Applying for a Job, Over the Phone?

[Alfonso Crawford]

A door-to-door magazine-selling gig has got me suspicious: they say that they'll bus you out to an area, cover your hotel, and all you've got to do is go door-to-door with magazines. I was approved very quickly, and the guy wanted me to fill out a job-app' over the phone.

I don't need to pay for anything, unlike the knife-gig I investigated (which I can't get dough for, 'cause no one in my family trusts it), but the speed at which I was accepted for the job seems odd. Having to give out personal information over the phone doesn't feel right, either.

The job itself doesn't bother me. The idea of travelling beats my current situation into next Wednesday. The rejection-rate I'll be facing is, in retrospect, nothing outside of my norm. If I can wash dishes for a living (which I've done, and kicked ass while doing it), selling subscriptions won't be too degrading, eh? If all else fails, I can just disappear in whatever new town I end up in!

[Addict]

Sounds kind of like Southwestern to me where they move you to a different city for an entire summer (so you don't waste any time on friends or family) and then you sell textbooks for 80 hours a week.

Here's my opinion on such opportunities: you should be suspicious about anything that doesn't require any skill set, things where you're too eagerly accepted. It pretty much means they'd hire anybody off the street. Highly successful companies hire highly skilled people. Otherwise, it's just results by volume (you're probably no risk to them whether you sell a 1000 subscriptions or 0).

And you say "I was approved very quickly, and the guy wanted me to fill out a job-app' over the phone."

If you are perfectly fine with what it is though and you know the details, it can't hurt to try.