Douglas Hurley & Reynolds (DHR Search) Tom (Thomas) Palmer DHR Search & Tom Palmer - Scam to encouarge job seekers to purchase E-Books and post contact/reference/resume information Austin Texas

After giving this company every benefit of the doubt, and chalking up their odd behavior to perhaps web server problems and unprofessionalism, it’s now pretty clear that the DHR Search (Douglas Hurley & Reynolds),as well as their representative “Tom Palmer”, is a scam.

My story begins in October 2013 when I was contacted by e-mail (unsolicited) regarding a job posting in my career field.  Tom Palmer contacted me and, although I had never heard of him or his company, I was doing a lot of networking and thought it possible my name might have been forwarded.  What followed was a preliminary e-mail where Mr. Palmer advised me to fill out an initial application on his website and forward my resume (which I did).

Things got a bit odd when I received a second e-mail, stating that I had advanced in the job consideration and now needed to take an assessment test.  I was provided a link to “download training material to help you pass the test”.  The link was actually to a website selling E-books.  The book I was being asked to purchase was only about 20 dollars, was in fact related to the job, so I went ahead and made the purchase.  Although, this did raise an eyebrow and I thought it strange.

I took the test which was actually a 2 and half hour affair, although Mr. Palmer said it would take 40-60 minutes.  The second red flag raised was the test itself was 100 questions piecemealed from various professional exams, most notably the PHR certification test and the Project Managers Certification Exam.  A few questions had to do with the job I was applying for, but a lot of it seemed ripped off of other tests to make the appearance of an official assessment exam.

At the end of the test, I e-mailed Mr. Palmer a screenshot of the completion page and this e-mail was returned as undeliverable.  Several other e-mails both to his address and his company came back as undeliverable as well.  I then tried calling this company and a 3^rd red flag hit.  They never answered their phone, never returned messages, and their voicemail was *very* generic – they didn’t even say the name of their company in the greeting recording.  

Fast forward to the next week, Mr. Palmer contacted me asking if I had taken the test (strange that he wouldn’t know).  I took it again just to be sure (I remembered most of the answers) and then e-mailed him again and again e-mails came back as undeliverable.  The company website then went down and I was beginning to be very suspicious.  A few days later the web site was back up at a different address and Mr. Palmer contacted me saying he “thought” he had everything he needed and to forward my contact and reference information.  I replied that the link to the website’s reference page didn’t work.  No answer until a few days later stating I was being scheduled for a phone interview.  Then, everything went dark and quiet.  Two weeks went by, no further e-mails, phone calls, or any contact with Mr. Palmer. 

So I did some investigation and what I found confirmed this was a scam.  The original website had only been up a month, even though the company had allegedly been in business for about five years.  I could also find no reference to DHR Search before October of 2013, although the name was very similar to “DHR International” which was apparently a major global search firm (perhaps Palmer and his company used a similar name to trick people).  The original website server was also in the Virgin Islands – a long way from Austin, TX, with the second website operated from serves in Northern Virginia which is a hub for foreign companies wanting to use US servers to promote themselves.

Then there is the address DHR gives – 111 Congress Avenue in Austin.  It’s a major business complex with some very high up companies and banks.  Strange I thought that DHR would not have an office or suite number but simply the general street address.  The final blow, however, came when I found Mr. Tom Palmer’s Linked-In Account: www.linkedin.com/pub/tom-palmer/85/169/46a .  The account was word for word copied from another individual (Ralph Jameson) www.linkedin.com/pub/ralph-jameson/85/702/5b8 from a similar employment company called RSR Search (which is reported to be a scam as well).

So, DHR and Tom Palmer are a scam and a despicable one at that.  They are targeting people who are trying to find a job in today’s economy, and creating fake websites, linked-in profiles, and voicemails to trick the person into thinking they are in the final rounds of a job selection process.  Do not trust them, do not use them, do not respond to them.