Sales Positions, Unpaid Internships, and 10% Unemployment...Oh My!

by , Mar 27, 2010

The following is a guest post by Andre, a current MBA student and a blogger for The Dirt. Andre is writing a series for Beat The GMAT to share a bluntly honest perspective of life in business school. Beat The GMATs editorial staff purposely left his article in its original raw (and entertaining) form.

In todays article, Andre shares a recent experience interviewing for a sales position; he also vents some frustration about the tough job market. With out further ado, here is Andre:

So I mentioned before that I had an interview this week with a company, which i was pretty excited about. Oh how naive I was.

First let me preface this story by saying that out of nowhere last week i got offered two job interviews within about an hour. When it rains it pours, I guess (fitting since it was pouring on the east coast for about 3 days straight). The first job, which I was basically almost 95% sure that I was going to get, was to be a Bond Analyst for a smaller finance firm. It sounded really cool, but the problem was its meant I had to work about 40+ hours a week, and on top of that be a full time student. Feel free to let that sink in. Ill wait....

Yeah, basicallyme = no life. I would probably wake up at 7am, commute, get to work, work until 5 (at least) and have class until 9pm, and get home at 10.5 days a week. Not to mention I would probably have to put in some overtime, and find out how to do homework in the meantime. Oh, and theres the pesky student organization that I am VP of. So, Yeah, that wasnt going to work out. Oh Well.

So then I had this interview for this week. Do you want to know what the interview was for? It was a sales position. Thats right, a sales position. You know, send emails, you pick up phones...which is fine i guess, for a short term type thing, but lets be honest, i didnt want to do that for the rest of my life. "Well, I wouldnt mind a sales position to get a better understanding ofthecompany, as long as it allowed me to, in the long term of course, move into some other field in the company, like maybe finance, which would make better use of my degree. I would love to find a company I could grow with."

Several akwardseconds passed by.The guy looked at me like I had run over his puppy.

"Well, the sales people were looking for we would mostlikelywant them to remain in sales."

Thats not what I really was looking for, so the meeting ended, sort of akwardly, and i left the interview, rather confused. Which led me to ask myself, and hopefully some recruiters who frequent this site, thefollowingquestion...

Why in the &%!% are you trying to hire MBAs for Sales positions?!?!

Are...You...Kidding me? Do you think im getting an MBA so that i can get paid 12$ an hour to pick up a goddamn phone? Really?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWb1K0kdDxQ[/youtube]

Its a basic concept people, its called Return on Investment (ROI). Why would i plunk 60,000$+ down on a degree so that I could essentially dowhat anyone with ahigh schooldiploma could do.

Now dont get me wrong, sales people are crucial in any economy (my dad was an excellent salesman), but heres the thing about sales people (especially entry level sales position)...they dont need specialized training! and they certainly dont need an MBA! You are either a sales person or you arent, its not like once you get an MBA, voila!, you can now sell stuff! Any good sales person isnt a good sales person because they took a class in selling, its just something that you happen to be really good at! You ever see the matrix? you know the part where Neo asks the prophet lady if hes "the One?" and she tells him being "the one" is just something you feel and know, you cant be told you are one. THE SAME PRINCIPAL APPLIES WITH SALES PEOPLE!

So that interview sucked, but at least it was a good practice interview. But what kills me is that on top of that, i keep getting sent emailsfrommy career counselor about unpaid internships. Unpaid internship...that just kills me. I wonder if companies do this kind of crap just to see if they can run some kids into the ground for free just for sheer entertainment. I can understand if its a company that im really interested in, but its just hilarious reading these companiesbeggingasking students to join their unpaid internships to get units, free keychains, or whatever other crap they have lying around the office. I expect this type of thing if your fresh out of undergraduate and have a summer to kill, but seriously, some of the people in my MBA program are in their 40's, do you really expect them to spend a summer killing themselves for 2 units of credit? Or get an exciting opportunity to see the exciting world of...being the CFO's assistantassistantsassistant?

10% unemployment or not, throw me a frikkin bone here people.

Until next time...

Read more posts by Andre in his blog, The Dirt.