Memories Again...

 

 

I’ve been on some sales job interviews back when you answered ads in the ProJo, sent in a paper resume and went through a tiered interview process. Two of those I tried for stick with me to this day. IDS Financial (now defunct) and Corey & DeWyre Insurance (also now defunct).

IDS was a firm that sold retail finance packages to anyone who had some retirement savings socked away. The trick was to convince those people to let IDS manage them. At the time, the early 90s, wasn’t such a great time to be investing in the market short term but if you were in it for the long haul, perhaps it would pay and it usually does.

Roy Halston

The guy who headed up the local IDS office in Providence, the sales manager, looked like Roy Halston, the designer. Every hair of his was in place, cleanly shaved and wore what I thought was the latest in men’s fashion for 1992. I could not identify the cologne he was wearing which was not noxious, he used the right amount. This guy’s airs tole me he knew he looked the part and played it. He oozed confidence to nearly seeming smug. You don’t get to run a sale’s office unless you’re the Top Dog in sales, repeatedly, and this guy must’ve had the interpersonal skills to read and then persuade people to make them part with their cash numerous times.

“That’s a European suit...where did you get it?” he asks me when I met him for the first interview. I was surprised he knew that it was. Euro suits have two slits in the back instead of the American single cut. I wasn’t about to tell him the truth that I bought it at a re-sale hole-in-the-wall shop in N. Providence. I didn’t know it was of Euro design till I had it tailored to fit me when the guy asked my if I knew that I had that kind of suit.

“Men’s Warehouse.” I lied as I answered the manager’s question. It was an evasion to hide how cheap I was. I wasn’t about tell him I spent a whole $50 for it.

“Really? I didn’t know that chain sold those kind of suits from Europe.” he says.

I sat there, looking around his office and was surprised at how austere it was. The desk was just, what seemed, a high quality dining room table. There were no pictures on it or piles of paper to process. Just a phone, a yellow legal pad and my resume. The rest of the office had a few plants, a small couch and just his awards and licenses on the wall. Very sparing I thought. What I was to learn later that this was a “fashion,” the office décor of successful finance types.

He goes on to tell me I would be selling $20,000 to over $2 million worth of product. The compensation would be a sliding percentage by commission. The more I sold, the higher the percentage.

“We have someone here who once sold $8 and half million dollars worth of our financial packages to one person. The company awarded him a 4% commission on that, $340,000 for two days work. That person was me.” I guess that’s one of the reasons he ran the office. When he told me that, he seemed rather proud, a bit too proud.

He goes on..

“Our process here is to throw the net out there, bring in applicants, you’d be surprise at what walks of life they come from. We hire only 2% of them. I and the home company in Chicago will decide on the final hires. Do you have any problems with taking tests?”

“No” I tell him.

“Great, let’s get started!”

I go into another room and the secretary brings me a booklet full of questions. She tells me I have a whole hour to finish it, where upon they send it off to Chicago and I’d be brought in for a second interview to discuss it and perhaps more.

I start the test and I realize it was a personality inventory. In college and at an old social work job, I immediately recognized it for what it was. What I couldn’t ascertain, was what it was measuring. You can tell what kind of test it was but not necessarily what it was assessing. The tests are designed like that and I won’t go into how they do it because it’ll take a whole ‘nother page and it would bore you. There was one test I saw, being designe, where it was looking for any psychotic personality traits and asked: “Does peach pie come out perfect every time?” Yes or No. Ah, one day I’ll explain it…

Since I know what this test is, I begin to feel annoyed that I’m being probed for something I cannot figure out and deeply too I bet. So I start purposely answering the questions in any damn way I want, randomly. All of them.

Two weeks later, Halston guy brings me back in for the second interview.

“We got your results back...they couldn’t make heads or tails of them so they put it to one of the psychologists..he says you’re “foxy and dodgy...squirrely...not easy to get a fix on.”

I sat there with my poker face saying...”Who? Me?” But I was kind of surprised that they figured out that much. That my intentionally trying to avoid an honest assessment of who I was was showing up on the test. So what, I wasn’t happy this corporation was trying to sneak a deep peek into me and purposely threw the test like a rigged mafia boxing match.

Halston goes on, with an annoyed look on his face. “We need people who, on the surface, are honest, open, seemingly free of deceit...a...”look” or “countenance” they have…that on first look engenders trust in the customer. First get the customer’s trust, then persuade them to purchase.”

He was saying I wasn’t it. No problem. I wasn’t interested when I had found out a few days after the test, had I passed, that I’d have to spend a month in Chicago for training. Training meant this in sales circles. I’d be intensely competing with others from across the country picked for those few 2% job openings. The contest can be ruthless and I’d be going up against people who had few ethics or morals. So I shook Halston’s hand off I went.

**

I saw it again at an insurance sales jobs I went to in Milford MA, the austere office with the expensive Ethan Allen like dining room table for the desk and an office with little else in it. I began to wonder why these sales guys decorated like this as  seeing this was becoming common. It spoke of Puritan restraint to me, denial of self and the world. Or that’s what they wanted everyone else to see and think.

The sales manager this time was very polite, much older guy. He too was impeccably dressed and if he had any hair, that too would be in place. We sat and spoke of my background and he lit up when he saw I went to Saint Raphael’s. How he knew it I don’t know.

“You were taught by DeLasallians? They’re brutal! You have to be well educated if you graduated. This will help with the position we have.”

“I wasn’t in the top ten of the class...I was in the top 20%...which is OK I guess. Nothing stellar.” I tell him.

“No matter, you have the background to analyze...you have to have it spending time with them…they're like the Jesuits...Nuts.” he says. Later on in life, I’d hear that from others as well. DeLasallians were Jesuit-Lite and that true Jesuits could be wholly insane in their zealotry.

The position was to sell insurance products to homeowners and small businesses. He assured me that once I got going, that within a year I’d be making $50,000 as a fresh new comer, if I had the chops. In time as I learned, it would go up. What opened my eyes were what he called “residuals.” If the customer stayed with the company for years, I’d still be collecting a cut from their policy, as long as they held it. Every year they paid the insurance premium, 2% of that would end up in my pocket. So the trick was to sell as many and as expensive policies as I could.

The interview ended well and he walked me out. In the foyer, I shook his hand and told him the date for the second interview would work. I walked to my car and I noticed him watching me from that foyer, not leaving.

As I sat in the car, he comes out, walking a bit hurriedly to my car and I roll down the window when he comes. He then asks this odd question out of the blue.

“Have you ever, in your past, ever have to deal with some pretty unfair situations, where you had to struggle...thinking there isn’t a light at the end of the tunnel? That it’s all for nothing?”

“Yeah, sure..medical problems in my family. I had to play nurse/psychologist/Dr/cabbie...only to know all these efforts will end in death due to their terminal illness.” I tell him.

“Thank you! Thank you!” he says and quickly turns and leaves.

I drive off wondering what the hell that was all about.

A day later I get a curt call cancelling the second interview w/o explanation.

Years later, I was talking to a sales manager at an Irish pub and I told him the same story.

“That was a trick question.” I was told. “He wanted to know if you’ve ever dealt with ugliness...and if you had, he knew you didn’t have that silly optimism other people have who lived an easy, charmed life. He wanted sales people who were perpetually assured of success as their lives so far, have given them that. He wanted people who never had been exposed to adversity. What you’ve been exposed to...has changed you in ways you probably can’t see and it can be a determent in sales.”

I guess he wanted unfailingly happy horseshit people who exude bright sunny, springtime mornings. That ain’t me, I know otherwise how life can be.