There’s a fine balance in blogging between personal and informal on the one hand, and being excessively “me-centered” on the other. One of the most effective ways to build your own personal brand is to demonstrate your expertise, rather than talk about it: keep making useful contributions to the Great Online Conversation in a way that provokes a “who said that?” response. Best to plan this in advance: have a clear summary at your side of your own key ideas (at the SBC we call them “pips”).

@Rebecca – I agree – when I did this with the resume experiment I had very clear instructions to not mention who it was… btw, I didn’t know that was a common complaint (I thought the common GenY complaint was that they don’t stick around :p)

@Pete – Wow, your willingness to chip in really impressed me. I’ve known you to be a pretty cool guy before now but his is above and beyond.

@Chuck – excellent (and candid) points, thank you!

@Carl – thanks for the link

@Ryan – ya, I’d say, something smells fishy in Denmark (no offense Karin :p). There are too many things in your comment that are bright red flags. This is going to require another post.

Anyway…I am looking for thoughts and opinions on the following situation:

I am having second thoughts about accepting this job offer…

It’s 60 hours per week, straight commission, no benefits, 6 day work week (5 10.5 hour days, Saturdays 10:30-6)
Their spiel sounds really good with tons of money to be made getting customers to enroll in a 5 year guaranteed price, no increases, for natural gas. $25 per person that enrolls. The guy I shadowed today had 6 people sign up in about 3.5 hours…in 98 degree heat.
The alleged goal is 10 enrollees per day. There are only 2 locations in the state, so their sales area is huge. If you could average 13 new enrollees per day, it’d be $100K+.

Right now I really have nothing to lose by giving it a try, unemployment dried up in June. A 60 hour, 6-day work week may be a little much though. How am I supposed to get any personal things taken care of with Sunday as my only day off?

We would be paid every Friday though. The #3 manager I talked to claims that we’ll be able to retire in 10 years and that after 3-4 months in the field we should be able to become managers if we want to be because the market is booming. All 3 of the managers in this current location are moving by early next year because they are opening locations in new states.

It’s also a 1099 company, so taxes would be our own responsibility.

There really was no interview process to speak of. A group of about 25 of us came in one day for a presentation and then I had about a 3 minute interview (admittedly, mine was shorter than most other people’s) where I was offered a 2nd interview. Interview #2 consisted of 11 of us coming back, and 2-3 of us were assigned to follow training managers around (supposed to be for about an hour and a half, ended up being 3+), seeing what they did and if we’d like to do it.
Despite the sweltering heat, it looked fairly easy. Another major drawback would be that on occasion you have to go into a very rough neighborhood, and we could be prosecuted if we misrepresent ourselves as associated with the utility company. After following the guy around we came back to the office and had another very brief, individual sit down with the managers where they asked if I’d be interested. All 3 managers seem like nice guys, although they are also all stereotypical salesman personalities.

As an added bonus, on my way in to the interview a mourning dove came zipping in on my truck and exploded when it hit my cargo rack…all I saw was an explosion of feathers in my rear view.
Then, as I’m backing out once my suddenly 9:30 hour day was done (it was supposed to last 11:30-6:30…didn’t get out until 9:30ish) my former minor grinding on my front axle became major, and suddenly my brakes are soft.
I went back into the office and talked with one of the managers, he came out and took a look at my truck, upon quick visual neither of us sees what’s wrong. I got it about halfway home before pulling into a mall and calling my dad for help, since at that point I was very close to his house.
All in all…left home at 9:45am…returned home shortly before midnight. I was supposed to be back for training and heading out into “the field” at 9am today. Shortly after I got home I called the office and talked to a different manager about what had happened, he said it’d be alright if I just came in tomorrow.

My gut tells me that something smells fishy in Denmark.
How about you?

And, I’m really overwhelmed with the excellent input and advice received already… seriously, how many people can say they had THE Chief Architect of HP.com to help redesign your blog (even if it’s just a few things)??

Best of luck and enjoy the mention in Jason’s blog!

http://ryansmithtest.blogspot.com/

I obviously didn’t do anything with the left side bar and my profile comes up instead of Ryan’s, but you get the idea.

Pete Johnson
HP.com Chief Architect
Personal Blog: http://nerdguru.net

Hope it helps, and welcome to the fray. -Carl