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Today Chloe and I FINALLY went to the beach. Yes thats right we've been in Sydney for 12 days now, and this was the first of which we actually took the liberty to set our towels down on a sandy shore, looking upon the vastness of the pacific and, as cliche as it sounds, the large numbers of surfers who occupied the relatively shallow parts of its depths. And which beach did we go to you ask? Bondi perhaps? no...... Coogee maybe? guess again........ Manly was in fact our chosen destination. For those who know nothing of the Sydney suburb, it is located in the north west part of the city away from the hustle and bustle of the rocks and the touristy harbours of Darling and Circular Quay. That being said, Manly itself is, to a degree, brimming with travellers. This brings me to a thought which has been brewing in my mind since arrival into Sydney's CBD and surrounding inner city areas. There appears to actually be very little Australians here, at least very little out in the open. The hostel we stayed in, as you would expect, hosted a diverse variation of varying nationalities, the majority of which were European and particularly British. Yet even a large proportion of those who worked at the hostel were not Australian nationals, while the streets of Sydney seem to compromise large amounts of citizens who hail from East Asian nations, such as China and Thailand or at least, were descended from these countries and have since settled. The lack of obvious cricket loving, surf boarding, didgeridoo playing Aussie's has been further evident in the two job interviews I have attended. The first of these, a Telesales role saw me interviewed by a lady from North England (God knows where specifically), who introduced me to one of their workers whose thick London dialect I could detect with ease, as well as the man sat next to him. The lady preceded to give me another interview with a team leader, who was more Irish than a leprechaun eating potato's. Although my other job interview was run by a typical Australian 'blokey' the 5 out of the 7 interviewees were English, while one of the other 2 Australians lived a fair way out of Sydney city centre anyway. This job interview by the way, was for a sales focused role, fundraising for a charity, involving a based rate and commission. I could not hide my discontent for half an hour or so this morning after receiving an email saying I had not be offered the job. It is with this in mind that i'm now going to have my rant about 'some' sales interviews and the bizarre and frankly pointless tasks you can be asked to carry out..... I'd like to point out at this stage that not all sales people or organisations involved in the selling of products and/or services will recruit their sales people in the ways I am describing and criticizing, indeed the telesales interview I recently went to gave a fair and orthodox procedure for assessing whether or not I will be suitable for their job and organisation. I am to hear back from them on Friday, but whatever result I get back I expect to be a fair one. So as stated, I did not get the fundraising job which I applied for and for which I attended an interview for yesterday. The fact that I am bothered about not getting it, is down more to the relative, or appeared relative easiness of attaining such a job, as well as the caliber of candidates that I met on the day of assessment. I was only 1 of 2 there who had a degree and with that the only one with a degree in Business. I was probably the only one of the two of us who had gained a First, taking into consideration the fact that only 10-15% of people do so in the UK and almost definitely would be the only one of us who had their dissertation published. Before I go any further let me put this into context.... I am not a snob, I do not by any means believe that having a strong academic degree grade at an above average university gives me automatic entitlement to a job over others with little or no qualifications above GCSE and A level or equivalent. My personal academic background wasn't even very strong pre-university, having gained 10 GCSE's half of which were C's with a few B's and A's thrown in and a BBD score for my A levels. I've always been someone who has had a job, i've worked in a wide variety of industries undertaking roles including pizza deliverer, shelf stacker, waiter, barman, admin assistant, telesales operative, receptionist, ice rink operator, purchase ledger clerk and customer service adviser. At 21 years old I think thats a great achievement and proof of my ability to adapt to situations, communicate with various types of people and develop new skills. I have always been a sociable person too, participating in sport, even to county levels and was chosen as a captain by both school and club as a teenager. I even studied abroad at an American University for a semester 2 years ago, if that isn't enough evidence to suggest the all round type of person I am then please tell me what is? My point in all of this is this, I might be a graduate with a decent degree, but that doesn't mean I stroll in with my certificate expecting to be hired at a welcoming handshake. I am instead, someone who I believe possesses the skills necessary to be successful in at least a small sales role for the time being. Sadly at interviews everything about you on paper seems to be forgotten, or actually is the opposite actually true? I respect the fact that sales recruiters are required to find the best people possible, and as part of that process they must set out criteria to which they must also devise a series of ways to test you, be that by the conventional norms of asking questions in a boardroom style format or by more modern techniques, some of which to me are unnecessary and pointless. Yesterday was quite possibly the tip of the iceberg for me in this regard. The day started well, 'Daniel', the name of the recruiter had the seven of us into a boardroom, told us a bit about the company and how the pay scale worked. He preceded to ask us to introduce ourselves one by one and tell him why we wanted to work in the role, how our friends would describe us and just generally talk about our lives. This seems to be done in most job interviews to an extent, though it is usually in a one to one format as opposed to an open group of candidates which I've had in every sales or recruitment job I've gone to (except the Telesales job I went to the other day). Why sales and recruitment assessments are different to the rest of the world really is a mystery to me. The companies and individuals who set up and carry out these open ended discussions would say that when looking at candidates, they want to see how confident people are infront of a group who they don't know because sales involves meeting new customers on a regular basis. Thats fair enough, but its almost suggesting that sales is so incredibly unique to any other job, I mean do other roles in business not involve meeting different people everyday and require the ability to be a confident and assertive individual? customer service? logistics? Finance? Management? Speaking from personal experience, I went to an assessment day for a logistics management graduate scheme for a large and growing organisation by the name of GIST who offered a very generous package of £25,000 a year + various incentives and a company who you would be proud to work for. The assessment day involved simply a one on one interview and a tour around one of their depot centers. After progression to the final stage which was another assessment centre, yes I was required to do group work and then a presentation on my own, but not at any point was I forced upon to just talk and talk spontaneously about how great I was infront of every other candidate then passing it over to someone else to do the same. Remember this was for a management scheme, not a low down, poorly paid sales role chatting to people on the street. As I have said in other words, the environment set out by the open style group sales/recruitment interview promotes vain and cliche comments, fake smiles and a degree of acting. Words most commonly used when describing yourself in such a place are bubbly, outgoing, confident, energetic, crazy, fun etc etc etc, I myself have fallen prey to it, though I try my best to stay clear of being fake and losing all dignity as much as I can while maintaining the confident and communicative character I believe that I honestly do possess. But what really comes out of such environments is this, instead of learning more about the personalities of its candidates, the recruiter is simply learning who can balls*** the most about how they can 'talk the hind legs off a donkey' and 'develop a rapport' with just about anyone, ranging from David Beckham to Bashar al-assad. They set about proving this by slipping in terrible jokes and forcing smiles throughout the process. I found this at an assessment day for a recruitment role before leaving for Australia, by this point I was not going to take the job anyway because of my travel plans but thought going for the experience would be worthwhile. One girl I noticed throughout to be particularly irritating, trying to be funny at any opportunity and cosying up to the assessor at any given opportunity. She went blatantly up at the end to shake the lady's hand in an overly gracious and thankful manner as if she'd just bought her tickets to see Justin Bieber at the NIA (she looked the type who liked that kind of thing.) The other streotype you get is the 'Jack the lad' who believes that the 'gift of the gab' he possesses, based on the fact that he has no English GCSE, 'doesn't read much' and has played some Sunday league football means he can sell. I'm all for being polite and asserting yourself in interviews, or fitting the stereotype that a recruiter is looking for, (in sales that often seems to be one of or generally more than one of the following; being loud and annoying, kissing ass, having some kind of accent and a cheeky smile and telling everyone multiple times how outgoing you are) but is it really necessary to do it in a way that is so obvious? The unfortunate thing is that in sales and recruitment it seems to actually work. Recruiters either strangely don't see through the transparency or actually want people to be fake. I'd like to think that sales requires more than just being a loud, in your face type person who can pretend to get on with anyone. Surely you can sell if you're persuasive, a good communicator and a decent, honest but assertive and confident person too, without being fake and unintelligent. Throughout the process of my assessment for this fundraising role, I believed I conducted myself in a way that would suggest I could be a good salesman in the mold of the attributes I have just listed and would not suggest that by any means I was marginally worse than anybody else who was considered for the role. However, there was one aspect of the assessment of which I under performed and believe that this was the reason I did not get the job, it is also (quite coincidentally of course) the part of the assessment procedure I found to be most ridiculous and for me symbolizes all that is wrong with certain sales recruiters. After initially introducing ourselves, 'Daniel' took us outside onto the street to take part in a couple of tasks which really took the biscuit. The first one was straightforward, we were required to walk along a designated area in the street and try and get as many names of charities from people as we could, simply by asking them their favourite charity, or by any other means, the only rule against this was that we were not allowed to say that we were in the process of a job assessment. This part of the assessment was undoubtedly the best bit for me, I obtained 15 answers in total, more than anyone else, in the 2 minutes we were given. The problem for me was that according to Daniel this was just the 'warm up.' The next task was a lot more tricky and even more ridiculous. We were to go a step further from merely obtaining a one word answer from the public and were expected to stop someone from walking and talk to them for as long as 3-5 minutes, or as long as we possibly could. The most frustrating aspect of this second task was, in my view the advantage that the female sex had. With me and just one other lad in the process and the others being girls we already had a difficulty with attracting attention. I know some people here will not agree with me, but in my personal opinion it makes a difference. Lets be honest here, if a guy comes up to me and starts asking random questions i'll either ignore him completely or tell him to piss off, if a pretty girl on the other hand stops me in the streets and smiles, i'm a sucker for it, all men are, it doesn't mean anything its just how we are, easily flattered, sad I know. It would be fair if the opposite were true. But a man going up to a woman in the street randomly and asking questions will 99% of the time result in the girl looking at you as if you're crazy or some kind of stalker. Of course this is not to say I could have still not done a better job of carrying out this task, but from what I saw the other guy wasn't having a great time of it either. The other bone I have to pick with this task is simply this..... luck. The time period was 5 minutes, it was impossible simply to find a way of just stopping anyone and it seemed to be as though the amount of available people on the street decreased from tasks one and two as well as the availability of native English speakers. I came across many East Asian people who I did try to talk to but who waved me away, smiling and shaking their heads as if to say 'no speak English.' My overriding point over these two issues draws me to a paradox with mathematical probabilities. The term 'all things being equal' comes to mind in this respect, and by all means there was nothing equal about this task, it was more like playing Russian roulette and I seemed to be the one who blew my brains out. That being said I just about managed to speak to a couple of people, one a teacher on a school trip with his pupils for around 1 minute, then a 25 year old Chinese women for about 2-3 minutes, who I later admitted was moving very slowly and possibly was already standing still (against the rules of the task). But somebody please tell me, what Daniel was gaining by watching me and other candidates try and strike up a conversation about just about anything with complete strangers? I know what the common sense answers will be to that. Yes, ok they want to see how you an connect with people, how you can communicate with them, and keep them interested, because obviously in the role that is being offered, you will be consistently meeting new people and attempting to sell to them. But there is a big, big difference between that and the true realities of selling. After obtaining the job I would have been given pre conceived knowledge of exactly what it was I needed to keep people interested in, before actually selling it to them. In my head, therefore I would have a clear goal and aim as well as a clear understanding of the best way to approach people to connect with them by use of the knowledge that I have. Ok yes, you could argue that in this task I should have thought on my feet more and just gone with the flow of somehow making something up completely and feeding a load of rubbish to a random streetwalker, possibly tell them that i'm making a film and need them as an actor (as the other males candidate at my assessment did). This, however is something i'm generally not great at, again its a type of acting, being fake and all that jazz I listed above. This whole idea of 'thinking on your feet' I really think is another misconception that seems to be related to sales roles. Every interview i've been to, they always seem to drum in this idea that you have to have the ability to make stuff up almost. I found an example of this at a graduate sales job interview that I went to last year while at university for a company called Softcat. I was asked 5 attributes a good salesman should have, one of which I said was a grasp of product knowledge. I was told by the interviewer, who also happened to be the person who would manage me if successful, that this was basically rubbish and that you had to 'wing' sales a lot of the time. Some will say they understand where he is coming from and I know what they're thinking, yes you do need to sometimes be able to think quickly without not always knowing the facts in order to keep the customer interested and sometimes you need to nod and smile as if to say you agree when actually you have no idea what somebody is talking about. no doubt this is part of what makes someone good in a sales role. But this man was suggesting to me that a firm base of knowledge for what you're selling was practically irrelevant. The concept of task 2 for the fundraising role, for me, created that same feeling of having to start from scratch and develop a random conversation without any real reason. I realise now that I should have taken it upon myself to create a scenario where I was doing some form of survey for the company, I could have at least then made a few things up which made sense in my head, but it still would have been associated with this nonsense about 'thinking on your feet' taken to the absolute extreme. The final part of the assessment involved a short interview just with Dan, finally a standard one to one format with sensible questions about what i've done, my skills etc... oh no wait another pointless task. This was to see how convincing and persuasive I was when attempting to sell an idea to him. I was asked to pick something I was passionate about and persuade him to do it. After choosing rugby he told me to convince him to go and watch a game. Despite his consistent references in the role play, to how he preferred the pace of rugby league to union I believe I gave a sufficient response and was satisfied with what I said. To be fair, it wasn't as stupid as the task I was given in the recruitment interview I mentioned earlier, in which I was told to convince the recruiter to run the marathon. Again, I get the point of the exercise, but does it really tell you a lot about someone, really? And is there no reason whatsoever, that on this one occasion that person may just get it wrong? And does this one occasion in which they don't convince you mean that they won't ever be able to be more persuasive in the near or distant future? And what does this actually tell you about them? that they can't make something up basically. The biggest issue I have against these types of exercises is that they simply aren't serious enough. Personally they make me feel as though I'm back in the classroom being asked to perform a small play with the typical loud and obnoxious personalities who see it as the best part of their day. A time when they can escape the harsh realities of life and hard work. Sales, really doesn't seem to always find the people who work hard or at least what I would call hard work. Quite ironic when you consider that it is another buzzword used amongst those that apply. Don't get me wrong, some sales people are obviously grafters, but so am I and I think having a strong academic degree, coupled with various other pursuits and a number of part time jobs over the years reflects that rather than discounts it. Yet in certain interviews it feels as though being this way can work against you, 'you're too intelligent,' 'you've done too much in your life already,' you must lack skills in communication.' You're degree is devalued and used against you, and employees often speak to you as if they are threatened by its existence. Indeed I was told by one sales manager who did actually offer me a job that my degree 'summed up' was basically that acquiring more revenue and reducing cost equals profit (I rejected the offer accordingly.) Ultimately what It means that if you seem above or not perfectly tuned to the exercises set in the assessment then you're a gonna straight away and yes I did hang myself for this assessment in regards to task two but to be honest, from what i've seen I doubt being it would have really made any difference. If there was even a shred of doubt in the recruiters mind all Daniel had to do was take a glance at my resume and read the words 'BA (hons) First class grade achieved' - definitely not a sales person.
- comments
Chris Alex, you are a genius and write so well and you know what, you are right. Rest assured I have never recruited salesmen like that. The best salesmen I have employed are honest hard working communicators with a real desire to succeed. The job probably would have driven you mad. Their loss!