I came to the office expecting a 1 on 1 interview to talk about my leadership experiences as well as the multitudes of jobs that included sale experience, instead what happened was that I was ushered into a room with 5 other candidates and the CFO. Everyone dressed nice (well almost everyone- will get to that in a second). Instead of opening the forum to the candidates to sell themselves to the company, the CFO begins to sell the company to the applicants.
This should be a HUGE RED FLAG. Ultimately, what he does is he gives you statistics for the best case scenario, where you enter the business and learn everything there is to learn about insurance in 3 months to make a 50,000 annual income in your first year. He covers what happens after your first year, of course, you make even more money with RENEWAL commission. Yes, in your second year in this career you should be making 75,000-80,000 and hit six figures in your third year.
At this point, some guy in a track suit and Lions Athletic visor comes and sits down at the table with all the suits and begins going through our resumes. He is introduced as the Chief Executive Officer, and without hearing the preliminary responses we gave to his CFO about the outlook of this job, he begins to ask about job experiences, but he makes sure to distance this job we are applying for from any other job we ever had in the past. For example I worked as a bartender and when I told him it gave me interpersonal skills and the ability to create conversation, he assured me that selling policies is a lot different that selling a drink essentially undercutting my experience and replacing it with his own imagined one.
Undoubtably, the main reason for the group interview and the extremely impersonal questions is to demonstrate power, so that when they do bring you on board (which they will ask you about 70-75% to do), there is no question about your servile role. You have to do everything they say exactly their way or you won’t make any money is
essentially what they are trying to tell you. As a
self starter I have a huge problem with that insinuation, as when I did work there I witnessed the script fail as much as it worked, and I also witnessed unscripted encounters that ended productively.
If you want any more information on what it’s like to be in the MDF ranks, read my review “Manager-oriented”