volterator (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
volterator) wrote2009-07-11 02:27 am
volterator) wrote2009-07-11 02:27 am
Today's experience
>Thoth<
That job interview today:
The business is the sort of marketing firm I expected it to be and the presentation basically fills in a few gaps in my preconceptions as to what is the business model of these firms. We're left in a room for a long time, with cursory notification of the delay, on couches and chairs arranged in horseshoe around a TV playing a season 10 Friends DVD in the wrong aspect ratio. An enormous Sky TV poster behind plexiglass with Rugby action shot presses in on the room from the back wall. Eventually we are rounded up at 3.25. We've been invited in today by a scouser who takes the dozen and Powerpoints us at a flatscreen. The guy is a medium height, medium build chancer who might have been popped out of an Official The Apprentice Muffin Tin. Mustelid; Tom Cruise's blunt nose beneath Tom Cruise's rock face. James Franco's dark ringed and languid eyes and relaxed mouth loosely draped over an open collar.
He explains that the company is in direct marketing and that they work face-to-face trying to ensure maximum market penetration for their clients. He tells us that he has huge personal goals, and that he's been in this business for three and a half years and is 21 now. He assures us that direct marketing has gone legit, it's not the purview of wide boys out to make a quick buck with the gift of the gab. He plans to retire by thirty, and already has offices around the country and is opening one in Scotland. He is totally legit, he assures us, only working with the biggest companies. Mainly they contract out their sales services to Talk Talk, who are now Britain's biggest provider of Broadband. He's gleeful that after months of pursuit he's just got the contract to be working with Asda, he says that in business speak that's the whale. He grins as he tells us: he's caught the whale. His excitement is palpable – he has that baked James Franco smile, benign and faraway. Next year he's going into the States. There's real chances for advancement through the company's Sales Development system: he needs people who he can install as managers. After all he can't be in the States and Preston at the same time, can he? Again: his personal goals are huge, he got in a 7.30 this morning, sort of late actually, and he won't leave until 10 at night. He doesn't expect that of his staff during their six day work week, he's driven, with a ten year plan with this as what it takes.
He goes on to explain that to his huge clients direct marketing is the best because it provides maximum return for their outlay. He tells us that he pays solely on commission. The goal of his business to to get everyone in the country signed up to Talk Talk broadband, Talk Talk are growing huge. Do we remember Tiscali broadband? They were asking £500m for that company just last year but, he says proudly, through companies like his eating away at their customer base Talk Talk were able to absorb them for half that just recently. He says “we got them for less than half of that, y'know? Which makes a big difference.” What happens when British Telecom have lost their dominant market share of phone service, and everyone is on Talk Talk we ask: well, then his company just signs everybody back up to BT. He explains the commission structure, for a basic phone service customer signed up commission is £12, "but no-one really does them 'cause it's crap money, honestly." For every person we'd potentially sign up Talk Talk's full package we'd get £28. “Every one of those contracts is worth £720 a year to our clients, so what they're paying us is a bit of a rip off really” His conciliation: the big guys are wringing us out – is interesting to me. Surely what he means is that for every big sign up they make he pays his salespeople £28? He's excited to tell us that his firm alone made £38m gross for his clients last year. That the direct sales industry is worth £77 billion. His staff sell phone service to strangers in shopping centres and supermarkets, unbidden angels returning not-a-few pennies saved that are pennies earned in this time of recession. When his presentation is over he has us fill out applications and says he'll have his assistant call us back this evening. He's dead cert on that, he reiterates it. He, I am reminded, needs people who are as good as their word; with initiative. Well, it's 2:12am and motherfucker has not called. I don't think I got the second interview. Since all that had changed between my being called in and now is that I've seen a slideshow and filled out a piece of paper rating, on a scale 1 to 6, in order of importance, which qualities I look for in a job from options like “A fun work environment” and “High rate of earnings” I have to wonder why the godsdamned company called me in in the first place. I was never interviewed, I made no personal impression on anyone at all. £12 in train and bus fare I will not see again.
I got a coffee while I waited for the train. Heavy Starbucks mug of cappuccino and a man who looked like a recessive beaver who I'm sure was a university lecturer but, at first, couldn't be sure if he was Mick Gornall, the head of Media Studies. The crabgrass beard maybe replaced with a duckweed goatee. It wasn't. This guy was too mild and slight to be Gornall, who's a first-time-around hippie and has the scrunched paper towel suit and jaded demeanour of all those guys gone straight and pushing sixty-five. Starbucks make better coffee on Blanshard than they do on Fishergate, Preston. So much for standardisation through globalisation.
Impulsively, I decided to go to see the new Michael Mann film, Public Enemies. Since the Metro no longer print cinema listings and the primitive O2 Javaworld bullshit on my four-year-old phone doesn't include listings for Wigan since they sold the multiplex to Empire Cinemas, I took a gamble and walked out there from the train station. I'd missed the start by fifteen minutes, so I walked the twenty minutes back to the station again and went home.
All in all a 100 per cent successful day.
That job interview today:
The business is the sort of marketing firm I expected it to be and the presentation basically fills in a few gaps in my preconceptions as to what is the business model of these firms. We're left in a room for a long time, with cursory notification of the delay, on couches and chairs arranged in horseshoe around a TV playing a season 10 Friends DVD in the wrong aspect ratio. An enormous Sky TV poster behind plexiglass with Rugby action shot presses in on the room from the back wall. Eventually we are rounded up at 3.25. We've been invited in today by a scouser who takes the dozen and Powerpoints us at a flatscreen. The guy is a medium height, medium build chancer who might have been popped out of an Official The Apprentice Muffin Tin. Mustelid; Tom Cruise's blunt nose beneath Tom Cruise's rock face. James Franco's dark ringed and languid eyes and relaxed mouth loosely draped over an open collar.
He explains that the company is in direct marketing and that they work face-to-face trying to ensure maximum market penetration for their clients. He tells us that he has huge personal goals, and that he's been in this business for three and a half years and is 21 now. He assures us that direct marketing has gone legit, it's not the purview of wide boys out to make a quick buck with the gift of the gab. He plans to retire by thirty, and already has offices around the country and is opening one in Scotland. He is totally legit, he assures us, only working with the biggest companies. Mainly they contract out their sales services to Talk Talk, who are now Britain's biggest provider of Broadband. He's gleeful that after months of pursuit he's just got the contract to be working with Asda, he says that in business speak that's the whale. He grins as he tells us: he's caught the whale. His excitement is palpable – he has that baked James Franco smile, benign and faraway. Next year he's going into the States. There's real chances for advancement through the company's Sales Development system: he needs people who he can install as managers. After all he can't be in the States and Preston at the same time, can he? Again: his personal goals are huge, he got in a 7.30 this morning, sort of late actually, and he won't leave until 10 at night. He doesn't expect that of his staff during their six day work week, he's driven, with a ten year plan with this as what it takes.
He goes on to explain that to his huge clients direct marketing is the best because it provides maximum return for their outlay. He tells us that he pays solely on commission. The goal of his business to to get everyone in the country signed up to Talk Talk broadband, Talk Talk are growing huge. Do we remember Tiscali broadband? They were asking £500m for that company just last year but, he says proudly, through companies like his eating away at their customer base Talk Talk were able to absorb them for half that just recently. He says “we got them for less than half of that, y'know? Which makes a big difference.” What happens when British Telecom have lost their dominant market share of phone service, and everyone is on Talk Talk we ask: well, then his company just signs everybody back up to BT. He explains the commission structure, for a basic phone service customer signed up commission is £12, "but no-one really does them 'cause it's crap money, honestly." For every person we'd potentially sign up Talk Talk's full package we'd get £28. “Every one of those contracts is worth £720 a year to our clients, so what they're paying us is a bit of a rip off really” His conciliation: the big guys are wringing us out – is interesting to me. Surely what he means is that for every big sign up they make he pays his salespeople £28? He's excited to tell us that his firm alone made £38m gross for his clients last year. That the direct sales industry is worth £77 billion. His staff sell phone service to strangers in shopping centres and supermarkets, unbidden angels returning not-a-few pennies saved that are pennies earned in this time of recession. When his presentation is over he has us fill out applications and says he'll have his assistant call us back this evening. He's dead cert on that, he reiterates it. He, I am reminded, needs people who are as good as their word; with initiative. Well, it's 2:12am and motherfucker has not called. I don't think I got the second interview. Since all that had changed between my being called in and now is that I've seen a slideshow and filled out a piece of paper rating, on a scale 1 to 6, in order of importance, which qualities I look for in a job from options like “A fun work environment” and “High rate of earnings” I have to wonder why the godsdamned company called me in in the first place. I was never interviewed, I made no personal impression on anyone at all. £12 in train and bus fare I will not see again.
I got a coffee while I waited for the train. Heavy Starbucks mug of cappuccino and a man who looked like a recessive beaver who I'm sure was a university lecturer but, at first, couldn't be sure if he was Mick Gornall, the head of Media Studies. The crabgrass beard maybe replaced with a duckweed goatee. It wasn't. This guy was too mild and slight to be Gornall, who's a first-time-around hippie and has the scrunched paper towel suit and jaded demeanour of all those guys gone straight and pushing sixty-five. Starbucks make better coffee on Blanshard than they do on Fishergate, Preston. So much for standardisation through globalisation.
Impulsively, I decided to go to see the new Michael Mann film, Public Enemies. Since the Metro no longer print cinema listings and the primitive O2 Javaworld bullshit on my four-year-old phone doesn't include listings for Wigan since they sold the multiplex to Empire Cinemas, I took a gamble and walked out there from the train station. I'd missed the start by fifteen minutes, so I walked the twenty minutes back to the station again and went home.
All in all a 100 per cent successful day.
no subject
no subject
Which is not to say I wouldn't do it - I mean I hate being bothered in the street only almost all the time and I'm only half boycotting Wal-Mart - why would I let that get in the way of having an income?
no subject
I have been on too many of these interviews to count: where they talk at you for 30 to 80 minutes giving you only enough time to nod in agreement, then call you and say that although your qualifications were adequate they have chosen someone else for the position. What the fuck did that other person manage to squeeze in between their insane rambling to make a better impression then I made? Because I was smiling and nodding when I wanted to shoot myself in the head.. so there must have been some manner of sexual favor involved to further ingratiate them to that dumb son of a bitch I was pretending was a revolutionary thinker.
no subject
I think I failed to make it clear, in the two lines that they asked me to write, that I'd not settle for anything less than the highest possible number of sales and being their star employee, and they hate that.
no subject
You didn't want a horrid job like that any how
xsjx
no subject
thanks
(Anonymous) 2011-03-10 12:21 pm (UTC)(link)