Pros
They offer the typical income structure of an insurance company, pay was supposedly really good, and of course the lack of any one to look over you is appealing to some.
Cons
I went into the job interview for a clerical position, steady business hours and pay. Well when I got there one of the office managers sold me on the insurance agent job, and told me they have incredible success and make tons of money. I acted interested and that plus a pulse got me to the next level of the interviews, which was more of a commercial for how awesome the life of an insurance agent is. "You can make a million dollars in your first year!!!" the whole experience was a way for them to get inexperienced people signed up and out the door to licensing, which is a month of unpaid and unmanaged learning of the insurance business, which requires full time attention and during which they pressure you to quit your current job and study. So fast forward through that colossal and expensive process. You finally get in the door with a license and they had you a script that you must memorize (phone and inperson sales pitch) and sit you down in front of a phone to make calls for 8 hours (twice weekly). During these days you are making calls for your trainer who is supposed to mentor and train you to make that million dollars, but most of the time they smoke and stand outside for the entire time and scream at you when you don't have their entire week scheduled for them. Fast forward through that experience during which, anybody that made it through the licensing requirement in time (about 60% of the hired class of 50 people), myself and one other sales person were all that made it through the "training". They give you a stack 100 pages of people who you are responsible for contacting and meeting with, never mind that you are about the 50th person to have this list of individuals, oh and did I mention that these individuals live 3 hours from the main office? Oh that's right, you are responsible for driving to these people, on your own dime, in your own car, by yourself every week. But it's okay you can claim all of those expenses on your taxes (never mind the fact that in this job you will never make enough money for it to be worth itemizing your deductions on your taxes). So you get up to your respective town of people, and the people you are selling to are dirt poor, these are not small business owners or doctors that you sell to, the only leads you get from AIL are union factory workers, people who make just above the poverty line and most are actually on welfare. So you sit in that double wide trailer trying to convince this person who struggles to buy groceries each week, that they can afford $100 dollars a month in life insurance. And when they rebuke you with that fact, your manager will train you to say "if you can barely afford groceries now, what are your kids going to be able to afford when you have died and they are living on the streets?" One last thing, say you get a miracle and you get through all of this, a test you struggle to pass because no one has taught you the material, a training process that is impossible to get through because you aren't making any money and you make it through the repetitive leads list to the person and for whatever reason your half cocked logic makes it through to the person. Remember that there is a reason this person has not bought it before now, one they don't qualify and all time is wasted or two they qualify, get the policy, then realize food matters more than life insurance and cancel it. The company then comes to you and wants what little they gave you for this effort back and if you can't afford to give it back then, you are fired. ...that's your job
