CYDCOR - THE MARKETING GROUP - NOW GLOBAL BUSINESS STRATEGIES Cydcor Client Manager/Management Training Richmond, Virginia

I am here only to tell the facts of what takes place. I am not here to tell anyone what to do with this information. I worked for this company for a brief period and at best I was lied to. Duped. Misled. I can walk you through the process and point out the inconsistencies. What you do with this information is up to you. It's hard to tell what to do. It's hard to tell if technically they broke any laws. Other than misrespresentation of what the job actually is. The only nice things are said by people who still work with this company and I was told flat out that the managers post good reviews to make the bad ones seem outlandish. Here goes and please make up your own mind, but this is the case and I'm not judging, I'm just giving you the facts....

The initial phone call:

I was called based on the fact that my resume was scouted on Career Builder. I was told that the job did have a base salary plus commission. When I arrived for the first interview (see the interview) I was told that there is a choice. Down the road, you found out that you could get salary but if you opted for it you were belittled and ridiculed. If you decided to stick with it, the manager informed his staff to attempt to make you quit. (neg you out; as they would say)

The First Interview:

I was called in for a meeting that lasted about 5 minutes and I asked a lot of questions that were not directly answered but was told that if called back for a second interview I would get a lot of my questions answered.

The Second Interview and the Job Itself:

You are out in the field all day with an individual and they show you what the job is. Which, Okay I guess it's tough and we don't want any miscommunications about what we do. Come to find out that if hired this is what you will be doing and the managers will train you in what to say to verbatim quote "get people to bite". If you hire the person it is your job to train them and show them the ropes. Great! Basically, this is when the managers teach you what to say if consumers out in the field yell at you, threaten you or treat you bad in any way because people from your office have been there before. You look at their info and call into a help desk to see if you can sell them something in a newer package that will help to save them money. The price given over the phone is a price before taxes, surcharges etc. when their bill is not, so it virtually looks like you are saving them money when in essence there bill is raised. None of this information is given to you. Once you are there long enough to figure that out, you are in and you start hearing about how so and so screwed one guy over and raised his bill like this...or I won a customer back and jacked up their bill so high... This is when I started looking for a job. The only way to make money in this job is by hurting the consumer. There are fees and costs that your "employer" is not going to tell you about that are charged to the consumer. You will have to hurt people to make money. And if you come back to the office one day without making anything, you are berated, belittled, mocked and made to feel horrible. you are asked to leave training sessions and meetings because you didn't hit your $100 goal for the day the day before. If you don't "hit goal/bell" as they call it for long enough, you are fired. By long enough, I mean 2 weeks, demoted, 3 weeks fired. So, you can still be making money but you only have 3 weeks then you're out.

The pay:

You get paid but you are not reimbursed for gas/cell phone. I was told and I guess now it makes sense to me as to why it was worded this way...."there is a way to get reimbursed for gas/cell make sure you track your usage." There is no reimbursement. They do go over a way for you to file it on your taxes though. But you're not self employed, you get a W-2 so that is interesting. So, if you make $600 a week. Which is about average, You will use about $100 a week in gas. Down to $500. And your average cell phone bill will be about $300 bucks a month. Which breaks down to about $75 a week. So now, your take home is $425. Oh, and the other thing they don't tell you is that they are going to take 10% of your commission out of your check in case your sale cancels. Now, you're down to $382.50. By the way, taxes were not taken out yet. At about 15% of your check (a small estimate) you will walk away with about $316. So, you will need to make about $1000 a week to make any head way AND you can do this by defrauding several of your local community businesses. By the way, Road Trips are available for which they do not pay for. You are all but forced to take a road trip to an area about 2 - 3 hours away. They put you up in a ghetto hotel where prostitutes and dealers frequent with 4-5 people in one room to share beds with co-workers. Not family members. Not people you would most likely want in any way shape or form to share a bed with. When I asked about this, I was told to sleep on the floor or share a bed. You will pay for all of your food. And all of the gas it takes to get there. Last road trip I took, The room cost approx. $75 a night if that gives you any indication. I am not above hard work. In fact quite the contrary. However, once you find out that to be and Asst. Manager means that you still do not get salary. You will have to stay out in the field still and even on up through Mngmt. You are not given an office location. You are to stay in the field until you have earned enough money to save about $10,000 to open your own office. Which, okay, you are paid on a higher commission structure at that point, but you will need to stay in the field until this is done. You will have to pay any office staff out of your pocket once you do open your office. And you will have to pay all of the office expenses. You will be paid on what your underlings bring in so again more money coming in for you. However, this is not the way it is presented up front. None of this is told to you. Oh, and they had a mandatory meeting on a Sunday that we all had to attend up in Maryland. Again, we paid for that too. Said we had to go in order to still work there, but didn't provide a way to get there. Money to get there and it was on a non-official workday. And, we didn't even get paid to be there. Fairly sure, that legally it can't be mandatory then.

The mentality:

This group of individuals will present you with something called "the system." They system breakdown:

Law of Averages: The more businesses you see, the more money you will make. No problem with this line of thought at all, but it is kind of common sense. If you do not make any money that day, you are told that you did not see enough business. You are lazy and are not giving it everything you've got. Behind close doors this individual was referred to as a piece of s**t and we were all asked to either neg them out or see if they could make a sale.

Working your territory correctly: This is where you are shown how to go into the businesses, which ones to go into and which ones not to. In the beginning we are told to not go to Corporate locations. This is because (as you will learn) that corporate places can afford the attorney's it will take to make an issue once they learn that you have jacked up their bill. You are told here that if you didn't make any money that day it's because you are not good at working the "Impulse Factors". In reality, the territory itself had been worked over and over to the point where people are hanging signs in the windows of their businesses for our representatives to not even bother coming in. But you are told it's because and I quote: "you suck."

Now comes the part where you are there for a while and the manager is talking to you more and more about all of the ins and outs of the company...I had an opportunity to sit with a manager over a beer at what we called "team night". It was once a week and if you did not go after working 10 hours already that day you were berated, belittled and talked down to. I asked verbatim what why we operated the way we did and made the statement that we look for a certain type of person don't we? And the answer came back (and this is a direct quote) We do look for the people who have no where else to go and spend a lot of our time making them feel like they have to stay here to be able to make any kind of money in life or be any kind of success. The jokes were made about it being a cult. I don't think it's a cult. I just think it's a bunch of High School graduate, college drop outs that were sucked in and are now passing on the mentality. We know the type of individual to target was what I was told. The easy sell, the kid who doesn't know better, the loser who needs us. I thought to myself. What the hell does that say about your company that this is the type of person you want to hire. It says that 99.9% of the peole hired will be there only long enough to fatten his pockets and will be beat down (verbally) and belittled for their entire working relationship. Anything you share with the manager at this company about your personal life, will be used against you and talked about amongst your peers in a negative way even though he makes it seem like he cares and understands that every one has the ocassional issue. I was told that I should have showed up to work with a severe case of the stomach flu after I was ranked as one the hardest working and highest earning reps. I explained that I was vomitting every five minutes and to weak to stand and he said he would have been at work that day. Came to find out that behind my back a whole meeting was run about how pathetic I was for not being there that day. The one and only day I was out.

My departure:

I was able to find out after I left that I was called a loser who was never going to make anything out of my life. I was never going to amount to anything. Not two short months before that, I was being touted from the roof tops for being top in the office. Broke office records. Building the highest earning team. This isn't surprising. He had to make me look that way because I left him. I guess maybe he doesn't credit the rest of the gang for having the intelligence to see that he was calling me out for being the best and that I was the person to get around not a few short weeks before that. Now, because I left. I'm a loser. In my world 2+2 still equals 4. I by the grace of God have found another job. I look forward to starting a new adventure and loser or not I will still be a good person.

Summation:

These are not good people. Who cares...okay

These are not honest people. Who cares...okay

You are not going to make the money they say or any money doing this. Who cares....okay

To continue to make money on the campaigns they are running, the only thing you can do is lie, defraud and steal. I left before having to do that. But was berated for not having the sales they wanted. Who cares. ...okay

If none of that bothers you, then this is the place for you to be. If so, there are no good offices of this company in the state of Virginia. There are no exceptions. RUN!!!