Congratulations, you're hired! Now quit!
(MoneyWatch) American Support is taking a wildly different approach to hiring. They're telling applicants that they are "supposed to quit this job," to "step all over us" and even going so far as saying, "Don't work for us." The company believes its applicants will find this type of straight talk during the hiring process refreshing.
In an interview with American Support president and CEO Matt Zemon, he shared the method behind this madness. "We have been hiring and training people how to sell for more than 20 years. While we certainly try to promote from within, the vast majority of our hires work with us for a year or two while they prepare for something else. They aren't looking for a career -- they are looking for a good job for now. As I looked at our industry, and how all of our competitors were talking about career paths, I realized that this was a bit dishonest on the industry's part and irrelevant from the employees' perspectives. So why do it? Our 'don't work for us' campaign is our attempt to bring a new level of honesty to the hiring process.
"One American Support company value is to establish a great relationship with all of our employees. Our ideal candidates are overeducated and underemployed. We are a stepping-stone job for them, and they are excellent employees for us. This hiring campaign is our way of embracing this relationship for what it is -- temporary and mutually beneficial.
"The right candidates are attracted to what we offer. American Support has been producing sales results for 20 years, and the names of our clients look good on our employees' resumes. We use leading-edge, cloud-based technologies that our employees can again refer back to when they move to their next stage in life. We are also a 100 percent U.S.-based company, and our employees and a majority of our candidates take great pride in this.
"Experience has taught us that employees want to be a part of a winning team, and it means a lot to them that we have succeeded in the sales business for over two decades. Our ideal candidate is a person who has no interest in doing telesales for life but is willing to learn a sales process, make some money and be part of a successful team. College students, work-at-home moms and military spouses are a significant part of our 20-year track record of telesales success for many of the largest companies in America. All three of these groups don't want a career path in telesales. They want a good job, for now. They then want to move on with their lives. We understand and respect that.
"Because of who these candidates are when they come to us, they are able to follow the processes we teach them and be consistent and reliable, which keeps our involuntary turn-over rates down. From our perspective, when they quit it's not a bad thing psychologically -- they move on to become part of our alumni and can look back at what this job provided at a time when they needed it. I think that type of turnover is a good thing and something that we both can embrace."
In the next 90 days 200 more "overqualified candidates" will join American Support with every intention of quitting -- and for this company, that is good news.