Pros
I met some really great life long friends here. The pay is actually pretty good, even though you have to sell your soul. The office location is downtown Pittsburgh, so it’s a cool spot to go out after work and have drinks after a long, exhausting stressful day.
Cons
The Financial Reps (some not all) are horrible to the Associate Financial Reps/Assistants, esp if they are having a bad day or not making a lot of money in a given week. The new Recruits/Financial Reps also have it hard; Mgmt CONSTANTLY recruits new fresh reps out of college and gives them the impression that they will make a salary of 100,000+ dollars after year one. Even if that is true, the rep has to pay for everything they use in the office – office space, assistant help, supplies, fax copies, etc. It is basically like a pyramid scheme. They bring in fresh recruits and then force them to reach out to all of their family and friends to offer to sell insurance, which is fine. The bad part is that they will have a senior Financial Rep go with them to the in-person meeting, and then they will take a cut of the sale money. If the new rep cannot continue to source new people, other than their family, they will be let go within the first 9 months, but the experienced rep will still have the money from the sales from the new rep’s connections. You will be let go fast if you cannot keep up and bring in fresh new clients each and every week. There is so much turnover here with reps, it’s really crazy. The office was not terribly huge, but I would constantly see new faces. Again, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, if you are comfortable with this type of setup. Also, the HR Department here was awful. They are not helpful at all if you have an issue; they only care about the Financial Reps who are part of the ‘Million Dollar Roundtable.’ HR is so unprofessional, I don’t feel comfortable listing all the details, but the person there was just terrible and really let a lot of people down. The “experienced” reps are still younger(ish) guys so they seem nice at first, but also have a chip on their shoulder, and are typically very entitled and spoiled. So this makes it hard to interact with them. They want to come off as the cool, calm relaxed type, but when you get to know them you see this is a fake persona. They don’t want to pay the assistants much money, but the pay is still good since they are paying you more than you would make elsewhere. It’s just not worth it however, because they treat you so poorly that I would rather be paid less, and treated with respect. If you are sick and still come to work and 5 mins late, they give you a hard time, and they micromanage you. The office is very outdated and very boring, but this is not a deal breaker, just disappointing. Overall, if you are ok with a stressful, outdated office with micromanagers who are entitled, inexperienced and hard to deal with, then definitely apply to work here.