, though. Most people admit that education plays a role in their choice of prospective mate. For me, that would mean he would need to be a college graduate or higher. Approximately 40% of Americans graduate college.

Uh oh, my selection pool is down to only 280,000!

So far my only considerations have been: gender, age, country, general physical preference, and education (five factors!), yet I’ve reduced the number of potential dates from billions down to thousands. That’s not even taking into consideration other important aspects like personality, interests, culture, etc.

Now for the really fun part — just how many people do we have to meet before we find one worthy to date? With a US population of 3 million, we’d have to encounter over 1,000 people (300,000,000 ÷ 280,000) before we’d find one even potentially worth going out with! Ever play Where’s Waldo?

Another Look: Dates per Mile

Just for fun, we can look at our dating difficulties based on mileage, too. While a “date per mile” model is nowhere near as accurate as a “date per population” one due to some areas being sparsely populated whereas others are very dense, it’s still fun to think about!

For simplicity’s sake, let’s assume a uniform population distribution across the United States. There are approximately 3,800,000 square miles of land in the USA. That means that there is only 1 qualified guy for every 13.5 square miles (3,800,000 ÷ 280,000) of US soil. Throw in some of the other factors we’ve mentioned, and the miles per male grow even larger.

How large is your city or town? Mine is one of the larger cities in my state and is about 18 square miles. That means there are only two men (18*18 ÷ 13.5*13.5 – rounding up, since unlike the U.S. Census Bureau, I don’t count fractional people) in my entire city that I would even consider dating, let alone marrying.

Two men. In a city of thousands.

Sometimes I hate math.