GenM

At first I thought this company was going to be great but sadly I've had the same experience as many of the others on this review site. Acadium (the new name for GenM) has been a negative experience for me, as I've spent hours on boarding two different apprentices and both of them "ghosted" on me. I was so kind, encouraging and supportive so I was shocked when the first one just suddenly stopped communicating and didn't produce the social media images that we'd discussed. The second time around, I tried to choose really carefully and in our Skype interview I expressed the importance of communication and reliability and she assured me that she was committed. She as great the first week, and then as soon as the work actually started, she "ghosted me" too. I have complained to GenM/Acadium, I've asked to speak to a manager and they are trying to tell me that I don't qualify for a refund because they have a statement in their contract, that they are not responsible if you don't find an apprentice. I'm contesting this because I have found two apprentices and each time they are wasting my valuable time. This business model does not work. Basically, these apprentices do not want to work for free and since no deposit is taken from them at the beginning, there's nothing for them to lose if they just decide to suddenly quit – there's no consequence for them but there is for the business owner. I am shocked that this company doesn't want to do better and give me a refund knowing how much time and inconvenience this has caused. If you want a VA go online and hire someone – this company is not about customer satisfaction, they are just trying to get people's money, even though they know their business is unreliable…very sad.

This is so wrong
Plus, isn't free as 1 credit cost 300$

So, the student's are not paid, but acadium is

After my experience with Gen M, I REALLY fear for this next generation. I have never encountered so many consistently incompetent, negligent people in my life. I understand they are young but the lack of effort and wanting to be breastfed information instead of thinking for themselves is astounding. They get back to you inconsistently, don't respond to texts or phone calls. Gen M was a huge waste of time and money. The selection pool is embarrassingly bad.

Acadium has taught me a lot of things about digital marketing, much of it was totally new to me and others presented in a refreshing new light. The lessons are quick and easy to follow but impactful all the same.

I have also met some delightful persons who are interested in mentoring me. I would recommend Acadium to anyone who is looking to learn and develop real world digital marketing skills.

GenM has now changed their name to Acadium or something, likely to avoid the bad reviews.

I tried twice to use their service. The first time I poured over applicants, interviewed several and decided to work with one after asking a lot of questions. I've hired LOTS of teams for online businesses and thought I'd found a new gem of a service.

After getting the new apprentice onboarded and providing her with training so she could work on her first task, she quit, citing internet concerns. The training I'd had her go through was the reason I'd hired on GenM in the first place. As it was no longer available, I had no need for another apprentice. But I couldn't get my money back.

So instead I tried another apprentice. Again, after on-boarding, she ghosted me. No replies to my request for calls, no response to my messages to her on their internal system.

I spent roughly $150 and hours of my time trying to vet and train people and got nothing. And, instead of refunding my money, they suggest I resubscribe and try their task based projects instead.

I truly believe it's a fraudulent company. They collect money up front with no guarantee of service.

GenM is a great platform to learn and acquire free skills and a free certificate for your Digital Marketing Portfolio. I haven't secured a job yet, and now in my apprenticeship after finishing a few lessons. I will come back and tweak this review after my apprenticeship and securing a Job. GenM, You Rock.

GenM is a perfect platform to learn and gain experience from, it allows you to connect with mentors and fellow students globally. The practical apprenticeship makes it way ahead and easily recommendable amongst their competitiors. The only disadvantage is the GenM chat was unavailable on my mobile therefore I recommend GenM to enable all Android users to easily access their chats without logging into a laptop or computer.Not everyone owns Samsung,iPhone etc

I do not recommend!
I tried them and have spent quite a good amount of time trying to find an intern from their site. People don't reply, they lie about their experience and don't follow up on your follow up questions. I wasted so much time(3 full months with no success) and still couldn't find an intern, so I asked for a refund- here's the womans response- sorry we only have a 15 day refund policy. I have now requested to speak with the owner or CEO.

I want to say I love my apprentice! I love this service. It is the very definition of "win-win". It frees up my time from doing vital marketing tasks and allows me to give back to a young person who is trying to expand their horizons. In the end they get credible resume-able experience as well as ongoing training.
It is my plan to bring on more apprentices as I go, because this can multiply my business efforts in ways I hadn't previously considered possible.

Perfect Platform to build your skills, build business relationship and improve your employability. I recommend GenM to my friends and family every now and then. Thank you GenM for sharing the thoughtful and extremely useful information.

Set your goals and Take Actions.

Good day to all

Great platform to recruit interns.
Excellent value!!!

If I could give zero stars I would. I wish I'd read these reviews before I lost my $147. My experience had been much like others here – I'm left out of pocket, having lost many many hours from an already stretched schedule and feeling frustrated and robbed of precious time and money.

After having a few candidates just disappear from the platform (after doing the initial interview process and narrowing down some to interview), I contracted one. She let me down five minutes before our first meeting. We rescheduled for the following Monday – I literally reorganized my diary for both. Five minutes before the call, she emailed to say she realized she couldn't do Gen m as she'd taken on too much. I am about to go on an overseas business trip and do not have more time to waste so asked for a refund. To be honest, the candidates disappearing and quality of those that contacted me was quite alarming – I got more messages from candidates in Bangladesh this morning who don't have the skills I've specified I need.

Gen M refuse as I just went outside their two-week cancellation window. I'm disgusted by their customer service and, frankly, the lack of commitment the candidates I have interacted with leaves me thinking I'll just cut my losses now and move on. I can't get my time and money back, but I also don't want to waste more time! I'm so disappointed with my experience with Gen M.

However, I'm anxious about the reviews here that say they've charged more money as I've read this elsewhere on other forums too. Take my advice, go to Fiverr and pay somebody there for your digital tasks if you can't afford a local intern. The frustration and loss of money just isn't worth it.

A wonderful array of talent to engage with which is great for both the business person and for the intern.

I really hate giving bad ratings like this and I tried very-very hard to work with GenM's team to communicate my problem and get it resolved, but ultimately in the end of the day, they didn't deliver the service and only refunded me one of my two payments.

We were very excited to sign up for the platform as we thought it was a fantastic idea.

I found the process of looking for an apprentice and interviewing much more time- and energy-consuming than we expected. A lot of students didn't speak English well or were very disorganized; on top of that, a large percent would disappear at different stages of the interviewing process. We initially planned to get 4 students, but quickly realized that finding that many would be more work than we were willing to invest into this.

After quite a bit of time and effort we finally found someone, who we thought was a good fit. He accepted our offer and started with on-boarding, but after just a couple days he disappeared and stopped answering our messages… After a week or so we contacted GenM and let them know, asking to cancel the apprenticeship and suggesting that they should work on ensuring that there is some accountability for students for accepting an apprenticeship and not showing up.

In the meantime, we found another apprentice who looked promising and made an offer to him as well. He also accepted and started his on-boarding, but after a little bit… also disappeared… At that point we were pretty unhappy, and ultimately we were hesitant to start over, not having any guarantees that the students we find are going to actually stick around. At that point we requested a refund, which was promised to us.

I received emails from at least 3 different people on GenM team, who clearly haven't spoken to each other, which added insult to injury. In spite of that, I really felt like giving them the information would help put some processes in place to prevent this problem from happening to other companies, so I shared our experience along with our perspective and suggestions.

They all were very nice, and support rep offered to help us find another apprentice and advertise our posting through their misc channels to help us get more attention. We considered it for a bit, but eventually decided that we didn't want to start another cycle of search. Our problem from the very beginning wasn't getting students' attention, we were contacted a lot, but rather getting through the interview process without kids disappearing and ultimately, actually getting apprentices we pick to stick around.

At that point our promised refund hasn't yet arrived, so I informed the support rep of our decision not to start another round of search and reminded him about the refund. To my complete surprise, I was told that they have a 14-day refund policy, though he would make an exception and refund us the latter of our two payments.

Throughout the process I was thinking how nice they were and how well they handled the situation, expecting to get a full refund, because obviously not only they haven't delivered the service, but I spent a lot of time providing them feedback, suggestions and ideas on how they can deal with the problems we encountered.

So needless to say, I was less than happy. After asking for clarification, I was told that their refund policy is 14 days after starting to use the service 'to see if the platform is the right fit for you'. I was confused why he didn't tell me that in the first place, when I requested a refund, and I also I felt that this didn't apply to my situation, where it wasn't about whether this was a good fit or not, but rather about the fact that they haven't delivered the service at all.

I really think that the platform is a great idea and it's run by nice guys, but that's not good enough. The service promised should also be delivered, or at least refunds issued when the company fails to do so. This ended up being a huge waste of our time and energy that cost us much more than the money we spent on membership.

Okay, at first I wasn't sure about GenM because my first go-round was not all that in lighting or helpful. I learned very little and felt as though I was just a means to get free work done, with no promise of paid work at the end. But now, I have an entirely new outlook! I have found who I believe could not only help me gain knowledge as a creative marketer but is already directing me to people who will pay me. AND my current internship has put me in front of some very important people in regards to my career as both a Virtual Assistant, but an author.

The key with GenM is to do your research. Just because a company or brand want's to offer you an internship, does not mean you have to accept it. Get a feel for what they are offering and go with who you believe has the most to offer in terms of your long term goals. And always listen to your gut.

Pros:

1- Easy, fast, and convenient. Best topics, Tutorial text, Videos, expertise.
2- Anyone can easily sign up to start as a freelancer through GenM
3- Job ready through doing micro-works apprenticeship is the best feature ever.
4- Chat with 10-20 plus contacts at a time
Cons:
1. The basis is 鈥淗ELP ME HELP YOU鈥?the mentors teach the students and in lieu of the student's works for free for resume building and carrier development. They are not slaved to provide free services without LEANING anything from mentors. But the company has no eyes on鈥?this is also an unprofessional one鈥easons why enlisted business tries to take advantage of…
2. Support TEAM members are not professional and well versed.
3. Once my account suspended without giving me any reasons why?
4. I guess- most the business owners don鈥檛 have tech-savvy know-how. They are using the plat to get the advantage out of free apprenticeships!
5. Students can鈥檛 ask for money. But the mentors ask for apprenticeship works that are not covered by the 5-10 hours of free works. Students don鈥檛 have any choice to enter into an agreement by mutually agreed upon鈥?br />
6. If the student has the right to choose the minimum 5 hours weekly and for the 3 months free 5 hours x 12 weeks = 60 hours. But for the rest time, they have the right to ask compensation for additional hours. Mentors may have the option to flag students (maybe), which is alike giving a gun to the unprofessional for abuse.
7. I have lost more than 6 months corresponding support issues to recoverable my account to a business one.
8. Again recently- my account auto flagged!? Reasons mentioned in cons #5.
9. I have contacted several times with SEO and Co-founder鈥?but they didn鈥檛 respond on time. But the usual online norms are not more than 24 hours to respond鈥? So I think they are also unprofessional too.

This site is a great way to get help with your company and help students get job experience. You should already have some knowledge on the task you want done so you can mentor the your student. It's a great win win.

Have had huge problems getting an apprentice. Then GenM took out another $220 from my account without any authorisation. This is a scam. I am going to my bank and make a report on them.
Plus there is no place on the web page to contact them. This is a high security business, do not deal with them. You should be able to contact a business 24/7.

Had a very bad experience using the platform. Students were flaky in terms of response/recruiting and working on projects, also not the best quality talent, even if students. It's probably more worth it to hire freelancers specifically tasked to these needs with the equivalent price of the subscription fee versus recruit marketing interns. I wasn't able to complete a project given these issues and they refused to refund me, so be very careful when using this platform, or better yet, don't use it, you'll waste your time on the attempts to recruit and lose the fee.

GenM stole my money twice!!! Even after I requested they not charge my account without my authorization or cancel my account if they cannot. Plus they want to take my money and leave me with nothing if I cancel.

I tried to find an apprentice on their platform and had zero success. The process to find an apprentice was really laborious. I reached out to them many times with suggestions on ways I needed to sort or filter through the students and they didn't work on any of those ideas. For example, I was getting approached constantly from people in time zones that just would not work for me to apprentice. I can鈥檛 teach someone something in the middle of the night. I needed to be able to sort who can apply to me by time zone but thats not allowed. There were a ton of other suggestions as well that seemed super obvious to me that they just replied with canned responses on.
The apprentices mostly had zero experience, most had not even take a single class yet on their platform. They market as if these are qualified folks and they are not. I understand the meaning of an apprentice is to teach them on the job and I was fully prepared to do that but that just meant I needed time to interview them for their potential not their skill, which takes time to asses. Time they will not give you.
I tried for a month and it was just such an overwhelming experience I wanted a refund. They refused to refund me because of the refund policy of 14 days. Its super hard to sift through qualified applicants and interview them and select them for a job in 14 days let alone someone with zero experience. I tried really hard to get them to give me a refund because I didn鈥檛 even get to the interview phase with a single candidate (they notoriously canceled or ghosted me!). They can see in my messages I was unable to successfully interview anyone. I finally let them know that although I can respect they have a policy just because it is a policy does not mean its whats best for the users.
Gen M has a very long way to go before it鈥檚 a useful platform. Don鈥檛 use it. It is a waste of money.