Have you ever seen Have you ever seen Have you ever seen Glengarry Glen Ross? If so, this might make all the more sense to you. For those who haven’t seen the movie, I highly recommend it (if for nothing more than Alec Baldwin’s brief appearance). Glengarry Glen Ross is a movie about salesmen and Alec Baldwin is a douche bag in it (and in real life, from what I hear).

I’m on the hunt for a job right now. As an Economics major with no practical Economics work experience behind him, I was pleasantly surprised to get a call back for an “interview” for a financial planner position at Ameriprise Financial, a spin off company of American Express. The job I applied for seemed “reputable” enough and had been recognized as a great way to launch a career in Forbes magazine. So why would they be calling me back? As far as I figured, it’s not what you learn in college, but that you went there -- they say that you learn 80% of what you use in your job from the job itself, not college. I saw no reason that it couldn’t be true about Ameriprise; after all, I learned 90% of what I needed to do to manage a Walgreens store through my Business Management Internship and in-store experience.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

First off, this wasn’t an interview that Ameriprise invited me to. It was an informational session. They invited a ton of people there and it didn’t seem to me that the pool of people they invited were anything “special” (perhaps the only thing we all shared in common was opposable thumbs). For someone who is looking for a career in something that 1) requires a college degree to do and 2) utilizes my knowledge of Economics in a constructive manner, I was very turned off by my first impression. I’m looking for something more in line with Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) than cold calling and door-to-door salesmanship (actually, Ameriprise stressed very heavily that they don’t cold call…as I later found out on the internet, Ameriprise advisors find other, more creative ways to pester and pressure people).

A more telling sign of the “quality” of this job (and their commitment to hiring quality people) was that they sent me a confirmation email specifically telling me to come to their office at noon (in fact, they urged me to be early!). Stupid me arrived there at 11:30 am, only to find out that “they moved the meeting back to 1 pm.” Clearly, no one thought it was important enough to tell the interviewees (sorry, potential interviewees) that the meeting time changed. Oops.

Maybe they should actually validate parking too. The extra hour cost me an extra $7 in parking fees.

More obnoxiously, however, was Ameriprise’s “why you should work for us” pitch. The woman giving the presentation (the field vice president) was the embodiment of Alec Baldwin’s character in Glengarry Glen Ross. An arrogant prick taunting you with the “luxurious side” of sales. It’s all so very easy, right? She made a specific note to tell us all that she just purchased a new BMW.

She also outlined how much money one could make as a financial advisor at Ameriprise quite early in the presentation, something that most companies do not even talk about until they make you an offer or at least give you a call back for a second interview. It’s called modesty and neither she nor Alec Baldwin has any.

Yada, yada, yada. You get the point. The job sucked and I just kept sitting there thinking “god, if I ever took a job like this, I’d be just as miserable as Jack Lemmon in that movie…” And I probably would have.

Hell, even Al Pacino, the successful salesman of the office wasn’t TOO well off.

The funniest part of the whole experience was that they made the job of a financial advisor sound an awful lot like a pyramid scheme. “You pay for all the necessary resources and classes and exams you will need to take to in order to be an Ameriprise advisor upfront…then, you go out and find 10 clients, who in turn each refer you to ten people and so on until you have hundreds of prospective clients.” The catch of this pyramid scheme, however, was that you get fired if you don’t get at least 5 clients in the first 10 weeks of your 70 hour, below minimum wage work week.

Pardon the use of AIM lingo here, but LOL!

I could easily see this sort of a day becoming some sort of short film. Perhaps I’d be an older gentleman who has recently become unemployed and must find a way to make ends meet. Perhaps the lucrative potential of sales catches the attention of my greedy side and attracts me to Ameriprise. Undoubtedly, I would also be going through some sort of midlife crisis in this movie. The funny part is, I think a few people at the informational session fit this description…

Perhaps Ameriprise Financial should look into making its own late night infomercials to recruit future “employees.”

“Are you seeking financial independence? Do you wish to make your own schedule. Would you like limitless income potential?”

Me thinks they’re wasting their money on Dennis Hopper.