The a person from the "company" contacted me by phone saying she reviewed my resume on a website and wanted to see if I was interested in joining their company.
When I asked about the nature of the job, I was told I am going to be managing an account and that they work with a big mobile phone company and many fortune 500 companies and that they are trying to expand in the Milwaukee area. When I asked about the pay, I was told it is base salary + commission. She reluctantly disclosed that the base pay is between 42 to 82k.
I went in to the face to face interview and was greeted by an empty office space with 2 people, both skeleton staff and not working the position I'm applying for. The person from the phone took me into a small office and started with asking screening questions. (see below) After hearing my answers, she told me that she would love to have her boss meet with me. Then she realized that she needed to ask me if I had any questions, I asked "What exactly is the job about?" She then said the boss will answer that, and then proceeded (much like a car salesman) to repeat what I had said about myself as the qualities that they're looking for.
The next step was to shadow an existing employee. Mind you I hadn't signed anything yet so this was a sort of a weird orientation that was before I even met the boss let alone got my questions answered by him.
The shadowing started off by going to a local business (who is ostensibly a consenting potential customer) and trying to sell them a phone plan that they clearly didn't want. After harassing them and leaving, the rest of the places we went to were a comedy of errors and fumbles and walk-ins to several places that were in no way consenting and were pointing out the flaws in the phone plan "deal".
As we drove from customer to potential victim, I had a chance to be lectured about how good the company is, how good the job is, and how much potential money I would be making pushing a shoddy deal to people who didn't want it. This gave me time to ask the questions that came to mind as the red flags had reached critical mass. The first obvious question is how much the base salary was. I was unsurprised that there is really no base salary and that she had never heard of the option to have a base salary. My next question was about compensation. We were in her own car, driving all over Milwaukee for several hours. I asked how much the compensation is per mile or hour of driving. Again unsurprisingly she said the boss is going to go over it with you. I immediately felt that my line of questioning had caused her to think that she had already said too much.
Once the drive was over, I was back at "HQ", eager to get my questions answered. She left me and the other potential hire who was with us in the office, while she went to find the boss. She came back 2 mins later saying that the boss is not going to be seeing us because he had left for Chicago. Oookay. The boss who was going to answer all of the questions, who we hadn't seen up to this point, is not going to be there at the appointed time. He was going to give us a call. This brought back car dealership tactics again.
I asked when I could see him face to face because I felt I deserved a face to face with the person who I was told was going to love to meet with me and answer all my (red flag) questions. I was told they don't know and that he will call when he's available.
Angrily, I decided to leave, saying to not bother calling me, if the person who I am scheduled to meet with cannot keep his appointments and wastes people's time, and mentioned that I was going to write online about my experience.
20 minutes after I left, I get a phone call from the elusive boss. He started by apologizing and quickly turned it into a discussion about my review. He even offered me money not to publish my review and joking said that they didn't want any negative reviews.