Complaint Review: New Business Concepts - Natick Massachusetts

In December of 2013 I was looking for a job when I came across a position on Indeed.com. The job was for some company called New Business Concepts (they're called "The New England Team" now and you'll see why they change their name a lot). The position was advertised as an "Entry Level Sales and Marketing" job with paid training, and no experience required. I figured I might as well apply and within just a few hours I got a call from them. That should have been my first warning something was up, but I was desperately looking for a job and was just happy to get a response to an aplication. They scheduled an interview with me for the very next day.

Now, I've always been told it's good to research the company you're interviewing with to learn as much as you can about them and show your interviewer that you're interested. However when I went to their website, I found it told me little to nothing about the company and just had some (most likely fake) pictures of people doing business. This should have been red flag number two, but I figured I would just have to wait for the interview to learn about the company. I went in for the interview and saw several other people around my age (early 20s and or recent college graduates). I was eventually called in and met with some woman who I guess was the HR director, the interview lasted maybe 10 minutes tops. All she told me was that they work with fortune 500 clients and curently do outsource marketing for Verizon Fios, and that I would learn all about how the company works if I was selected for a second round interview. I had no idea how they would have enough information to determine whether they would want to have me for a second round interivew, but sure enough I got a phone call later that night saying they wanted me to come back the next day. In retrospect, the first interview was just to see if I was a warm bodied individual who could dress myself and speak English at a first grade level. I suspect if you meet that criteria you get called back for a second interview.

I went back for my second round interview and this time met with one of the people known as a team leader. He took me to the local Dunkin Donuts for a cup of coffee and went over how the company works with me. Basically he said that they have a program where you start as an entry level for about a month making 400-600 a week. Then you get promoted to team leader, his level, and make something like 600-1000 a week. After a year or so of that you become an assistant manager, and eventually you become a manager and get to open your own office and ultimately make 80-100K a year. Now this is all bull**** of course, seldom do people actually make it to management and from what I understand you personally don't actually make 80-100K. It's also almost impossible to really make those numbers as the job is pure commison, more on that later though. Anyways he then went to explain what the work of the company was. Basically he said that Verizon provided them with a list of people who were potentially interested in switching their service to Fios and it was our job to meet with them and discus the perks of Fios, and offer them various packages and what not. He made it clear to me that the people we'd be meeting with knew that we were coming and Verizon took care of finding all the leads. We then went back to the office and he told me he'd talk to the boss and see if he could get me a final third round interview, and that I would recieve another phone call that evening letting me know. Now by this point I really wanted to get the job, the pay sounded good, it seemed like they had a nice training program, and most importantly it wasn't cold call sales, so I thought the job would be easy enough.

Well surprise surpise, I got invited for a third round interview the next day with the big boss of the company. We talked for about 10-15 minutes and he basically wanted to see if I had any issues about whether or not I'd be able to do the job, of course I said I didn't. He also confrimed that the people we met with knew we were coming, and he also mentioned you could chose if you wanted to work on pure commisson or start off with a base bay and then a percentage of the commisson, but ultimately you would make more on pure commission. That was also a lie as I later found out the job was pure commison and it was hard to make the figures mentioned before. Anyways I was once again told that I would receive a call later that night letting me know either way if I got the job, and of course I got the call that night saying I got the job and would begin my training that Monday, which struck me as odd seeing as it was the week of Christmas, but whatever I had a job. 

Now over the weekend I had talked with someone who told me he had heard of jobs like the one I just got and said he thought it could be a scam. This made be do a bit of research and I came across a company called Cydcor, a lot of the companies that are subsidaries of Cydcor sounded similar to New Business Concepts, but I didn't see any reviews about them specifically. Remember how I said they change their name sometimes? This is one of the reasons why. So anyways that Monday, the 23rd of December, I went in cautious, but hoping my new job wasn't one of those scams I had read about. All I really did that day was fill out a bunch of paperwork but I noticed one of the forms mentioned Cydcor as the parent company. This made me feel uneasy, but I decided I would give it a chance and wait and see what the fieldwork was like before I would make a decision.

After a two day hiatus for Christmas, I went back in for more training with a few more entry levels. The stuff we went over made it sound like the job was basically door to doors sales, something I was told the job was not going to be at all. After a few hours of that they let us go home and said we would do fieldwork the next day. In the parking lot I talked to another entry level and we both agreed that if the job ended up being door to door sales we would probably quit. So the next day we went in and after a few hours of dicking around the office, oh right, I should mention that the hours spent in the office before going out into the field are very unproductive. All the team leader level people seemed like a bunch of frat boys who just like to drink beers and play video games. Anyways after doing nothing important in the office for a few hours, the team leader I had my second round interview with took me out in the field and we drove about a half hour away to the town of Hopedale. While driving he pulled out a list of customers in town that he was supposed to meet with, he also wasn't wearing his seatbelt the whole drive. As we arrived he called the local police department to tell them he was going to be working in the area for the afternoon. There was just something sketchy about that. 

As we began working it became apparent that while Verizon does provide you with a list of potential cutomers, it's just people in various neighborhoods that don't already have Fios and it's our job to try to convince them to switch, and they had no idea we were coming at all. That's right folks, the job was the definition of door to door sales, even though I was explicitly told that it wasn't. So now I'm stuck with this guy who's way more enthusiatic than one should be who does door to door sales for a living, sadly he was probably brianwashed by the system. We walked around in the sub freezing tempuratures for hours and most people either aren't home or just aren't interested. He was able to make two sales towards the end of the day, which of course made him all full of himself. By the time we got back to the office it was almost 9 PM and he told me I should just head home since everybody was probably already gone. He did mention some stupid bell ringing ceremony that they typically do at the end of the day which I've read about from other people complaining about Cydor jobs. By this point though I had enough information to go on, and the next day I went in, spoke with the head of the office and told him I wasn't interested in this job anymore.

If you see a job posting out there, and there's a lot of them on the major job boards out there, keep an eye out for jobs with websites that offer little to no descrpition, and say they're entry level sales and or marketing with no experience required. If you decide to chance it and go for an interview, watch out for the bullshit managment program I described above. I got the hell out of there but some people aren't as lucky. I know this company is still opperating under the name "The New England Team" and I know there's thousands of other companies like this across the country. Maybe if they were honest about what they do instead of lying and wasting people's time they wouldn't have such a bad reputaion and wouldn't have to be litterally always hiring. Anyways just be careful when job hunting and look for the red flags mentioned in here.