Posted On: July 1, 2009, 10:58 am CDT

Posted By: in virginia

ySpace
State Farm is not my idea of an ideal work place. My overall experience was negative. I left for two reasons: training was poor and I dislike being forced to sell regardless of need. The rest wasn't that great either:

Pay: My pay was what I asked for. I don't know if others were paid more than I was, but I do know that I was paid more than some others. I did receive periodic raises, which was confusing as I generally had the impression that I did my job poorly.

Respect: Absoluely none, but it ran both ways. My agent consistently threw the team members under the bus when it helped him save face with an angry customer. I had no problem doing the same thing right back! He would also either give the team members a silly name or make fun of where they were from.

Benefits: None. No health insurance or life insurance, which is ironic as the company sells it! We didn't even have a retirement plan, again ironic as we sold those too. I worked for two different agents and this applied to both. I cannot say whether this is standard or just among newer agents.

Job security: Both the people I worked with and I generally felt like we were always on the razor's edge of losing our jobs. Employment at an agent's office is at the will of the agent only. Some of these guys have some serious turnover! I think that if the training was better the job security would improve. Many staff members are not properly trained and then fired for not knowing how to do their job.

Work/Life Balance: In my experience, the job is stressfully consuming. You're always worrying about performance and whether you will get fired soon. I was so stressed out that I had an impossible time leaving work at work. But depending on the agent, taking time off for illness, dental appointments and your child's school play can be extremely easy. Other agents will make you feel guilty when you leave work early because your kid was sent home from school/daycare because of vomiting and fever. As I've had both of these types of agents, I'm fairly neutral on this aspect.

Career Potential/Growth: State Farm's agency structure does not lend itself to upward mobility. You're either the agent or the team member. There are agency field offices that support the agents, but the employees there tend to be failed agents.

Location: State Farm offices are as ubiquitous as Starbucks stores. Their operations centers are rarer, but we're talking about the agencies. If you give it some time you should be able to find a location close to home.

Co-worker Competence: I'm grading this on my most recent experience, but I will say that there are some highly competent people working at State Farm. Each one should take their knowledge and experience elsewhere as they will have money and gratitude heaped upon them. But back to the not so good ones. My agent had no knowledge of a basic auto policy, and so neither did my co-workers. I heard everyone repeatedly give incorrect advice and explanations to customers. My co-workers were not licensed to sell insurance, but did anyway AND received commission. The agent's philosophy was to simply get new policies and it didn't matter what had to be done to get them. It didn't matter to him that nobody knew what they were doing as long as they sold.

Work Environment: I worked at two very different offices. The first one was uncomfortable. The agent sucked all pleasantness out of the air when he was around. He was mainly belittling and controlling, and when/if he was nice it was confusing. The second one fancied himself The Cool Boss. He seems to have a pathological need to have everyone like him so he was over the top with the chumminess sometimes. One good thing was that he was very liberal with the praise. He would then heap on the criticism, negating any nice thing he said. He was also very numbers focused. As team members were paid commission for every policy, there was a lot of sniping. There was no incentive for being fair in this office. Sell, sell, sell and do whatever you have to!

I didn't like State Farm the first time around. I didn't like it from the day I started and I was happy when I left. I didn't like being micro-managed. I didn't like being stagnant and learning nothing new. I didn't like that I would never be promoted no matter what I did because there was nowhere to go! I came back thinking maybe things would be different since I would be working for a different agent. I was wrong, unfortunately. My State Farm days are over and I couldn't be happier