Sales Representative - Run away as fast as you can
Pros
Wide breadth of products, easy to access product managers, and that's literally IT. No other pro's. It was the worst experience of my life.
Cons
Medline is a truly awful organization, rotten to its core. The problems run deep through its culture and there isn't an easy fix. The only reason they have positive reviews from sales reps is because they hire kids straight out of college, or younger reps who have had one low-paying job, and these people have nothing to compare it to. It's honestly genius. Medline just hires people with zero perspective and then just absolutely grinds them into the ground with no pay and they say, "thank you" because they just don't know any better. Here's an exhaustive list of all the ways Medline is the worst place for a salesperson on the planet. 1. Cheap. Everything about Medline is cheap. The products you sell are cheap. The health benefits are cheap. Your sales budget is cheap. The swag they give you is cheap. Their main priority is finding out how little money they can spend on everything, from people to products.. It's like the Wal-Mart of corporate sales. I felt cheap every day I was there. Sometimes I still want to take a shower because I just feel cheap and dirty from being there. 2. Low Talent - Medline is full of people with no talent. Everyone you work with is a B player. See point number one. They don't pay people any money because they're cheap, so they can't hire A players. As a result, no one can do their job effectively because they're just incompetent. It's infuriating working with B, and in a lot of cases C, players all day. Product managers have no idea what they're doing. Warehouse workers make the same mistakes over and over. Sales Support people are rude. Buyers don't submit orders on time, The list goes on and on and on. 3. No ethics. They are the least ethical company I have ever worked for. They lie to employees, they lie to vendors, and they lie to customers. They gaslight reps, they lie about compensation during the hiring process, they lie to customers and say they can't meet the terms of agreements that have been signed, they lie to employees about splitting territories, they lie about being sold to private equity, they lie about axing entire divisions, they lie about promotions, they lie about anything and everything. The lying is so pervasive that it's almost like a virtue -- like you're part of the "inner circle" if you know how to effectively lie. Again, I wanted to take a shower every day I was there just to wash the Medline slime off of me. 4. Culture - Medline is a private company that really only promotes from within. The result is a giant echo chamber where everyone is a yes man/woman and thinks that the Medline way is the only way. It's an incestuous cult where everyone drinks the Kool Aid and no one can think outside the box. Every rep I met who had actually been successful at another company before joining agreed that it was an insane place. They hire people fresh out of college or people who have failed out of other jobs and are desperate. Medline then crushes their souls and these poor people are so blind or just desperate for a job that they keep taking it. Mind blowing to me. I have watched them completely ruin people's lives and just not even remotely care. They are the worst of the worst and are too blind to realize that it doesn't have to be that way because they are all inbred. 5. Technology Stack -- See point number 1. Medline is cheap. Therefore, all the tools sales reps use are cheap. CRM, order management software, Medline.com, etc. They are all TERRIBLE and make your life significantly harder than it needs to be. I couldn't believe the tools they used when I first started, Still can't now that I'm gone. They actively hinder productivity,. 6. Compensation Plan - Medline has the dumbest, most backward comp plan I have ever seen. I would guess that prob 1 out of every 15 reps actually understands it, and they use it to completely control reps. See point number 3, no ethics. They will change your quota, not count sales at the last minute, erase margin, etc. at the last minute just to keep from paying you. I've never seen anything like it in my life. Complete disgrace. So, to summarize: Medline is a cheap company that hires low-talent workers in every functional area with a terrible culture and zero ethics. To top it off, the tools you use will suck and they will lie about your comp plan and completely screw you over on comp. Sounds like a lovely place, doesn't it?