***READ THIS BEFORE ACCEPTING Inside/outside/associate district manager sales roles ****
note: post was removed for mentioning specific titles. The instances mentioned in this review extended to the highest level of local management.
This will get buried or sandwiched between 5 star reviews from managers who make their people write reviews to win a $12 bottle of fireball). If you want to confirm what I am saying here... look at the tops of the desks/cabinets when you walk in the office for an interview and look at all the bottles of strewn about the office.
Where to start.... the recruitment process was incredibly unprofessional, but probably the least terrible part of my time at ADP. The recruiters should have been a tip off the whole company was a complete farce. They were always juggling me around multiple people and nobody was communicating with one another. Every time I responded to one, I would get an out of office that they were on vacation and would have to connect with someone else and start all over again.
Once hired, I was told I would be given a short internship to make sure I was a good fit (the sales apprentice role). The *leaders* slyly told me it would only be a few days and would only pay $12/hr. To their credit they did only have me doing this terrible role for a few days. They brought me in and offered me the permanent role, with a start date of NEXT MONTH! So for an entire month, they paid me $0.50 above minimum wage to work there with zero benefits. I should have left at this point but I was determined to make this work. I honestly don't know who was luckier, me or the other interns who were kept in this role for months before being told they weren't going to hire them. In reality multiple managers told me they knew they weren't going to hire the people months before firing them out of the apprentice role. This was simply a way to get their top people free calls to generate business they didn't have to work for. If you find yourself in the "apprentice" role for more than a week and making dials for an "elite" performer.... leave. You will not be getting a job offer from them and are basically cheap labor.
Next came the new hire training, which everyone had said was "world class sales training." At one time this may have been true. These days it was only for one hour per day, 3 days per week, over an eight week period! Why this was an acceptable practice is completely beyond me. The whole thing could have been accomplished in a week. They covered nothing important and taught zero skills relevant to the job. During my training I was told by my direct manager to just sign their name on all the role plays I was given as homework to do with them and to copy the answers from people who had done it previously. Again... should have taken this as a bad sign but I was determined to make this work.
At this point, I was able to start seeing the cracks in the paint. It was all smoke and mirrors. Nobody was making money except for a few people who had been handed the top referring CPA firms in the county by their managers. This was strategically done to make the managers look successful. ***Fun Fact: These firms only refer over to ADP because ADP will pay these CPAs up to 12x as much as they will their sales people for those accounts.***
Bottom line…nobody was making any money as an associate district manager.
When I was interviewed for this position they told me I would easily be making $70k by the end of my first year, six figures at least in year two. In order to make that $70k, I would have to be selling at least $150,000 worth of payroll. To put that in perspective, it would put me roughly in the top 5% of all producers in that role worldwide. To make matters worse, they won't actually give you your territory (opportunity) until after you already are hired. At this point you will usually find out that you are restricted to walking around some disgusting gang infested neighborhood that nobody else wanted or has had any success in. In addition to all of this, the other lines of business are constantly stepping all over the same tiny accounts (inside sales, time & labor, workers comp, TotalSource, Resource, workforcenow & more). Nobody is playing by the same rules.
During my time in the San Diego office I witnessed outright lies to customers and employees alike, cheating, sexism, intimidation of subordinates, bullying, hazing, favoritism and a bevy of other wildly inappropriate behavior I never thought possible from a Fortune 250 company. I was actively coached and encouraged to engage in these behaviors and was ostracized when I expressed my concerns to management.
Unfortunately, my experience was not an isolated issue and has been reported to the corporate headquarters in New Jersey and individuals in the HR department by multiple people. To my knowledge, nothing has ever come from any of the complaints.
Take my advice, between the intimidation of employees by the management, outright lies about the position and overall opportunity... you can do better. Do NOT take this job, especially in the San Diego market.
