I recently made a post about applying to various crypto jobs ( [post here]( ) so I and have been taking interviews. One of the companies is called AlphaChain ( and I just got off a Zoom call with their, what I can only imagine to be there hiring manager.
First off, the only reason I got this interview is because the company charges £2,250 ‘as an investment’ to learn a 1 month course (10-15 hours a week) to learn MetaTrader4, an electronic trading platform widely used by online retail foreign exchange speculative traders. After the course and a forward/back tested trial period you are granted a trading account of $10,000, that can ‘grow’, on which you make 50% profits. Sounds great, no? No.
You only get to trade 5 crypto’s at the moment (presumably the top 5), but that they are going to bump that up to 25 (out of the top 50) next year depending on volatility.
The interviewer, who was in Dubai at the time, said he had only been working for the company for 7 months, and CLEARLY did not care about any of the answers to my questions.
I told him I was in my last year of my PhD candidacy, to which he say, “oh okay you study” – an infuriating belittlement of 4 years of project management, formal academic journal writing, tutoring students, data analysis, and much more – but whatever, non-academics make that shitty comment all the time. He didn’t even ask my age which was a red flag.
He kept saying I get to ‘work with major players’, always quoting their portfolio values (he must have said the phrase ‘millions of dollars’ about a dozen times) and kept repeating that the managers give ‘1:1 trading’ and will ‘share knowledge’ with me as if that’s a godsend.
I asked what the turnover rate is for employees – he said they do not have ‘employees’ they have ‘self-employed traders’. Okay, so I asked what the turnover rate is for ‘self-employed traders’ – he said he did not have the information.
I asked how many traders progress past the first $10K stage – he said he did not have the information.
I asked what the growth rate of the company is – he said he did not have the information.
At the end of the interview he agreed to schedule me for interview 2/2 which will be a 20min live presentation of one of the managers using MetaTrader4, and then a Q&A session that I should prepare questions for. To not seem rude, I agreed to have it next week.
What do you guys think? Have any suggestions for the types of questions I should ask during my next interview? I have very little intention of taking this job, as it just feels like a $3000 trading course cash grab, but hey, what is 30min of my time to learn what’s out there?
Yeah this is a scam 🤣
Any “job” that charges you first to work for them is definitely a red flag
>He didn’t even ask my age which was a red flag.
Just a comment on this… In the US, it’s illegal to ask this in an interview. Age is a protected category.
As for the questions you should ask – pretty much the same ones you asked, and they didn’t answer, this time. (I agree that this is most likely a $3K cash grab.)
Man you are studying for a PhD. You can do better than this.
Ask him how he sleeps at night.
Sounds like an MLM
Anything that requires you to pay out of pocket in this manner is a guaranteed scam lol
That’s a lot of information……
That he did not have
I’m surprised the interviewer wasn’t in Cairo. Definitely seems like a pyramid scheme
You are the customer and not an employee if you have to pay a company to get in.
If you have to pay…. scam 100%
Dude you are on the brink of getting scammed.
Your academia apparently didn’t enlighten you to how to spot obvious scams vs actual jobs
Why would someone wanted to be asked for age or your graduation?
These are non relevant facts for the position and no one cares if you graduated at all or did your PhD with summa cum laude. This is especially true in IT and I guess even more for a shady “trader” company.
But what actually is a red flag imho is that this clown of an HR guy didn’t know any answer to your questions.
I wouldn’t waste any more time interviewing with this company. Also taking money for a course? Wtf is this supposed to be.
This is a common scam of people at university.
Companies give you training for a fee and “guaranteed” work afterwards. Happens with tech jobs in general, not just Crypto.
You are basically their customer.
Sounds like a classic ponzi scheme
You paid for a job? That’s a scam.
It doesn’t take a PhD to figure out you’re about to be scammed out of £2,250. This was not an interview.
Looks like the “Herbalife of crypto” interview to me.
Reminds me of a scam interview I had many years ago. He kept asking ridiculous questions like ‘on a scale of 1 – 10 how aggressive would you be in trying to land a sale’ before I could speak he said ‘we only hire 10’s here’. So I said 10 as I could see where this was going. After another couple of stupid questions in a similar vein I could tell that this wasn’t a serious job and was clearly just some kind of commission only sales bullshit job that likely only ever manages to pay out half a peanut every week.
He then proceeded to ask ‘if you found a cave full of gold, how much would you take?’. I said that I’d probably call the authorities as it is likely illegal drug money. He then said ‘what if it was all natural and it was just sitting embedded in the wall?’ I said I would take three pieces of gold. He went mad asking me why on earth I wouldn’t take it all. I told him that gold is quite a dense metal so taking too much would make for an uncomfortable walk home and three pieces is enough to pay for my holiday to Crete. He went mental again telling me they only hire people who would take the lot, to which I replied that I’m not greedy and the right thing to do would be to share it.
Needless to say, they still offered me the job after all of that which confirmed the scam nature of the job. I declined of course.
You should di a presentation on how they are scammers!
while this is definitely a scam and they should have known the answers to most of your questions, you’re a bit self-important about your PhD – either they care or they don’t, it’s up to the employer to decide how important that is for the position. i’ve also never been asked my age in a job interview and i would think it was weirder if they did.
>as it just feels like a $3000 trading course cash grab
You got that one absolutely right. It is exactly that. My advice: stay away. Serious companies never ask for money ahead from their staff.
>”self employed traders”
sounds like you take the risk – they take your money.
Next week they will offer you the job and tell you that you’ll start to make real money once you bring in another 10 people. And then they pay the fee for the course. And the money flows upward while nobody makes any money trading crypto.
We should all volunteer to do an interview (since they do interviews with pretty much anyone) and just completely waste their time, heck they may even get bored and stop interviewing people
My dude you’re on track to graduating with a PhD, don’t waste another minute to these clowns. Scammers from the sound of it.
100% scam. Everything you just said was a red flag.
Sounds sketch as fuck.
I can almost guarantee that all the info he gives is available online for free (which isn’t enough for average joe to be rpofitable).. Why didn’t you ask him about his understanding of blockchain (which most scammers have no clue of), without it he is not Crypto trader, but only trader (who dipped his toes crypto), and possibly a bad one.
This does sound like a scam.
But for the people shouting “you don’t pay for a job, they pay you etc”. It’s not as straight forward as that.
There are actually plenty of jobs where you must pay: some airlines for example: you pay to get your pilot license. The airline may or may not sponsor you but if they do, there’s usually a clause that you must pay them back if you decide to resign.
Plenty of military jobs also around the world where if you decide to leave early you must “buy yourself out” to repay the cost of the training.
Just playing devils advocate here but again, it does sound like a scam, the obvious red flags are him not being able to answer any questions about the company.
My own job: I didn’t have to pay, but had to take out loans just to survive while I was training, they gave a small allowance towards it. The pay is decent now and the loans are long gone.
Has PhD, but falls for classic crypto scam lol. As soon as u send that $2200 their job is done
Sounds very scammy, but let’s face it, the scammers and the wealthy are the only ones who making big bucks here. Perhaps a few who got lucky too, but you can’t make a business out of “getting lucky”.
> an infuriating belittlement of 4 years of project management, formal academic journal writing, tutoring students, data analysis, and much more – but whatever, non-academics make that shitty comment all the time
Hate to burst your bubble but as someone who transferred from academia into finance I can assure that they are two very different worlds. Work experience counts for so damn much.
When I hire people their academic background is not a predictor of how well they will do. We pretty much start from scratch when people enter our world, we have to, but it’s worth it to bring in smart people with a bit of get up and go.
I hope you don’t come across quite so arrogant when you interview.
This all sounds like a waste of time. Direct your energy elsewhere.
Your application and interview process is very interesting! Thank you for keeping us all up to date on everything.
I thought you were supposed to get payed to do a job, not the other way around…
This is just money doubling (tripling) with extra steps. “yOu gIvE Us $3000 wE’Ll gIvE YoU BaCk $10000. “
Not sure if you know this by now, but this isn’t a job is a mlm type scam
As what others have mentioned, it’s 100% a scam. You haven’t mentioned which field your PhD is in but one does not need a PhD to learn and trade using MT4.
I’m graduating from a CS Masters in 2 months’ time and for the quant trader roles I am open to, they all need online coding/reasoning tests (which is a real chore but I guess necessary from their perspective!) and they pay you, not the other around lol. The reason why I’m sharing this is that if your PhD is in hard-sciences, do consider a quant trader role.
TLDR; I honestly don’t think you should waste your time with the 2nd round.
He’s in Dubai? Ask him how much they charge for my name to projected on the Burj Khalifa
Bullish on being scam by the Dubai’s king. Probably he is in his mother basement with a green screen Lol
This is a definite scam.
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F
It looks like a MLM
Any other interviews yet?
Ask the same questions you asked and he didn’t answer. If ‘one of the managers’ can’t answer them, there you go. It’s a scam anyway, but it’s nice to see their effort while knowing you’re already aware of their bs.
Best bet would be to just keep studying…
You pay 2,250 and they guarantee 10000?
The math is a bit off
Congrats on studying
Did they also offer you an opportunity to “be your own boss” or sell knives as a door to door salesman? This place sounds like a straight scam dude.