Sleel’s rules of sales:
[ol]
[li]Every company lies about sales.[/li][li]The people involved in sales lie.[/li][li]The company lies about how much you’ll make.[/li][li]Every single sales division in every single company will require you to pay for a sales kit out of your own money.[/li][/ol]
This is just a difference in degree. Kirby and Cutco are legitimate companies with real products that are actually pretty decent. The sales stuff is still a bunch of crap. If you work for them, you will find that the four points I listed above are completely valid.
In addition to those, the real soul-sucking part of sales is that you’ll be required to either exploit your family and friends for leads, or do cold-calling or similar lead-finding stuff. Either way, you’re encouraged to view everyone you come in contact with as a potential customer.
Because I actually took a sales job for a few months (where I eventually made enough to cover my kit costs, but lost overall on transportation costs) and had a brush with another bullshit situation, I’ve avoided anything that even whiffs of sales ever since. I hate the fact that they do their best even in want ads to mislead you as to what the actual job entails. You have to decipher the bullshit to even find out that it’s a sales job.
Yep, that’s how I fell for Primerica. Three hours of my life I’ll never get back, and they asked me for my credit card to pay for their “training” fee. I left at that point.
The only part of your list that’s not always true is number 4. I did phone sales for Dell computers and I didn’t have to lay down one cent. Everything else on the list is accurate for that particular job.
I’ll bet that if you were meeting clients face to face, you would have been required to lay out something for brochures, sample disks, or something. And they would probably offer a (mandatory purchase) computer for a “special price” (i.e.: only partial markup) just for their sales reps.
But yeah, you’re right, under the circumstances of phone sales, you don’t normally need to buy a kit. So I got 3.5 out of four. Close enough for government work.
Really? I thought that last sentence made them look even worse, i.e. “their head honchos say they aren’t bad, but they’re corp types; of course they lie.”
An Ex-GF of mine who was an assistant bakery manager for a grocery store chain had someone who obviously knew a bit about commercial baking strike up a conversation with her at work. After a few minutes he asked her to come down for an interview for a manager position with another large chain.
When she showed up at the address, it was a primerica office. She took the afternoon off from work to go to the “interview”.
I worked in outside sales selling advertising for a weekly newspaper, I don’t think any of the bullet points were true. I don’t know if the company mispreresented their sales figures because I never thier overall sales. I didn’t have to lie in that job, I didn’t have to pay for anything out of my own pocket and I made a ton of money. I also was not expected to sell to my family and friends, but I was always looking for an opportunity to sell.
It is however very hard work, you can never have an easy day. You don’t work, you don’t get paid. It is very hard to take time off, if sales are bad you can’t afford to take off, if sales are good you don’t ant to take time off. If you have the personality and drive to sell you can be very successful and not have to comprom,ise your morals.
I am no longer there because I got lazy and didn’t make my quota but man it was ride while it lasted! After that I decieded I needed a job that was a little less manic depressive.
I know I got interviews for jobs through Monster. When I was last looking for work, I looked for ads through the local paper, Monster.com and another one I don’t remember the name. The one I don’t remember mostly had jobs that were military or work from home scams. Nothing wrong with the miltary but I am not a viable candidate for those jobs and they really ought to spell that out in the ad darn it. Many jobs I applied for were in both the newspaper and Monster, but there was one I got to the fourth round of interviews before I broke down and told them how much money I was expecting to make and that ended that.
The one that really suprised me was a job through an employment agency! I have over the course of my career filled out dozens of applications for emplyment agencies because of a listing for a great job and every single one was filled as of 10am Monday morning except this one. (I had one that the agency couldn’t even get me an interview but I had worked for the OM at another company, He heard a few weeks later I was availble and sent me a message that I had the job if I wanted it but I had just accepted another position.) They paid to hire me and I was there 8 years before some mismanagment caused the company to go bankrupt.
A cousin of mine put her c.v. on one of those sites and had a good job in no time, so there’s some evidence that they work. There sure are a lots of parasites out there, though.
It happens. My first “real” job in the US was through someone who found my resume on dice.com. I was headhunted away from that to my current by someone who found my resume on Monster.com. Both robust, professional positions in Fortune 500 companies, FWIW.
Of course, I had my share of the scammers and con artists as well.
A rough estimate would be 50% hits from “consultants” who’d read neither resume nor job description (I don’t want to service cash registers in Utah, thanks all the same) , 30% from people who were more or less up front about wanting to sell their invaluable job-hunting services, 5% from bona fide placement agencies who wanted me in their database and 5% from people with a halfway relevant job to fill. The last 10% came from the low-lifes who’d waste tons of my time getting my hopes up before admitting that they weren’t actually offering me a job as much as an opportunity to purchase something. Assholes.
I can’t speak for Monster, but I’ve found my last two jobs through CareerBuilder. In both cases, I was contacted (directly, no recruiters) by companies I had not applied to, but who had found my posted reh-zuh-may.
I’ve gotten some contract work and my current permanent job through Monster, although in the latter case I had also worked for the company on a contract basis before, having applied directly at their website.
You young wippersnappers don’t even know how bad it can get. Back in the early 90’s…it was bad. REALLY bad.
After a few years of badness, a new kind of scum appeared. Some of it minor flesh biting…some of it more malicious.
I refer to the ‘Send in $x with your application/resume/cover letter as an application fee’. It was usually $20, sometimes $40 or even $50.
I remember calling a company and getting “Oh, our company charges $200 per applicant for interviewing expenses” ??? !!! Even if I don’t get the job? Yes.
It wasn’t the majority of job ads that did this or even a sizeable minority…but it was growing every year. At it’s peak it was a few percent of them. If the bad times would have continued I imagine it would have made job searching tough to do with companies scamming the unemployed for revenue.