Remember the Netflix documentary about Fyre Festival? That is essentially this company in a nutshell. Never in all my years of working in software have I experienced such an ill-informed, ill-advised and truly inept work environment. I knew going into this company that it would be a quick turnaround however:
We were getting paid outrageously to literally give away a product for free. A product that didn't actually work; so it was literally free crap. But whatever, they were paying out, so as long as the checks cleared...
And of course there was no actual practice or workflow process established, so every week was a change of direction: "Okay we have a callsheet, call everyone today--Okay that didn't work, go back to what you were doing before--Okay we have a new plan, we are generating leads for you, ONLY prioritize these leads from now on--Okay turns out these leads don't work, but we will make them better so go back to what you were doing before--Okay we have sequences we have perfected so please use them--Okay so turns out our sequences didn't work--" Quite literally a day to day or week to week basis...this was the experience. The CEO would never give it time to see whether an implemented procedure was working or not.
All you needed to "sell" the software to a company was essentially a name and phone number, so incredibly easy to do but most common objections were how we were going to potentially be spamming people.
But of course we were told as employees that the company would not be doing, and if you're an ethical company, would be the case. But instead, they had us (their goddamn sales people) lie.
It wasn't until I was a couple of months into the position that I had a client follow-up and share with me that they had been relentlessly bombarded with calls, texts and e-mails IMPERSONATING ME to try and get them to be using the platform more consistently. SO Crazy!!!! How are you going to make your sales people look like sleazy associates?! I am a professional in this industry and need to be taken seriously as such. I am attaching my name to this company.
The company motto was essentially: Volume, and fix it later. Which I get it, that's a pretty consistent start-up MO...but like come on, at least have your software actually DO what it's supposed to do.
If I am sourcing for a Backend Dev hybrid role in San Francisco CA, at the very least don't show me candidates with a GED looking for a waitressing position in Indiana.
The company has unrealistic expectations for their quota, especially unrealistic considering they have been getting their name dragged thru the mud with all of these terrible customer experiences. We had never heard of a single sales rep who's client actually had a positive experience. This was ACTUALLY a consensus.
Also good to note: If you've created an account on Hirect, you can't delete it. Isn't that great? You have to follow up with customer service, who probably won't respond, to get your account taken down.
Truly, I think this company is a Phishing scam. The funding makes zero sense: 75million series A with no info about their investors. Everything is super hush-hush on the backend in general. And then they were so worried towards the end about our "retention"....which wasn't even the right word to use for their concern! They were threatening our jobs over customer USAGE.
Which, I have to say, is hilarious to me because the software is supposed to connect you with candidates within hours....so don't we WANT to see bad usage? If they use the platform today and then never again, but hired someone on the platform...isn't then the software DOING it's job???? They were so pressed about clients downloading the app onto their personal devices....which would be all a phishing app would need to do all the shady stuff it needs to do.
So yea, probably an immense data scam to shoot for volume then shut down and sell to the highest bidder. Cut & run. I get it. It would have been great, but too bad your sales reps probably saw it coming and basically "grey area'd" the heck out of your shotty process so you probably hadn't got the numbers you were projected for.
And so now it's all falling apart. The economic decline in software right now is causing investors to need their money back, but this company doesn't have it. So they've let us all go to try and save their last pennies so they can hopefully pay back their supposed 75 million series A funding.
They're probably going to downsize until it's like 5 people and make a push to come back around in 2023--but I doubt it.
I think this company is sinking, and fast. Hiring 20 new sales rep to lay them off within their first few days or couple weeks in is pretty insane.
This company totally messed with people lives...
But hey who knows, maybe it isn't a scam. Maybe it is just another struggling start-up with poor software trying to keep their head above water.
