Job Search, Day 15 - Mission Accomplished

Today, I received the following phone call:
Caller: Michael, I would like to offer you the job that you interviewed for this morning.
Me: I would like to accept that job.

With that, an appointment was made for me to go to the main office in Hartford to fill out the paperwork. I will be working for a company called American Income Life Insurance Company out of their new Springfield office. When I first was contacted by them, I was a little skeptical because they were so eager to hire me.

It turns out that their business model is to work with labor unions. (This is why you likely have never heard of them.) They work with union leadership to offer products the union members. The members then send in requests for more information, and the agents follow up on that. This means no more cold calls, no more blind prospecting, no more selling to friends and family. As the manager I spoke to said, "business should be business, and personal should be personal."

The reason that they are so eager to hire is that they have made arrangements with unions in this area but they did not have adequate sales resources in place to meet with all the members who were interested. Thus, they must build up a sales office rapidly, and I am part of that.

The best part for me in my current situation is that I should have a paycheck in my hand by two weeks from now! This is very exciting news. As Annie said, "What's money?" It's been a while.

Doing my due diligence, I did a little search of the Internet to see what I could find on the company, fearing that I would find that they were some terrible, sketchy scam. I was very pleased to only find one negative web site in a quick search. They have a good BBB rating and a good AM Best rating, so they are legit as a company. I also looked around their web site a bit. They not only seem to be a good insurance company, but they seem to be a progressive company.

Find me another insurance company that says this on their web site:
Our agents have walked picket lines on behalf of striking workers, collected food for needy families, and participated in coordinated Get Out The Vote campaigns nationwide for progressive campaigns.
http://www.ailife.com/Main/markets.aspx?submenu=ProgressivePartners


It is also the only 100% unionized insurance company in the world: unionized not because the employees were disgruntled but because the company wanted to show their dedication to the labor movement by becoming a part of it.


This is quite a job I have come into, and I look forward to where the path will lead. It's a good thing I did not give into my skepticism and I checked the place out.


Overcome your skepticism. Get out and see what opportunities await you.

Update August 5th, 2017
Since apparently this article still gets some hits, an update on how this turned out. I worked for AIL for about a year and a half. They do have leads for union members, but they do not have as many as I thought they would so success is largely dependent on how many referrals you are able to get from each appointment. For the right person who has a talent for sales, AIL is a great opportunity, and, while it is straight commission, it is likely you will start making money fairly quickly because you are given leads right off the bat. Everyone who puts in the effort and follows the system makes at least $20-35K/year, and some do over $100K their first year, and the difference between the first category and the second is talent and skill. I'd definitely recommend this company to anyone who wants to get their feet wet in selling. They are good people doing good work.