I was contacted by the human resources department after having applied to a job listing on Indeed. As a recent college graduate, I was open to various kind of positions, but I wanted to stay AWAY from anything related to sales (especially direct sales that involved cold-calling and door-to-door selling). The job I applied to at NLA was listed as "Client and Campaign Coordinator." HR reached out to me almost immediately after to ask a few brief, seemingly generic questions, and we set up an interview. I was excited that their office in Piscataway was a short commute from home. Their office is in a large building, which upon entering I realized it shared with several unrelated agencies. The woman who greeted me at the front desk of the NLA office was also the woman who had contacted me from HR. She was friendly but I was surprised that she handled HR right by the entrance. While I was waiting for my interviewer, she handed my a clipboard with several questions. Things like "Why were you interested in this position?" "what are you skills?" (yadda yadda). When I was filling it out, I overheard the HR woman calling at least three different applicants, hastily trying to bring in for interviews as well. I started realizing how rushed it all seemed.
Anyways, I finally got called into interview by a gentleman whose name I forget. He was incredibly young. I thought that was promising because, as a young person myself, I like knowing that management positions are accessible and don't take decades at the company to become a candidate for. What I noticed, however, is that he didn't seem to know where to hold the interview. He led me from one office to another, until we reached one that was vacant. I'm thinking "why the hell you don't have an office?" and I guess he could see it on my face because he said "sorry about that, my team hijacked my office for a meeting." Of course, it wasn't an issue, just something I kept in mind.
We finally got situated. He told me a little bit about the company. Essentially NLA was a sales, marketing, and communications company that handled a lot of high profile accounts. One of which was Verizon Fios. When I heard Verizon Fios was one, I panicked. A lot of my friends had been called into interviews for positions listed as "project coordinator" and "marketing executive," but when they got in they realized it was actually a charade and they would be doing door-to-door sales on behalf of Verizon Fios. I was praying this wasn't the case, but in a few short minutes of his attempt to further describe my role in the company, was that I would essentially be knocking on doors trying to get people to make Verizon Fios their service provider. I was pretty upset.
The bait question that he started me off with was "we offer a lot of leadership positions in this country after a very short entry level period where you'll learn on the field about what goes on in the day-to-day, is that something that you think you would be interested in" and of course it was. He kept reiterating that EVERYONE who starts at NLA is required to start at the entry level position (which I thought I had APPLIED FOR???). So essentially, if you wanted to work your way up to be a glorified mass-recruiter of vulnerable young people for a B.S. door-to-door sales job (which he was), then you had to be what I'm going to call a Verizon Fios girlscout for 6 or so months. I even said "I applied for a client/campaign coordinator position, is that still what I'll be doing? because this sounds like sales" and he once again said that EVERYONE starts at the same place, and works their way up to leading a team. I acted like I was interested in the secondary interview offer, I even scheduled it for the following week, but I had no intention of returning.
I think that it's really terrible that out-sourced agencies get to set up shop all over the country, under several different company names, and list jobs with incredibly misleading descriptions and titles, to lure people desperate to get their career started. I'm surprised this isn't a legal issue, but I hope that someone puts an end to this garbage.
