Blogspot finally works in China again and since it does I might as well drop by a quick update before it stops working again. Well, in June me and my girlfriend moved to Shanghai. We found a really nice flat right in the centre. We have about 20 shopping malls and three starbacks within 10 minutes walking distance (btw, ever since I came to China I learned how to appreciate starbucks).
Once we got here we both applied for jobs. I got a reply pretty quick from a "financial planning company" in Shanghai looking for "marketing executives". Well, that sounds great, I thought and went there. It was a group meeting where all the aspiring marketing executives met with one of the company's directors. It turned out that it was a financial planning company for expatriates in Shanghai helping out with offshore investments and retirement plants. Well, out of the 12 or so people that went there five of us were hired. It turned out that "marketing executive" meant telemarketer, i.e., your job would be to sit at the phone all day and call expats who really didn't want to hear from you and invite them to meet with one of the consultants. I still thought I'd give it a shot, at least it was something. The conditions were pretty bad though, the company would pay NOTHING for the first month and if they decided to hire you they would pay you 4000 RMB per month plus commission. What was even worse though was that everybody in the office had to wear very formal clothes, i.e. a shirt, tie and formal pants everyday despite the fact that we just stayed by the phone and never actually met any clients. This was really bad for me since I had to travel about one hour everyday to get to work and it was getting very hot outside. Everyday when I would get the office my shirt would be soaked in wet, it looked like I had just taken a shower with my clothes on.
Among the five of us who were hired at the same time there was me, an English girl, a French girl who spoke great English (probably the first and last one I met), a French guy who told me he did a lot of mushrooms and weed back home in France which is why he had to get away from all of that shit and a guy from a really small African country I and just about everyone had never heard of before (a small island between Madagascar and the mainland). In the team of marketing executives consisting of about 15 people in total, about half of them were French, there were a lot of guys from S-E Asia as well, a Turkish guy and the consultants were mainly American including the manager.
The first week we mainly had training consisting of us calling to different people in the office and pretending to make a pitch. It was a way to learn about how to deal with objections, how to make the sale etc. Everybody did pretty find apart from Mohammed, the African guy. His English was really bad and it was hard for him to understand what people were saying. He didn't really understand the company either or what it was about. He was also really nervous on the phone. The first time he made the practice pitch to another guy in the office he was like: "Hello, my name is Mohammed". The French guy on the phone replied, "Good morning". Mohammed said: "What?". The French guy said: "I said: good morning". Mohammed laughed nervously and asked us how to continue. In general I tried to help him a lot, especially because his assigned "coach" basically ignored him the whole time. I tried to show him how the computer system worked, how to make the pitch, what the company was about etc. and I felt he was improving. I seemed to be the only one who cared.
Anyway, during the week I was there I realized how difficult telemarketing was. A lot of people would just say: "No, I don't want to talk to you. NEVER CALL ME AGAIN" etc. It was especially bad as I was calling cold leads, i.e. people who were essentially never going to meet with us for sure and had already told us a hundred times. I still managed to get through to some people and got two meetings the first week which everybody thought was really special. Some people had been there for weeks and still had nothing. It was clear the climate was very rough at the work place and not like I was use to back home. During the first week two or three marketing executives quit. The next week I realized Mohammed was missing at the weekly Monday meeting. I asked where he was and they said he had been fired. At the same time the Turkish guy who had been there for four months was fired as well. About a third of the staff had left in a matter of a week. I realized they had probably only hired Mohammed to set an example for us, i.e. they're not afraid to fire us if we do bad. I felt really sorry for him and given the overall situation in the company I was thinking about quitting. At the same time I was offered to join a training program in the company I was writing a thesis about as well for seven weeks during the summer to which I accepted and quit my career in "finance".
More to come.
No comments:
Post a Comment