I was hired to work as a "Business Analyst" for a company I knew very little about. Most of my experience has been in sales and marketing and I knew very little about business analisis, but I was pleased to learn after my interview with the "Senior Executive Analyst", or as they call themselves "SENEX", that they were interested in having me join their team.
Immidiately I was asked to start the Business Analyst training in their headquarters trainging facility in Park Ridge, IL. I attended this 2 week very intense training program along with 9 other Analysts-to-be who had come from different parts of the country. I was quite impressed to see that most of my peers were high-caliber executives. The trainer, who happened to be an older woman in her 60's did a wonderful job painting this picture of perfection about the company and convinced most of us that this was the opportunity of a lifetime. I could tell than when we asked certain questions sometimes she would be evasive and would try to avoid answering.
For starters they made us memorize word by word this 5 or 6 page sales speech which they call "the institutional". They always called us Mister whatever our lastnames were and encouraged us to call them back in the same manner. This seemed rather formal and fake to most of us. Anyway. Right after the training was over, they sent us all to our first assigment in different parts of the country.
The assigments took place as far as Canada and Mexico. Our main function as an Executive Analyst was to go into a business do a general analisis of their finances, operations, sales & marketing strategies, productivity, etc... And then give the business owners an assesment of our findings. But our real work was to sell them consulting services that could range from $5,000 to 50,000; 70,000 or more!
I didn't think there was anything wrong with this since most businesses could use some help anyway and I thought we would sell them a project they could actually use and benefit from. I started having reservations when I started to experience a treatment I had never experienced in a job before. Since I was traveling all the time from place to place, I expected that they were going to book the hotels for me and at least tell me two or three days in advance where I was going to, but instead I would finish an assigment one day in the afternoon, they'd ask me to go to the closest airport and sometimes I'd wait there for hours without knowing where I was going next.
I would always leave for my assigments on Sunday evenings and sometimes I would fly to the closest airport to my destination and arrive at 12:00,1:00 or 2:00am, rent a car and drive another hour or even 2 get to my hotel at 3:00 or 4:00am and then I'd have to be at my appointment at 7:00 or 8:00am.
This showed me they just had no consideration for their employees at all and they almost treated us as if they wanted us to quit after a short while. The worst came when I started seeing their tactics, I didn't feel that they cared for the business owners at all. Their only concern was to sell as many hours of consulting as possible.in many cases I'd find the business owners were not in the position to spend several thousand dollars for a project!
Part of their "modus operandum" is to have their analysts calltheir "SENEXS" infront of the business owner and then have this very pessimistic conversation about the situation of the business. Many times they would tell me what to say and they'd expect me to repeat word by word whatever they said, infront of the business owner. Afterwards when I was on my own they would try to explain to me that all of this is done just to help the client make a quick and smart decision.
During the training they made a big point in convencing us that we were not salesman but analysts. Truth was that this was an extremelly high-pressure sales job full of lies and deception. I'm sure that some of the projects their consultants deliver are of much use for some business owners, but I also know that in many cases they try to sell more hours of consulting than are actually needed, I know their tecnics are not very honest and they don't always deliver what they promise.
My career with George S. May International was very brief and I would never in a million years incourage anyone to work for them or do business with them.By the way, all the people who did the training with me are gone and went to better things.
MeChicago, IllinoisU.S.A.
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