Office hours are 7:30-5:30, not 8 to 5. If I got to the office after 7:30, I felt late. And you will be dressed to kill -sharp clothes, full hair and makeup. Part of the job, I kid you not, is looking absolutely beautiful every day. It's kind of unsaid, but your looks are part of the sell. The Zone meeting happens at 8 on the dot every morning, and you have to be 100% prepared to start your day after the meeting. For 8 months or longer, you'll be recruiting. I know they tell you it won't be very long til you get promoted, but I didnt' see anyone in that office get it before 8 months. or longer.
As a recruiter, after Zone you will sit down with an account manager and learn about the position you've been assigned to. This is probably the loudest part of the day -everyone is in the office, calls are coming in, people are yelling across the office, and everyone is trying to get what they need from the account managers before they're out the door. You'll jump into career builder and monster and "smile and dial," which means just calling people all day every day. Some will be really nice, some will cuss you out and hang up on you. Eventually, you start cold calling on managers at HP, Verizon, etc. to get new business for IGI. Some managers will be nice, some will hang up on you.
You get 1 hour for lunch. 11:30-12:30 or 12:30-1:30. If you leave at 12:45, that doesn't mean you get to come in at 1:45. You just gave up 15 minutes of your lunch. And often you'll find yourself staying after work for an hour or more but there's no extra compensation.
At the time, base pay was $32,000. You get 1% commission after your first 8 weeks. I was doing pretty well after a while, and I was getting $50 extra a week. The most I saw anyone in our office get was an extra $60 a week. To live in Uptown with everyone, buy your gas, pay your bills, and still go out, you either have to get a night job or ask your parents to help you. I just didn't go out, but many of my coworkers were being supported by their parents.
Overall, I felt the professionalism was sorely lacking. I found myself apologizing to people I was on the phone with at least twice a week because someone behind me yelled the f bomb across the room. The dress is strict and professional, (the girls were pulled into the conference room multiple times and told our clothes and makeup weren't good enough. ) but the behavior is not. It was like the wilder you were at the parties, the more respect you had in the office. I calmed down a lot my senior year, which put me a lot tamer than everyone else that came in. So that held me back and kept me from being "accepted" as part of the group. In fact, everyone I considered to be a friend in the office has left.
What I really didn't like was that I was wheeling and dealing people out of money. Not businesses, people. I would be talking to someone, hearing their new baby cry in the background while they tell me they need more money than they got in their last job, but I had to nickel and dime them down to as low as they would go. That made me feel like a terrible person on a daily basis, and that combined with the social factors is what led me to leave.
