| Category | Rating |
|---|
| Pay | -4 |
| Respect | -5 |
| Benefits | -5 |
| Job Security | -3 |
| Work/Life Balance | -5 |
| Career Potential/Growth | -5 |
| Location | -1 |
| Co-worker Competence | -5 |
| Work Environment | -5 |
Like many who have posted before me, I was lured in with the offer of a management position, but informed that I would have to start as an agent and work my up the ranks. The company was also prepared to pay for my training and licensing fees. Being unemployed at the time, I figured that any opportunity was better than no opportunity at all. Little did I know what I was walking into.
I envy those reviewers who work six days a week, 8 hours a day, and are given leads (regardless of how seemingly bad those leads might be). In our office, we were expected to work nearly seventy hours a week: 8-8 on Monday and Wednesday, our phone days, 830-730 on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, and 830-530 on Saturday. I also worked evenings, early mornings, and Sundays from home (when I left, there was a move afoot to require agents to come into the office of Sunday, too), using the calling system, trying to schedule sales calls for myself. Additionally, I rarely received leads to call from---and all of my leads were of the "non-responder" variant, meaning that Bankers' had sent them a letter, but hadn't back from them, requesting a pamphlet. Very frequently the demographic information on the leads was incorrect. More frequently, though, I was expected to call from the phone book. There is cold-calling with this company--practically nothing but.
Perhaps the most annoying thing, though, was being made to spend three or four hours a week, calling prospective agents (really, just calling down a galley list of resumes pulled from CareerBuilder, HotJobs, Monster and the like), to try to talk them into coming in for a job orientation. Working for Bankers, you are situated as a 1099 independent contractor. As such, there are no particular benefits to speak of. Also, much is made of the "in business for yourself", but in reality, an agent has very little choice in the hours he or she works, or in the tasks he or she does. Finally, the commission structure is abysmal, and the turnover is terribly high. In our office, the high-earning agent made in the neighborhood of $40k a year. I leave that for you to decide, though, if that sounds like the sort of success story you need to become a part of. A long-tenured agent is considered to be one who has been there over five months.