They tell you they are looking for an analyst - set up an interview - then set you in a room with a bunch of other people looking for work. Then they try to sell you classes, and make you one of thier salespersons!
I get the feeling that they try to get 20 or so people to listen to thier pitch every week. If just a couple try to make it work, it is hoped that they can get a few friends and/or relatives to buy Primerica’s services. Good enough for them, does not mater how well you work out - just stick a few family members.
They through out money - money - money. But look around the office; doesn’t look like there are lots of people making the big bucks they are talkin’ about!
Should have known, they were far too vague when asked what for what position are you considering me?
I was looking for work recently - I finally got a job, and in the area I was hoping for - and was contacted by at least 4 or 5 (probably more) of their “recruiters” within the span of a couple weeks. And why not - one of the “benefits” listed during the talk was that you get a small percentage of the profits of anyone who works for you and then moves on to open their own Primerica office. (This was cited as being a good reason for finding the best workers and encouraging them to do well, rather than seeing that as being competition.)
The part that really turned me off was that I was in a combined talk, for both potential customers and potential employees. So you were being pitched both to sign up for financial planning with them, and to take classes.
These weenies got my resume earlier this year and I had two different people contacting me, leaving vague messages on my voicemail and sending me vague emails. I finally talked to one of them live and specifically asked, after several minutes of weaseling, “Are you hiring software developers?” He slipped up and said “No, but…” Othersise I might have gotten to the “interview” stage, too.
About seven years ago a guy I worked with got caught up in Primerica. He then gave them my office number, and I get a call from a guy saying, “Mr. Crafter_Man, we would like to hire you as a manager in our exciting company. Could you please come in for an interview?”
I hung up on the bastard.
Next thing you know my co-worker is soliciting the insurance to strangers at the local mall…
Oh god, me too. Just got my third call from them in the past week today. And I’m an admin assistant for chrissakes. I can barely keep my checkbook balanced – and I should give out financial advice? Hmm.
I’ve got resumes out right now, so I assumed it was one of the call-backs I’m waiting on.
After scheduling an appointment for an “interview,” it became clear that the place wasn’t connected in any way with any employers that I have approached, so I became naturally suspicious.
When I told the woman that I didn’t recall sending them a resume, she said “Oh, I’m just calling people today.” Mudd: “Yes, but how did you get my number, exactly?” Primerica yutz: “Oh, out of the phone book.”
Okay… Thanks for wasting ten minutes of my life.
There really ought to be laws against this sort of thing.
Money’s tight enough right now that the six bucks it would have cost me to get out there and back would have been missed. Fuckers.
My roommate almost got sucked into that. They even offered him a “scholarship” (which I think would have then come out of his subsequent pay) for their classes. I just can’t fathom how they manage to legally make any money. It doesn’t seem like they’re actually hiring particularly capable or skilled people. I mean, my god, just calling people out of the phone book? The mind boggles.
I got sucked into one of these sessions a few years ago. I look upon it as a morning spent in education. Sandy Weill has made enormous amounts of money using this selling technique. Now I understand it a bit better. I’m glad I experienced it.
Primerica is a sales arm of City Group and pushes the Smith Barney family of mutual funds in addition to Travelers insurance and the other City group financial products. A former pastor at my mothers church is pushing the stuff and got my mother invested with them. At the time I was rather happy with the deal, the guy’s basically honest and even though he tried to get me to go to a recruitment meeting he never did anything like a hard sell.
Across the summer when the market was tanking I was concerned about her portfolio and what the Jack Grubmen/Smith Barney tie with the WorldCom scandal might do to Smith Barney fund redemption rates so I got in touch with the guy who sold her the stuff. First off we played phone tag for a while and it took almost a week to get an e-mail response from him and when I did talk with him he didn’t impress or confront me with his knowledge of the market or even current events. It was then that I learned that a Primerica FSA (financial service advisor) was a fancy term for salesmen and in no way should be confused with a certified financial planner.
Needless to say Primerica is no longer intrusted with my mothers money.
Hey, I’ve actually had first hand knowledge of this! This is exciting…because, well, usually I just well…lurk.
Early this week I received an email from a friend who is trying to start her own catering business and has invited her friends to a ‘dinner seminar’ with a Regional Vice President of Primerica. I was going to go out of duty, knowing that I would be thinking ‘I could be home playing IWD2 in my jammies right now’ and politely sighing to myself…
From the sounds of it, this is not a seminar I would want to attend. But free food…hmm…this will not be an easy decision.
Primerica is simply the Amway of insurance. It’s a multi-level marketing (pyramid) scam. If you sign up, they ask you for a list of contacts (family and soon-to-be ex-friends). The person who signed you up tries to sell insurance to all the people on your list. After they use your contacts, they send you out to sell, but as with most MLM scams, the real money is in recruiting people to work for you. I mean, they have like 50 or 60 thousand sales people. There aren’t that many people out there to buy this crap.
During my job search, they would call me about weekly (or whenever I updated my resume). They mostly got my resume from Monster. I know they didn’t read it, because mine actually said “No Primerica Agents” in the objective.
I actually looked forward to their calls, because I would vent my day’s frustration on the obnoxious little twerps that were wasting my time. My wife would try to get to the phone before me because she felt sorry for the people on the other line. I guess what pissed me off was that they were preying on the unemployed, raising your hopes that you got a real interview, which was actually a cattle call.
They usually will not tell you they are Primerica, or that they are an insurance company. They will tell you they are Citigroup and they need people with your background. “What backgound is that?” you might ask, to which they will say “I don’t have your resume in front of me…”
