I was interviewed by AIL. It was an interesting experience, to say the least.

When I arrived there were about 30 people waiting to get into a small office area, they had us all sign in on a clipboard and called us one by one into the interview. The interview lasted all of about 2 minutes. About half of the people were told "thank you" and escorted to the door, the other half were led to a boardroom with a big projector. I was one of the lucky boardroom people.

About 15 of us were waiting in this boardroom and the Regional Manager came in and started giving us his presentation. He was in his late 20's to early 30's and was a complete and total jackass. He kept talking about how much he hated being in our city and the only reason he was here was because he had to find a new manager for this branch and one of us was going to be that lucky manager. He said "we've got an MBA and a CPA in here, but that doesn't matter, all I care about is can you SELL!" He never pointed out or talked to the MBA or the CPA so I don't even know if they were real or if he was just hyping us up. He kept referring to them but never looked at a particular person. I think he made them up.

Anyways he goes through his schpiel and tells us about the job. This is on a Wednesday. He said that he was going to do final interviews with a "select few" of us the next day and the new person would start Monday. As he put it "I'm anxious to get the hell out of this town and go home so I've got to get this person trained!" He did keep telling us about how grueling the first 60 days would be. He said that we would be in the field almost every day (after our intial week long classroom training period) and would be trying to SELL, SELL, SELL to build up our clientelle. He said it will be typical to work 60 - 70 hours a week during the first 8 weeks.

There were definitely a few things I found interesting about his presentation. First off... This job is 100% commission, NO salary. He said that if you sold 5 policies a week (the minimum required) you would be making $48, 000/yr. However, most people sell more and make more. The average policy cost is $12/week so they are very easy to sell.

That made me do some quick math in my head. If you sell 5 policies a week for about $12 a policy that total dollar amount is only $3, 120. They are going to pay you a commission of 16 times your actual sales?!? BS. No way.

Another odd thing... He wasn't presenting this to us like we were a group of people and he was just giving us company facts. He was trying to sell US on a job with THEM. Now if you have ever been to an interview and the employer was trying to sell you on the company instead of the other way around, you probably know that there is something amiss.

Another odd thing... He said that he was hiring a branch manager and then he was going to hire that manager a group of employees after the manager was trained. But they already had people working there. Why would he need to hire a manager when he already had some people on staff? The people who already worked there weren't qualified to go into management so he is going to hire someone off the street with NO insurance experience? HUH? He said several times in the interview that he was only considering people with NO insurance experience.

Yet another odd thing... I was asked one single question when they interviewed me prior to going to the boardroom. It was "Do you see yourself as an individual or team player?" My reply... "I'm both." Two words. That's it. I know it wasn't a very good reply to an interview question, but my suspicion was so aroused by all of the red flags that I wasn't considering working at this place anymore, I was just trying to figure out what their game was.

Two more, then I'm done... Next odd thing... The girls that worked in the office were all knockouts. I mean they were drop dead gorgeous. They may be excellent insurance agents, but it made me think they might be more of a recruitment tool than salesmen (or saleswomen), especially when I looked around the room and saw that the potential employee pool was a man to woman 14:1 ratio.

Last odd thing... After we got done with the interview he gave us a single sheet of white paper and told us to write on the paper a short statement about why HE should hire US. So I took my pen and I wrote five words... "Because I'm hungry for success." I turned in my paper and shook hands with one of the managers and as I left I thought "well, I hope that wasn't the opportunity of a lifetime, cause I sure as heck blew that one."

About 3 hours later I got a call on my cellphone. "Hi (my name) this is (her name) at AIL. I just wanted to call and congratulate you on a job well done today. The Regional Manager was so impressed with you that he would like to invite you back tomorrow for a final interview. He said you were at the top of his list!" I was shocked. I was practically a smartass the whole time. I didn't make eye contact. It was clear that I knew there was something rotten in Denmark about the whole ordeal, and he wants ME? I told her thank you and we agreed on a time for the following day. I pondered as I drove home "why ME?"

When I got home I promptly Googled "AIL SCAM" and "AMERICAN INCOME LIFE SCAM" and I found hundreds of webpages about AIL and their deceptive recruiting practices.

So here is what I surmise...

AIL was not hiring a manager. They were looking for agents. What kind of manager is strictly 100% commission? If your job involves managing others you usually get some type of salary. But none-the-less.

Their game seems to be that he was going to call all 15 of us (or the vast majority) back for an interview the next day. Hire all of us and start all of us training on Monday. He would have told us that one of us would be selected as manager or that we are all managers in training or some nonsesnse like that. They would have worked us like dogs for 70 hours a week signing new clients non-stop that first 60 days, dangling a false opportunity out in front of us like a carrot in front of a turtle. Most of us would have given up during the 60 days and would quit. At the end AIL would have few (if any) agents remaining and have a whole host of new accounts we'd signed up during our tenure. Then they'd just rehire another group and go through the same thing over and over and over again.

What do they have to lose? They don't pay for our licensing and if you do not work there for a full 10 years you are not vested, so you lose all of your residuals. They walk away with a bunch of new clients and no agents to have to pay yearly commission on those accounts.

It is the perfect scam.