After graduation, I looked at sites like Careerbuilder and Monstertrak for employment.US First Energy advertised themselves as part of SUEZ Energy, an international energy giant, and claimed to be hiring "Energy Consultants".
Coming in for interviews was fine (even though, unlike many other companies there was no transportation reimbursement, I did not think too much about it). However, training consisted of three full days - NON-PAID, not to mention the homework that had to be done. As new "employees in training" we spent countless hours at the office memorizing sales pitches and then had to go home to read, and review even more. This would be okay if we were being paid, as most companies pay for training.
During the initial interviews we were told there was a base salary of pretty much minimum wage PLUS commission. However they never intended to pay us for our work which was advertised to me as an "Energy Consultant" where I would be helping companies select a good energy package. What it turned out to be was going door to door trying to sell energy to small businesses. However, most small businesses did not "qualify" for the bulk energy they were selling.in the end, the job is not only very physically, emotionally, and mentally stressful, but it is also NON-PAID!
After training and working one and a half weeks, I was still not convinced that the product was actually better than other energy suppliers. When questioning the current employees on how legitimate the product was, they simply told me stories and did not show me any evidence that their product actually saves people money. They spoke of "believing in the product" and one of the employees even yelled at me for doubting the company's integrity. To me, this is really shaddy. Not only were they making me sell their product door-to-door without paying me but they were not comfortable discussing the benefits of the product to me so that I can convey that information to clients.
What's even more shaddy about the company is that after calling it quits, I was told to sign an agreement that stated I was okay with not getting paid for my work and will not ever contact anyone from the company again. The first part, I really did not care about because I was simply so relieved that I was out of there. The second part kind of threw me off. From my experience with interviewing and working at other companies, I was always able to network with the employees even though I did not take the job or was not offered the job.
From a psychological point of view, this was (perhaps like their sales tactics) a game of mental manipulation.
In short, do not work for this company unless you want to do door-to-door sales for a cult disguised as a big corporation.
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