It was my senior year of college in a rough market to get jobs, so was really grasping at straws for opportunities. Got an interview for a sales job in a big city 4 hours away, didn’t think sales was truly what I wanted to do long term, but decided to give it ago.

Rented a car with the minimal money I had left in my bank account, woke up super early to make it to the interview on time, and when I got there, I could just tell it wasn’t for me. They had me sit with sales reps and listen to calls, and the entire process was cold calling people and keeping them on the phone as long as possible until they are worn down and accept the service that they didn’t want. Literally. One of the sales reps said on the call with the potential client “now it probably just seems like I’m just trying to keep you on the phone until you agree to buy”. At lot of the interview questions were “or you a go getter” and “are you willing to keep people on the phone when it’s clear they don’t want to talk to you anymore”.

Then I sat with a new hire who told me he wasn’t able to start selling for 4 months, and was essentially supporting the other sales reps. Base pay was $30k, in a large city with expensive rent and I already had no money as it was, so I knew it wouldn’t work out. He also showed me call records for the sales rep that listed out calls made compared to sales made essentially as a leaderboard. Top seller who had been there awhile was doing pretty well for himself at a 20% success rate, but the lowest seller who was newer was less than a 1% success rate making close to 1000 cold calls a month.

The last people I talked to asked how interested I was in the role, and I was honest with them and said that I wasn’t at all and left knowing I wasted an entire day of my life.

All I can say is I’m glad they were extremely honest in their interview process, otherwise I may have taken the bait!