I had reservations about this company, but had recently lost my job and needed to relocate to a specific city for family reasons. This looked like a good opportunity because they were recruiting people for the area I was moving to "due to their rapid growth". So I had an initial "interview" at a hotel.
The gentleman I met didn't strike me as very professional and he certainly didn't look like any consultant I had ever met. There was a lot of innuendo in the conversation about how to drive clients to use their services and it came across to me as being a little shady... A lot of sly grins and winks when I asked questions about how they do business, how we get paid, what their client retention rate was, what their success rate was, and how we secure consulting agreements. However, I really needed a job so I thought I would keep going through the process.
I was surprised the next week to learn that I had become an "approved candidate" after what had amounted to a very superficial 45 minute conversation in a hotel suite.
I then spoke to a Mr. Barry who was "Chief of Survey" and that's when I realized I needed to run as fast as I could and get away from this company. I had a list of questions regarding the pay structure, the employment agreement, the training, expense reimbursement, the benefit plans, etc. Nothing unreasonable, just basic questions anyone would ask before joining a company, especially since none of these things were spelled out in a straightforward manner in any of their recruiting / hiring documents.
Mr. Barry seemed clearly irritated by my questions and basically just wanted to know "was I going to join or not?" He told me they had a training class starting next week and he needed to know where I stood on joining. I told him I needed more time than a week because I was interviewing with some other companies. We agreed to touch base the next month.
The next month, I received an e-mail from Mr. Barry's administrative assistant asking me to call him. I did so, telling him that I still had some unanswered questions. Mind you, these were not unreasonable questions, they were basic things about the compensation plan, clients, consulting approach they use, etc. Mr. Barry became almost belligerant on the phone when I asked these questions and when I said I needed some more time to think, he cut me off mid-sentence and said, that's fine... Goodbye, then hung up. Overall, I thought he conducted himself extremely unprofessionally, using "bush league" high pressure tactics ("this position won't be open long so don't wait" - even though their turnover is obviously through the roof) and behaving in a very belligerant and angry manner that bordered on the bizarre.
I thought to myself, I wonder how they handle clients and employees if this is the way they handle recruits? So here were the concerns I came away with:
1) How could I be an approved candidate after a 45 minute conversation where the George S May interviewer asked me virtually nothing about my background, skills, consulting experience, etc.? Why did the recruiter have absolutely no interest in understanding whether I had a background that was appropriate for this type of role? He mainly seemed interested in whether or not I was willing to close hard and take the risk associated with being on 100% commission.
2) Why was the compensation plan so confusing and convoluted, with so many caveats?
3) Why were they so vague about expense reimbursement, benefits, turnover rates, their consulting approach, their client retention rate, their training program, their "sales" process, etc.?
4) Why would the "Chief of Survey" use belligerant, high pressure tactics on the phone with a prospective recruit, and if he conducted himself in that manner while I was recruit, how would he conduct himself when I was an employee?
5) Why was I being asked to memorize a 2 page document (the infamous "constitutional") and being told I had to recite it for prospective clients, word for word, at the start of each consulting survey?
6) Why did I have to pay for the cost of my travel to the training upfront and be reimbursed later if this was a company with an 80 year tradition of consulting excellence?
7) Why did the entire recruiting process and all their recruiting materials look so cheesy if this was such a successful company?
8) Why did they seem to bend over backwards on their website with all these certifications and statements to show how "ethical" their business practices are? In the words of a great writer, they "doth protest too much"...
I ended up doing some digging with contacts I have in the consulting industry, and none of them had anything good to say about George S. May - both from a client perspective and from an employee perspective.
My opinion is that they prey on desperate companies to gain clients, using high pressure tactics, canned sales approaches to scare clients into action, and questionable promises of value.
They appear to take a similar approach with prospective employees, looking for people that have lost their job and are in a desperate enough situation to take a risk (against their better judgement). My guess would be that they run through employees like toilet paper.
Please keep in mind that these are just my impressions. I may have a different tolerance for risk and a different standard of professionalism than you do. Maybe there are plenty of satisfied George May clinets and lots of very happy, fulfilled employees. But the intuition I developed from my 15 years as a business executive told me this was a shady organization and one that I would be better off avoiding.
I would recommend taking a very, VERY hard look at this company before joining as an employee or signing on as a client. Ask a LOT of detailed hard questions and trust your intuition.
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