Career in Sales?

As a person who had spent months and months job-searching and interview-hopping, I think my credibility in the area of giving job-search and interview tips is undoubtedly well-recognized. Even if you objected to that claim, I will still shamelessly insist in writing this entry, simply because there are still some lessons worth-sharing coming from these excruciating months of unemployment.

Having sending tons of resume to whatever job postings with the word 'marketing' on it, I discovered, some after the 1st interview and some after further Googling, several shady and fishy companies that are worth watching out for.

All of these companies have a peculiar interest in changing their names as often as changing a diaper. Some has undergone four different names in the course of only one or two year; this fact itself must have made you wonder what kind of scheme these companies are up to. Yesterday I checked, Google has not changed its name, and it is still Google today and I believe will remain Google tomorrow.

One, and the only, example I will mention here is this sales and marketing company now being introduced as Fission Inc. Further research (and you can do it yourself) reveals that it has progressed under names like Marketing Concept, Athens Consulting, and Midara Inc.

As I slowly learnt, all these companies share one common similarity in their business model: a newly hired employee will have to start out doing face-to-face marketing be it inside a store, door-to-door or B2B. Then, they sugar the pill by promising office ownership in just eight to twelve months time if you are 'hardworking' enough, and by that I mean completely dismantling your social life and crushing your bones for sixty hours per week including weekend.

This model obviously and thankfully is not for everyone, and my simple point here is if you are a person who are deeply corrosive to direct marketing and just want to live a happy and balanced life, stay away from all job postings from a 'sales and marketing firm' promising 'rapid promotion to management', and especially be more concerned if they have just changed their name from Google to Hoogle. Let's somebody else apply for that, please.