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- Jun 26, 2013
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I went to a job interview today, and by "interview," I mean I was shuffled into a room with approximately a dozen other people to listen to a 90-minute talk where the presenter first spent ten minutes telling us her life story, and how she was so happy with the company, and how she had risen to regional manager in just 3 years. The next 50 minutes were spent telling us how wonderful and amazing their life insurance products were, and how they practically sold themselves, and how those lucky people selected now would be looking at advancement opportunities by December.
They very carefully avoided talking about, yanno, the stuff people WANT to know about a job, like oh, I dunno, what the actual work entails, what they're looking for in a candidate, hours, pay, etc.
I got trapped in a similar situation years and years ago. That one was a straight-up MLM scam. This one seemed more legit than that - with actual money to be made, but they could have at least clarified in the job listing that it was a sales position (they didn't mention anything of the sort). I already know I'd be a terrible salesperson: "You wanna buy this stuff? No? OK. I'll leave you alone then." If they'd mentioned it was sales, I could have saved their time as well as mine.
I don't know what happened after the first hour, because I left. I was actually ready to walk out in the first five minutes, but they didn't pause the presentation to take questions, or have a bathroom break, or anything resembling a logical place to excuse myself. It was REALLY hard to finally just stand up and leave the room in the middle of the presenter's sentence.
The funny part, though, was that AW publishing advice kept floating through my mind. "They're trying to sell the company to the applicants," I thought. "That's totally backwards. If it were really that good a workplace, they'd be making the applicants work to sell themselves to the company." I never really considered how much overlap there is between shady publishing practices and shady job recruiting practices.
Just thought it was interesting.
They very carefully avoided talking about, yanno, the stuff people WANT to know about a job, like oh, I dunno, what the actual work entails, what they're looking for in a candidate, hours, pay, etc.
I got trapped in a similar situation years and years ago. That one was a straight-up MLM scam. This one seemed more legit than that - with actual money to be made, but they could have at least clarified in the job listing that it was a sales position (they didn't mention anything of the sort). I already know I'd be a terrible salesperson: "You wanna buy this stuff? No? OK. I'll leave you alone then." If they'd mentioned it was sales, I could have saved their time as well as mine.
I don't know what happened after the first hour, because I left. I was actually ready to walk out in the first five minutes, but they didn't pause the presentation to take questions, or have a bathroom break, or anything resembling a logical place to excuse myself. It was REALLY hard to finally just stand up and leave the room in the middle of the presenter's sentence.
The funny part, though, was that AW publishing advice kept floating through my mind. "They're trying to sell the company to the applicants," I thought. "That's totally backwards. If it were really that good a workplace, they'd be making the applicants work to sell themselves to the company." I never really considered how much overlap there is between shady publishing practices and shady job recruiting practices.
Just thought it was interesting.
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