The Brenar Group is another branch of Cydcor. This is what you can expect from the Brenar Group:
You have probably already read one of those ads published on Careerbuilder.com, Monster.com or Yahoo! (you cant avoid them!). They make the jobs looks very attractive, especially for new grads. What they dont tell you is that this is actually a door-to-door sales position. When you get a first interview, you can be sure that they will want you back the next day for a second interview. They are so desperate they will hire anybody because they have such a high turnover of staff.
Your first interview will go very well.indeed they make sure that you have a lot in common with them to make you want to come back. On your second interview, you will be assigned to a salesperson (who will become your Leader if you accept the job) that you will shadow all day. You are going to knock on 70 doors a day and try to sell AT&T products. No fun. So to make you want the job, you will go to lunch with the salesperson and he/she will tell you how this job is the best opportunity of your life: how you will become a manager in less than a year and make a 6 figures salary! The presentation will be professional: it is a presentation that they have to learn to "impulse" you and make you want the job.
In the same presentation, the salesperson will tell you that to become a manager, you have to train 5 people, and make a team of 10 people. So you can be sure that they will be nice with you because they need you to progress in the company! Inevitably there are a lot of fake people who you cant trust because they will tell you anything to make you stay.
If you accept the job, they will make you sign papers. Of course, they wont really go into details because one of those papers implies that you have to pay 34% of everything that you make in taxes!
A standard days work will look like the following: they will make you come at 9:30am and you will go to a session that is called "Atmosphere". There everybody gives "high 5s" to everybody, they all look happy and excited. You will go through your goals of the day, play some stupid games, training stations (where they teach you some selling techniques) and announcements. They try to make everybody think they will have a great day and that every "no" that they will hear that day makes you closer to becoming a manager. And they also talk about company "success" to make you believe that you will make it too.
At the end of the day, they analyze your sales. You will come back to the office at around 7:30pm. A 10 hour working day when you start. But when you are a leader, you can add another 2 hours to that. If you are lucky, you might make $100 that day (the daily average is around $75). Deduct taxes, lunch and gas (which you have to pay for yourself), and you are left with less than $50, which is roughly $5.00 an hour. When you are a leader it can get worse because you have to share your profits with the people you are training, even sometimes pay for their lunch. And you have to work on Saturdays too (a six day week).
One of their rules is that new salespersons cannot hang-out with each other.indeed, your leader will walk you out to make sure you dont talk with new recruits that might be skeptics and that you are still excited about the position. If you want to quit, your leader will do everything to persuade you to stay. The next day, your leader will tell the manager and other leaders everything you said and did the previous day.
When you become a leader, you have to become a liar like the others. You have to lie to new recruits and use psychological tactics to make them stay. Thats when you learn that you have been lied to as well. You dont make as much money as what they said you would make. You were yourself a victim of those psychological tactics. But still you want to believe that you can make it to a management position and that the other leaders are here to persuade you to stay too.
They also organize social events on Thursday and Friday nights. This is because they dont want you to interact with people in your entourage that can be skeptical about this huge "opportunity". Basically, you dont have ANY free time, except on Sundays, but after a week like this, all you want to do is to relax and sleep! The worst is that the leaders with children work so many hours, they think they will make big bucks in twelve months time and dont see their children growing up. At work they will hear things like "You do it for your family", "you will make your family proud", "at 30 you will retire and you will have so much money!" It is outrageous that they use your own family to make you stay! So you can say goodbye to your friends and family when you take this job. Your family will be all the fake people in the company and the new recruits who are comparable to rabbits just before they become road-kill.
When you quit, you will have to chase after them for what they owe you since they always pay in arrears and when you leave you wont get all they owe you. You will have to wait two weeks or more before you can get your final checks, depending on the managers mood. You will have to go there in person and there they will make you feel like you are nothing because you quit and tell you not to talk to anybody from the company. This kind of organization wants to control anything that has to do with their employees like a cult.
The facts are that the manager herself is not making 6 figures. She is barely making 50k, if not less, and is working more than 12 hours a day. Also, the sales staff are very competitive because they want to be the first to become manager. As a result some leaders wont hesitate to discourage new recruits from other leaders. What a great environment! They use psychological tactics to make you stay and you don't even make minimum wage. You can add to this the deceptive selling techniques that they use and this company and other affiliates of Cydcor must be amongst the worst companies to work for if not the worst.
If you want more information about the affiliate of Cydcor/DSMax, look for a msn group called "DSMax the aftermath" online.
0 comments